COMMUNICATIONS

Communications Program

An understanding of the complicated, dynamic relationship between technology and culture is increasingly important to engineers, managers and scientists; the reading assignments in Tech's communications courses allow students to explore this relationship and to do independent research in those parts of it most appropriate to their own majors. Tech students will graduate into a world increasingly dependent on electronic communication, and Tech's communications courses provide a solid grounding in the effective use of not only e-mail but also list serves, groupware, digital graphics, and Web design.

The freshman composition courses at Georgia Tech, English Composition I and English Composition II, incorporate all the content and skills required by the University System of Georgia but go considerably beyond those standards in both rigor and scope. Freshmen typically enter Georgia Tech with solid skills in critical reading and written communication. Their average Verbal SAT is in the mid-600s, and they typically received A's in their high school English courses. These composition courses help these students to continue to improve their reading, writing, speaking, and research skills to meet the written and oral communication requirements of Tech's upper level courses in science, engineering, and management.

The technical communications course provides the skills in audience analysis and verbal and visual rhetoric needed by students both in upper-level courses and in the technical and management workplace.

The courses make maximum use of Tech's outstanding faculty and its computing infrastructure. All of Tech's communications courses are taught by full-time faculty members, available to students throughout the week through office hours, appointments, and casual meetings. Each class has no more than twenty-five students; professors have doctorates from some of America's finest universities and extensive additional training in the teaching of writing. All the classes exploit Tech's computing infrastructure, which includes not only computer labs with the latest media-design software, but also dedicated individual high-speed connections for every undergraduate.