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Re: Who's Heard of the STC Outside of This Field? (was: Not again:ce rtification)
Subject:Re: Who's Heard of the STC Outside of This Field? (was: Not again:ce rtification) From:ccallen -at- beckman -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 19 Apr 2001 17:36:37 -0700
bryan -dot- westbrook -at- amd -dot- com wrote:
>
> I don't think a certification from STC is going to impress very many
> managers anyway, unless they are writers themselves because very few
people
> outside of our field have ever even heard of STC.
> Actually quite a few within it have never heard of STC either.
Okay, this is not a vote for certification (I wouldn't bother with it if it
was available). Nor is it a defence of the STC (I don't really think they
need me to defend them--people who find it useful will belong, others
won't).
However, the argument that certification by the STC is worthless because
non-tech com people are not aware of the organization is bogus. Most
professional certifications are done by organizations that no one outside
the applicable professions are familiar with. Do you know who certifies
plastic surgeons (hint--it's not an official government or semi-government
agency)? I don't know what the organization is, but I would prefer to have
a certified doctor work on me if the occasion arose. Who certifies CPAs?
Before she went to law school my sister was a paralegal (certified legal
assistant) certified by an organization I had never heard of, but her
certification required a three-day examination. I have a friend that runs a
program to certify sheetmetal workers--I never heard of the certifying
organization before I knew him. That's the way most certification works.
So whatever your opinion about the STC, it's still the largest (and one of
the few international) organization of technical communication
professionals. So if certification was determined to be viable and
desirable, they would be the logical organization to implement it.
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