[ATTW-L] Obituary of Dwight W. Stevenson

[Charles Sides]

Thanks for posting. I knew Dwight, as well. I used Ulman and Gould as a TA
at UMass, where John Mitchell was my mentor. But I did an independent study
with another professor who recommended Designing Technical Reports, and I
incorporated those ideas into my courses, too. I believe Dwight was John
Brockmann’s thesis advisor. Your post was a “trip back in time.”  Best
wishes, Charles.

Charles H. Sides, PhD
Internship Director and Professor
Department of Communications Media
Fitchburg State University
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Technical Writing & Communication


On Sat, Apr 5, 2025 at 1:07 PM Carolyn Miller <miller.carolyn.rae at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I have just learned of the death of Dwight Stevenson last month, at age
> 91. Most of you will not remember him, but for many of us old-timers in
> ATTW, he, along with his collaborator JC Mathes at the Department of
> Humanities in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, was
> central to the formation of technical communication as a teaching and
> research enterprise in the 1970s. Dwight was named an ATTW Fellow in 1987.
>
> I attended the first summer conference that Dwight and JC organized at
> Michigan, in 1975, and it illuminated in a whole new way what I was then
> trying to learn how to teach. They based the conference in large part on an
> early draft of their textbook, which was published in 1976 as *Designing
> Technical Reports: Writing for Audiences in Organizations*
> (Bobbs-Merrill). JC and Dwight developed a teaching paradigm for technical
> writing that I believe was the first not to be based on the
> current-traditionalism of composition textbooks, and it shaped my teaching
> for years afterwards. And incidentally, I remember that Dwight was the
> first person I’d ever encountered who was careful to avoid the generic
> masculine pronoun.
>
> A link to the obituary is below.
>
> Carolyn Miller
>
> Dwight Stevenson Obituary (10/07/1933 - 03/10/2025) - Ann Arbor, MI - Ann
> Arbor News
> <https://obits.mlive.com/us/obituaries/annarbor/name/dwight-stevenson-obituary?id=57990057>
> obits.mlive.com
> <https://obits.mlive.com/us/obituaries/annarbor/name/dwight-stevenson-obituary?id=57990057>
>
> <https://obits.mlive.com/us/obituaries/annarbor/name/dwight-stevenson-obituary?id=57990057>
>
>
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