Business Communication: Building Critical Skills

Overview: Business Communication: Building Critical Skills provides a unique approach to a hands-on course, devised and created in its previous editions by Kitty Locker, with the assistance of a community college colleague, Stephen Kaczmarek. The innovative module structure allows instructors to focus on specific skills and provides greater flexibility for short courses and different teaching approaches. While grounded in solid business communication fundamentals, this text takes a strong workplace activity orientation which helps students build the writing, speaking, and listening skills that are crucial for success in the 21st-century workplace.

Kitty O. Locker was an Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University, where she taught courses in workplace discourse and resarch methods. She has also taught at Texas A&M University and the University of Illinois at Urbana. She received her BA from DePauw University and her MC and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana. She is very well known for her research background and her research in progress includes work on collaborative writing in the classroom and the workplace. She has served as the Interim Editor of the Bulletin of the Association of Business Communication and in 1994-5 as President of the Association for Business Communication. From 1997 - 2000, she edited ABC's Journal of Business Communication.

Stephen is an Associate Professor at Columbus State Community College and a Lecturer at The Ohio State University. He teaches courses in business and technical communication, composition, creative writing, journalism, public relations, film and literature and freshman experience. He has also taught public relations at Ohio Dominican College. He received an MA in English and BAs in journalism and English from Ohio State. Steve has presented papers at conferences such as the Association for Busienss Communication, Northeast Modern Language Association, College English Association of Ohio, and Conferences on College Composition and Communication. Steve has served on ABC's Two-Year College Committee and on ABC's Diversity Committeee.