Ad Hoc Committees

Ad Hoc Committees are those committees that are formed for a specific task.  Ad hoc committees can become standing committees.

Current ad hoc committee:

External Program Review Taskforce (ExPRT)

The ExPRT committee aims to create an external program review service that Technical and Professional Communication programs can use when their departments or programs undergo external evaluations for accreditation, certification, or other reviews. We recognized that most departments and programs undergo some form of an annual internal evaluation in which they seek to demonstrate to their local administration that they are meeting their pedagogical and programmatic goals. Many of these involve creating a list of core “competencies” and/or SLO’s which graduates of the programs should demonstrate. At Tharon Howard’s school, for example, they expect professional communication graduates to demonstrate six competencies. These include:

  1. The ability to apply Visual Communication theories to multimodal design practices
  2. Sufficient knowledge of Scholarship and Empirical Research Design methods to apply them critically
  3. The ability to apply classical and modern Rhetorical Theory to contemporary professional communication practices
  4. A thorough and productive knowledge of Professional Communication processes, procedures, and practices in both workplace and academic contexts
  5. Demonstrable technological and media production literacies
  6. Outstanding writing and editing skills

In order to gain a broader understanding of TPC programs, we are conducting an informal survey of other programs and competencies being used in the community. Consequently, we’re asking you to please take a few minutes to share what you’re using for program evaluation at your local institution with us. Please note that we’re not planning to use any of the information we collect to publish our findings; instead, we’re just attempting to verify that our approach to the external review service we hope to create for our field has merit. Our goal is to create a review service which we can present at the 2023 CPTSC conference in October for critique.

Past ad hoc committees:

  • CPTSC GO exploratory committee: Chair, Nathan Bollig, University of Minnesota
    exploring the possibility of a CPTSC sponsored graduate student group to help professionalize graduate students into the field and programmatic work
  • Expanding external relationships: Chair, Loel Kim, University of Memphis
    considering ways to make stronger connections to practitioners, which includes expanding the definition of practitioner and also considering ways to provide resources on building experiential learning opportunities

If you would like to join any of our committees, please contact the committee chair or contact us.