The following was submitted for the CASE Newsletter in April 2026.

The big news in English and technical communication is the expansion of its current master’s degree program to “Communication, Media, and Technology,” official in fall 2027. This program will be entirely asynchronous online, designed for working professionals looking to deepen and future-proof their skills. It is not associated with any particular position or career; rather, it is intended to meet the shifting demands of communication roles in industry by integrating technical communication, digital media, content strategy, and user experience into a comprehensive and forward-thinking graduate program. This degree will facilitate advancement in the students’ current positions, as well as preparing them for advanced degrees in communication fields.

We are also developing a master’s certificate on generative AI in the professional world, from a humanistic and social science lens. This certificate is under development, with two new courses being introduced for fall 2026: “Foundations of Responsible AI Collaboration,” taught by Dr. Jossalyn Gale, and “Media Technology and Humanity,” taught by Dr. Eric Bryan. Both courses have already filled for their first offering.

The ETC department is providing exciting opportunities in the classroom, as well. Recently, the students in Dr. Sarah Hercula’s “A Linguistic Study of Modern English,” class met on Zoom with students from Mazoon College in Muscat, Oman, one of Missouri S&T’s partner institutions. Hercula and Lecturer Marwa Khalfan Habib Al Omairi at Mazoon arranged a “conversation partners” activity, which allowed students to gather in small groups for conversation, cultural exchange and the opportunity to practice their intercultural communication skills with students across the globe. The experience was a great success, and the class was grateful to Al Omairi and her students for the awesome experience.

In addition, ETC faculty are actively publishing. This year, Dr. Kathryn Northcut published “Pretty Persuasion: Visual Rhetoric of an American Corporate Campus” in International Journal of Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric. Furthermore, Drs. David Wright, Sarah Hercula, and Daniel Shank (psychological science), along with their two former undergraduate research students, Adam Rentz and Julianna Farr, published an article titled “Clash of the Titans: A User Experience Comparison of Amazon, Apple, and Google Smart Home Technology” in Communication Design Quarterly. This article stems from the team’s ongoing research projects in smart home technologies. To date they have been awarded over $100,000 in grant funding to pursue this research.

Finally, the ETC department did very well during the Missouri S&T “Giving Days” campaign in April. It received the largest number of individual donations of any department in the college and earned a reported $2,021, the third highest total in CASE and up from less than $100 the previous year. These funds will go directly to student support and scholarships. Thank you to our wonderful donors – especially our current students and alumni!