A principal focus of education at Elizabethtown College is writing. It permeates every administrative office and academic department — from the writing-intensive departments, such as English, to the less obvious, such as Biology.
Jane Nini, director of career development, said Career Services has updated its correspondence and media outreach programs with more focus on social media platforms such as Twitter. One of the national trends the department witnessed is an increase in job postings that require a high level of competency with social media.
“Written applications and job postings are changing,” Nini said. “LinkedIn is a staple in the professional world. Students will have to think about their professional profiles and how they want to develop their written online presence to enhance networking opportunities.”
Nini also said that writing skills are of increasing importance to employers. “In ‘The Job Outlook for the College Class of 2014,’ by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, employers rated the ability to create and/or edit written reports as a 3.62 out of a 5.0 scale,” she said. Employers expect potential employees to know how to correctly write emails, letters and the aforementioned reports. Proper grammar and spelling are particularly important skillsets, as well as general professionalism. “Students often use an informal tone, such as addressing someone by their first name or starting an email with ‘hey,’” Nini said. “This is not an accepted format in a business setting.”
Richard Fellinger, Writing Center Faculty Fellow, heads Elizabethtown’s Learning Services Writing Wing, which focuses on helping students improve their composition skills. Writing tutoring is available for students of all majors because, Fellinger said, writing is a skill that is necessary in almost every discipline. As a result, the Writing Wing is one of the busiest sections of Learning Services. Fellinger said one of the most important services the Writing Wing offers is helping in high school-to-college writing transition. “When they get (to Elizabethtown), our standards are closer to a professional level because we’re preparing them for a career or for instances where they’ll be part of a public discourse,” Fellinger said.
The ability to write is one of the most challenging and one of the most important skills that students can develop in college regardless of major.”
The importance of professional writing to future career opportunities also was an important component in splitting the English major into three concentrations in 1991. These three concentrations: literature, English education and professional writing, were created in response to student interest in more specific career preparation. “English education and pro writing students get a strong foundation in literature to accompany their more specialized courses in teaching, workplace writing or creative writing,” said Dr. David Downing, chair of the English Department. He said in earlier years, many considered a general English degree sufficient preparation for careers in teaching or editing, but with the increased specialization of the modern world, more students want to customize their educations for the increased number of job opportunities open to English majors such as public relations and online publishing. “I hear from grads at least once a month that they are very pleased to find the skills demanded of them in the workplace are the very ones we helped them cultivate and refine during their college years,” Downing said.
Dr. Edward Chung, associate professor of marketing, said writing is an essential skill in business. He said he does not see composition skills as purely being for marketing or business, but as an integral part of working in the business world. The amount of writing business majors are required to do in their college work depends on the classes they take, but the majority of classes assign great deal of writing, including managerial communication and case analysis reports. Business writing is different from other types of professional writing because it gets straight to the point.
“The most important things we say first,” Chung said. “Adjectives and adverbs are minimized. We just want to get our point across.” Chung said much of business writing is something learned through practice. “The more you do, the better you are at it. But it only works if you’re taught by someone who, themselves, has done their fair share of effective business writing in the business world,” he said. One of the most common problems in transitioning from college writing to professional writing involves being conscious of space. Some business courses still require students to write extensive academic papers, which, Chung said, is not proper training for working in business. Students write long papers in school when most employers prefer written reports to cover two pages, maximum. “I think students would do well to make sure they can write well, because writing skills can often be deciding factors in terms of promotions,” Chung said.
Learning to write well is especially important in fields where other skills can overshadow the necessity of good writing. Dr. David R. Bowne, associate professor of biology, said that most professional scientific writing involves publishing papers in academic journals. Writers in the field must know how to speak to an audience comprised of other scientists, and their work goes through extensive peer review to ensure professionalism. There are no writing courses exclusive to the Biology Department at E-town, but many biology classes and independent projects include writing components, from lab reports to proposals to journal articles. Bowne said that most students in the scientists will not write extensively unless they publish in scientific journals.
“The ability to write is one of the most challenging and one of the most important skills that students can develop in college regardless of major,” he said.