The Rochester Chapter of STC is pleased to sponsor the Heritage Award in Honor of Edline Chun. Continuing in the tradition of the Ralph P. Kepner Memorial Award, this program’s goal is to encourage and reward excellence in technical communication by students in area colleges.
About the Honorees
Edline Chun is remembered by her friends in the Rochester Chapter for her special combination of grit and grace, art and science, and humor and intelligence. Her impact on the greater Rochester area spanned academia, the arts, and community involvement.
Following a successful career as a corporate technical writer, Prof. Chun taught Technical and Professional Communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Often working with international students, Edline was noted for being firm but fair, always insisting on high standards. Her fellow faculty and staff members enjoyed her generous spirit of peer support, professionalism, and creativity.
Edline was an active member of the Rochester Chapter, chairing several committees over the years and often recruiting new members. In her free time, Edline was active in Hawaiian cultural circles, was a gifted painter, and donated her talent to neighborhood development programs and services to victims of domestic abuse.
Ralph P. Kepner is remembered as an optimist, a person who looked at problems as opportunities for finding creative solutions. He believed in the importance of communicating ideas effectively in an increasingly technological society. Although his technical writings for his employer, General Railway Signal, are probably by now obsolete, his spirit of optimism regarding our ability to communicate effectively lives on in those who knew him and who passed on those ideas.
Ralph was a dedicated member and officer of the Rochester Chapter, as well as of the Society of Technical Writers and Publishers, the organization which preceded STC. He served as Secretary, Vice Chairman, Chairman, meeting planner, and seminar organizer throughout the 1960s.
After Ralph’s untimely passing in 1969, the Rochester Chapter established the Ralph P. Kepner Memorial Program as our way to continue the spirit of our fellow communicator, as well as to promote interest in the field of technical communication.
Student Eligibility
Any student (full- or part-time) enrolled in an area college may submit a work of technical communication produced for course credit. This work may be paper-based or an online project. Area colleges are those in the regions represented by our membership. Currently, they include the Rochester, Buffalo/Niagara, Syracuse, and Oswego areas. The course instructor will verify that the work has been produced for course credit.
Requirements for Submitted Work
Work that was created for course credit and was produced within the current academic year may be submitted. It must include substantial scientific or technical discussion and technical illustrations.
Students may submit papers without cited sources if the information they use is common knowledge, or where they, or the organization for which they are writing, are the experts. If a student is including information that is unique to a particular source, the source must be cited using an academically recognized format (e.g., MLA, APA, CBE, etc.).
At least two relevant illustrations—a table, engineering drawing, graph, schematic, block diagram, photograph, flow chart, etc.—must be included. A paper must contain a scientific or technical discussion which clearly describes the scientific principles or technology associated with the topic. Papers must be at least 1,000 words in length.
Multimedia or online projects can be considered if proper access for viewing is provided for the judges.
Submission Procedures
Instructors are invited to submit eligible papers up to the closing date each year. A college instructor can submit no more than twenty papers a year.
Papers must contain the names of the writer, the course, and the instructor, and the date of submittal to the instructor. Papers should not show the grade they received.
An entry form must accompany each paper. The entry form must show the instructor’s name and address, and the writer’s name and local and (if applicable) permanent addresses. Should a student’s address change after submission, it is the student’s responsibility to notify the manager of such change.
STC Heritage Award Entry Guidelines
Students are urged to keep a copy of their work since it will not be returned. All submitted work becomes the property of the Rochester Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.
Click here for a copy of the submission form.
Award Levels
Funding for awards is provided by the STC Rochester Chapter, and the amount of funding may vary each year. The award levels are:
- Distinguished (typically, $500)
- Excellence (typically, $300)
- Merit (typically, $100)
All winners will be invited to the annual dinner and meeting in May, where the winners will be announced. Their names and titles of submitted work will also be published on the STC Rochester web site.
Judging Procedures
Before entries are sent to the judges, the manager will examine them to ensure that they meet the requirements described in the previous section.
Judges will rate submitted work on the author’s skills in using the English language, for the author’s understanding of the subject, and the ability to effectively incorporate design elements into the document. Judges will then rank the works in order from high to low. Judges may also indicate that they feel a work deserves no award. The manager will collect and list the rankings, then notify the award winners.
Judges may make tie awards, joint awards for multiple authors of a single work, or no award in any or all categories, if, in their collective opinion, the works do not merit an award. The decisions of the judges are final and may not be appealed.
Award Program Committee
The Chapter’s Education Manager will assume the role of Award Manager or may appoint a member to the role. The Award Manager recruits competition judges, publicly announces the contest, distributes the submitted work and collects them from the judges, and awards the certificates and monetary awards.
The Award Manager decides how many panels of judges are needed each year. Each panel will have three judges. Judges are appointed for a year and may succeed themselves. At least one judge on each panel will be a member of the Rochester Chapter. Two judges will not be associated with any institution whose students have submitted entries being judged by that panel.
Donating to the Heritage Award
STC Rochester gratefully accepts tax-deductible donations to fund the Heritage Award in Honor of Edline Chun. You may donate online through our Eventbrite pages, or in person at any STC Rochester event. For more information, contact Carmel Priore-Garlock (education@stc-rochester.org)
