Wentworth Faculty Member Part of Award-Winning ‘Technical Communication’ Quarterly

A special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ) featuring a contribution from Wentworth Institute of Technology Associate Professor Juval Racelis has received the prestigious 2025 Nell Ann Pickett Award. The award recognizes the issue titled "Redefining 'Professional' in Technical & Professional Communication," as the best of the year. 

The award was presented at the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) Awards Reception in June. Racelis, of Wentworth’s School of Sciences and Humanities, was one of several contributors whose work was featured in the award-winning collection. 

Racelis' article explains how ideas of professionalism are shaped by the way people from different countries and who speak multiple languages have to adapt their communication at work. Using personal stories, the article looks at how family and older generations teach us about our professional lives. It argues that for multilingual speakers, looking and sounding "professional" is often judged by standards that favor native English speakers, making it harder for people to be recognized for their expertise. 

The award selection committee praised the issue for its timely and critical examination of professionalism through the lenses of social and linguistic justice. "This sustained attention and critical orientation to professionalism is long overdue," the committee stated. "This special issue and the articles therein...collectively highlight the multifaceted ways in which biased ideologies are insidiously encoded into definitions of 'professional' and have profound implications that impact every aspect of [Technical and Professional Communication] research and practice." 

The ATTW committee additionally commended the publication for providing "an important and diverse array of research, refusing a narrow idea of professionalism, and instead opening space for new, nuanced, and inclusive discourses." 

The winning issue, which was selected from 28 articles published in Volume 33 of the journal, was edited by Bridget Gelms of San Francisco State University and C.C. Johnson of the University of Central Oklahoma.