CPTSC

This year I presented at the annual CPTSC conference held, this year, at Michigan Tech in Houghton, MI. CPTSC is an acronym for Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Data and the topic for this year was "Communities, Workplaces, and Technologies." Many of the presenters focused on different aspects of diversity in technical communication.


My opportunity to present came just two weeks before the conference. The panel my professor was presenting on needed a student perspective and the original student wasn't able to go at the last minute. My professor sent out an email and I accepted the challenge to write and present a ~5 min speech at a  conference.


Fortunately, the panel was focused on technical writing programs in multi-disciplinary English departments. Basically, English departments, like the one at Pitt State, where technical writing majors are required to take tech and literature classes. I tried to be terse and concise in my speech. I just outlined some of my experiences at Pitt State and related a few ways I was able to apply my literature courses to technical writing.

Everything went smoothly, though. It definitely pulled back the curtain to the world of academia for me. It was a great experience and something I'd like to do again.

Also, Houghton, MI was ~14 hour drive. It's in Upper Peninsula Michigan, which is attached to Wisconsin. I think it may be closer to Canada than mainland Michigan. So, it's out of the way but the weather and foliage in the north are amazing.