Dr. Kirk St.Amant, Professor and Eunice C. Williamson Endowed Chair in Technical Communication at Louisiana Tech recently received the Alfred N. Goldsmith Award for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Communication from the IEEE Professional Communication Society (IEEE PCS).  

The IEEE PCS is one of the world’s largest professional organizations dedicated to technical and professional communication, and it is one of the 39 member societies of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Dr. St.Amant received the Goldsmith Award at the IEEE PCS’s 2018 annual conference held on July 23-25, 2018 in Toronto, Ontario.  

The IEEE PCS’s mission is to “foster a community dedicated to understanding and promoting effective communication in engineering, scientific, and other technical environments.” The Alfred N. Goldsmith Award is given to scholars who have achieved “distinction in the field of engineering communication as evidenced by a significant reputation in a field associated with engineering communication.” Recipients of the award are selected based upon the contributions their scholarship has made to technical and professional communication practices through research publications and presentations as well as innovations that have advanced the practice of engineering communication.

St.Amant, who is on the faculty of English at Louisiana Tech, is a Research Faculty member with Tech’s Center for Biomedical Engineering and Rehabilitation Science (CBERS) and is on the steering committee for Tech’s Visual Integration of Science Through Art (VISTA) program. His area of research expertise is international and intercultural communication with a focus on international health and medical communication, usability and the design of technology for global audiences, and internationalizing online education.  At Tech, St.Amant teaches classes in usability and design, health and medical communication, and technical writing.  He is also an Adjunct Professor of International Health and Medical Communication with the University of Limerick (Ireland) and has taught on-site, online, and hybrid courses on usability, design, and communication for universities in Belize, China, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Qatar, Ukraine, and the United States.

St.Amant has worked on international projects for companies such as Medtronic, VERITAS Software, the Braun Corporation, and Unisys, and for the non-profit organizations the Humanitarian Demining Information Center (HDIC) and the Consortium for the Enhancement of Ukrainian Management Education (CEUME). He is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), and is a past president of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC), a past vice-chair of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)’s Special Interest Group on Design of Communication (SIGDOC), and a past member of the Administrative (Executive) Committee of the IEEE Professional Communication Society (IEEE PCS). His more recent publications include the co-edited books Teaching and Training for Global Engineering: Perspectives on Culture and Professional Communication Practices(Wiley-IEEE Press, 2016) and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet(Utah State University Press, 2018).