Meet Our Students

From Engineering to the BA in Writing, Design, and Technical Communication

Kenyan Burnham

What was your industry background before joining the BA in Writing, Design, and Technical Communication? 
Ten years ago, I set out to build a career as an electrical engineer; having worked as a technician for a local company, Sam Jackson Inc. in Lubbock, assembling and wiring moisture control panels from writing diagrams, it seemed like a natural career path for me. I pursued this path through internships with Frito Lay North America working with the control system team at their headquarters, I did research in Robotics in Architecture (RobArch) at Texas Tech, I worked as a software developer for a local startup, and I eventually earned a staff position in an instructional laboratory focused on semiconductor testing on TTU campus.

Why did you decide to make a change?
As great as all these vocations and adventures were; during this time, I was struggling to find where I fit within the engineering and software development world. Most of the products I was producing were documents and very rarely did I create something you would normally associate with the engineering profession like a circuit board, a robot, or something of that nature. 

That being said, I was extremely proud of the work I was doing, especially the documents I created. I had several laboratory safety manuals floating about in engineering labs (all of which are still there), I had a custom reservation system I'd created for the Program for Semiconductor Product Engineering (PSPE), and I had over-time built a fantastic inventory system at my job. 

I shared my work with a friend from the English Language and Literature PhD program in the TTU English Department, and he stopped me and said: 

“Why aren't you in the TCR program? You're doing work that's similar. You should maybe take an introductory class to see if it's your thing.” 

And so I did. 

My first instructor was a GPTI student named David Young (These days, Dr. Young is a lecturer at Georgia Tech University), who himself was a former chemical engineer who had found more meaning and purpose in writing than in engineering. After that semester, I officially transferred into the BA program and would finish a Bachelor's degree I'd started eight years prior in December 2020. 

How did some of the projects that you produced as part of the BA program's coursework help prepare you for your future career aspirations?
There were numerous projects that were informative during my time in the BA in Writing, Design, and Technical Communication program but there is a special project near and dear to my heart that I helped to create that taught me some important lessons about the discipline and industry as a whole. In English 4380 - Professional Issues in Technical Communication, the capstone course in the BA program, my classmates and I were tasked by Professor Craig Baehr with creating a communication product that connected an audience of choice to a resource that they needed. I took this course well within the Covid-19 Pandemic in Spring 2020 and there was a growing understanding that personal and professional life would have to transition to online modalities and that many aspects of life would likely remain online. 

As an avid table-top board gamer, I was already aware that many families and friends, who had previously enjoyed hosting regular game nights, were feeling isolated, disconnected, and did not know how to overcome the challenges the modality change brought. Luckily, my group members, Jeremy Brunner and Logan Miles, (also former BA students), and I were already aware of many of the online formats for hosting table-top games online. However, these online resources required a certain level of digital literacy skill sets and competencies that could not be expected of all families and casual table-top gamers trying to keep some semblance of normality during social distancing. And so, we set out to create an online resource, which we called “We the Meeple”. 

Named after the people-shaped game pieces, “Meeple”, our project focused on educating table-top board gamers about various technologies and more specifically, about techniques for hosting virtual table-top game nights. We designed a website and wrote articles about how to go about setting up a virtual game night within three major gaming platforms. In addition, I built a simple JavaScript filter and search tool for finding board games that were available in these online platforms and I later added an example of a custom designed board game in Microsoft Excel/Google Sheets which I had developed for another course, English 4365 - Special Topics in Technical Communication: Crises in Digital Democracy: Fake News, Conspiracy Theories, Demagoguery, and Hate Speech Online, taught by Professor Michael Farris.

Takeaway Lesson: Technical communicators work in many genres with a variety of content, contexts, and audiences.
As someone who was used to writing technical documents like Operational Procedure Manuals (OPMs) and Work Action Safety Plans (WASPS), I had a very nuanced understanding of what it means to professionally practice Technical Communication. That same instructor who had demonstrated to me that it was possible to transition from an external discipline to the BA program had commented on my assignments:

“Not everything we do is a safety manual. You can't write the same way for every context.” 

And of course, they were right. 

When we were creating We The Meeple, we had many factors to consider based on the genre and our intended audience; against the backdrop of an ongoing pandemic. We needed to be explicit about our tone, what level of complexity was necessary within in each article, and we had to research and have people (real people) test out our website so that we could iteratively refine our website to meet the context, to connect with the audience, and to provide the right details for someone to effectively use our website so that people could connect with one another through our communication product. 

Some Final Thoughts
If my experience in the BA in Writing, Design, and Technical Communication has taught me anything, it's that regardless of what industry you come from and what experience you bring into the program, there's a place for you.