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Recent developments in engineering education have shaped the nature of composition programs at institutions or programs that emphasize engineering and science. Among these developments are revised accreditation guidelines and a curricular debate with a long history. Such developments highlight collaborative opportunities between technical and humanities/social sciences faculty. This multi-case study investigates how composition programs have responded to such drivers, opportunities, and challenges. The study draws from historical, observation, document, and interview data, and particularly interviews with composition program administrators at six institutions with significant technical emphases. Findings indicate shifts in historical emphasis on culture and utility, and three contemporary responses. Reductions, transformations, and innovations are occurring in first-year communication courses. Also, multimodal communications, including written, oral, and visual components, are being integrated across multiple instructional contexts. Finally, strong crosscurricular communication programs are emerging in which composition faculty partner with technical faculty. Implications of these findings are discussed.

ABSTRACT. We distill complex frameworks for stakeholder engagement into five main principles that scientists and natural resource managers can use in planning stakeholder engagement efforts. Many natural resource management professionals, including practitioners and scholars, increasingly recognize the need for, and potential benefits of, engaging stakeholders in complex decision-making processes, yet the implementation of these efforts varies wildly, reflecting great methodological and conceptual diversity. Given the dynamic and diverse natural resource management contexts in which engagement occurs and the often significant stakes involved in making decisions about natural resources, we argue that stakeholder engagement would benefit from a theoretical framework that is both agile and robust. To this end, five essential elements of stakeholder engagement are evaluated and organized to form the Five-Feature Framework, thereby providing a functional and approachable platform with which to consider engagement processes. Aside from introducing and developing the Five-Feature Framework, we apply the framework as a measure to evaluate the empirical case study literature involving stakeholder engagement in natural resource management in an effort to better understand the obstacles facing robust and genuine engagement in natural resource management. Our results suggest that the most basic principles of engagement are often absent from stakeholder engagement projects, which confirms the need for a functional framework. The Five-Feature Framework can be used to plan flexible, adaptable, and rigorous engagement projects in a variety of contexts and with teams that have varying backgrounds and experience. By virtue of its simplicity and functionality, the framework demystifies stakeholder engagement in order to help natural resource professionals build opportunities for collaborative decision-making and integrate citizen values and knowledge into complex management issues.

In 2008, the Society of Environmental Journalists listed nearly 50 science or science immersion workshops for environmental journalists. Yet relatively little is known about the content of these workshops and their impact on participants. This ethnographic study, conducted at a science immersion workshop for environmental journalists, aims to fill this void in our knowledge. Relying on participant observation and depth interviews, the study suggests that such workshops are useful for participating journalists: Reporters feel they leave the workshop better understanding the scientific method and scientific uncertainty. But the findings also reveal that “metacommunication”—communication about communication—is equally as important as science immersion activities. Workshop scientists should be involved in metacommunication activities not just as scientific experts advising journalists on science but as fellow professionals seeking to improve communication between the two groups.