Week 12: Thesis of Paper

I am still working to refine the thesis of my paper for this course; however, I submitted the following abstract I'm hoping will be accepted for the Computers & Writing conference 2016:

Bridging Cultural Dimensions: Matriculation From the English Language Center to the University

Technical communication serves to bridge STEM and the humanities by moving writing instruction beyond stylistic levels of composition through the employment of computers in writing English for specialized discourses. Intensive English language centers prepare students linguistically and culturally, with intercultural competence, for matriculation into American universities. The framework of Geert Hofstede’s (1979) value systems indicates a need for multi-dimensional considerations as the university seeks to recruit and retain women, first-generation, and under-represented populations to STEM courses. Increasing numbers of international students call for increased international competence and carefully guided educational shifts leading to increased student success and retention of these special populations in STEM and STEM-related courses. Carefully guided recruitment and retention strategies could lead the university and the intensive language center to move from an ethnocentric to ethnorelative lens, per the work of Milton Bennett (2004, 2014), as specialized programs teach students to communicate in a global society through increased knowledge of technical communication as a STEM-bridging major. This study explores matriculation trends from a local/national intensive language center to a public research university and considers ways the university might begin to recruit and accommodate under-represented populations in technical communication, a field dependent on computer-generated writing, bridging majors in partnership with local/national community intensive language programs.