Technical Writing for Engineers & Scientists

About the Author

Leo Finkelstein

Leo Finkelstein, Jr., received a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1968; a master’s from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1969; and a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York, in 1978. He was Lecturer and Director of Technical Communication for the College of Engineering and Computer Science, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. He directed the technical writing program at the U.S. Air Force Academy while also serving as adjunct faculty for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He wrote, produced, and directed technical films in Southern California and commanded a combat-documentation, photographic unit in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, flying combat missions as an aerial photographer. In addition, his military service included experience in both space and logistics systems. He held FCC commercial and amateur radio licenses, had a black belt in tae kwon do, and was an avid user of all types of gadgets.

Jeanine Elise Aune

Jeanine (Jenny) Elise Aune is a Teaching Professor and the Director of ISUComm Advanced Communication (AdvComm) program at Iowa State University (ISU). She has an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has been teaching writing in the Department of English at Iowa State University since 1999. She was the Coordinator of ISU’s Learning Community (LC) English links for 11 years. Her responsibilities included helping linked discipline faculty communicate their expectations for students’ communication skills to English instructors, and helping English instructors re-design writing classes to help students develop those skills. The number of LC-linked English sections more than doubled during her tenure. She has been directing or co-directing the Advanced Communication program since 2011. She has worked with stakeholders across campus to build standardized curricula for the program’s four courses—business communication, proposal and report writing, biological communication, and technical communication—in both face-to-face and online mediums. These four courses are taught by ~40instructors in ~200 sections and enroll ~4,800 students every academic year. Most recently, the online business communication course earned QM certification1 at 97%, and the online technical communication course earned QM certification at 98%.

Leslie A. Potter

Leslie A. Potter is a Teaching Professor in the Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering (IMSE) department at Iowa State University (ISU). She has a B.S. in industrial engineering from ISU and an M.S. in industrial engineering with an emphasis in manufacturing from The Pennsylvania State University. She worked as an engineer and supervisor for John Deere for seven years before joining IMSE at ISU, where she has taught undergraduate courses across the curriculum for the past 20+ years, ranging from freshman problem-solving and programming to capstone design. As part of her research at ISU, she co-developed a professional communications course within the industrial engineering curriculum. From those efforts, she has developed and incorporated substantial writing and speaking curricula that are used by many of her peers. She was the co-founder in 2013 as well as the co-chair for the IMSE Undergraduate Research program for seven years, supporting hundreds of students with writing and presenting their research. She regularly requires writing and presentation assignments in her engineering courses, and has collaborated with faculty in the Iowa State University Department of English since 2007.