By John Clement
Hello! My name is John Clement, and I’m the current president of the Future Technical Communicators club at the University of Central Florida. One of our club’s most ambitious and exciting ventures has traditionally been to gather a group of students to attend the STC Technical Communication Summit. This year, it takes place in Rosemont, Illinois from May 15 to 18. I’d like to share a recent update about our students’ plans to attend and some ways you can support our group’s efforts.
For the past two years, our group has had hopes of attending this trip but experienced roadblocks; the coronavirus pandemic shifted the conference to a virtual capacity and also interfered with our ability to get funding from our university. However, this year it will be in person again, and the outlook for funding the trip is brighter. Thus, we are spearheading this initiative once again.
Over the past few months, the FTC leadership team assembled a committed group of students to attend the conference. Currently, including myself, our group has 7 students who have signed up to attend. Each student plans to volunteer at the Summit to offset the registration cost. For the rest of the costs, we submitted a funding request to our university to go toward the trip. Fortunately, our funding request was recently approved! We received $2,000 of university funding for it. This is a significant milestone and is what we needed to get our feet off the ground and help make this trip a reality.
However, what we received only puts our group two-thirds of the way to total funding; between four days of hotel costs and seven round-trip tickets, the total cost of the trip comes to approximately $3,000. This means we’ll need some additional help if we’re all to be fully funded. Accordingly, our team has set up some fundraising initiatives to help offset the remaining charges.
What are some ways you help? Here are a few:
- Donate to our GoFundMe. Please consider donating to our online fundraiser and spreading the word. We appreciate any and all contributions, and the funds will go toward any outstanding costs each of our students have.
- Purchase an FTC T-Shirt. Our club recently designed and put together club t-shirts. We have set up a group order form for it. If you buy a shirt by April 1, a portion of the proceeds will go back to our club.
- Participate in and donate at FTC’s upcoming socials. FTC has two upcoming socials planned where you can join in, spend some time with us, and donate if you would like.
- On Friday April 1 at 5:00 PM, we have a game night that will start with a fundraising activity—”Knight’s Declassified Career Survival Guide,” a student play about technical communication that is set in a fantasy world.
- On Saturday, April 23 at 12:00 PM, our club plans to host an FTC Reunion Social for students, alumni, and STC Florida members alike. It will feature fundraising activities in between networking time. Both events are hybrid, so participants can join either online or in-person. More info will be posted by our club soon and sent to those who RSVP. The links to RSVP for both are on our LinkTree.
If we are able to attend the Summit, we intend to represent the talented technical communication student body at UCF as well as STC Florida and STC’s volunteer committees. Past members of our club who have attended the Summit found it to be a life-changing experience that connected them to a fantastic community of both students and professionals alike, all the while preparing them for successful careers in technical communication. Please consider supporting us and spreading the word about our fundraising initiatives. We appreciate any and all contributions.
If you’d like to learn more about FTC or what we have been up to recently, you can:
- Read our March 2022 Newsletter
- Visit our website
- Watch our recent webinars
- Read this brief article about our club’s history up to now
- Follow us on social media and more
If you have any questions about the club or ways you can support us, you can reach out to me via email at johnclement.stc@gmail.com.
Thank you,
John Clement
President, Future Technical Communicators club at UCF