Contract House, class and certification

[Tim Altom <betelgeuse -at- DELPHI -dot- COM>]

I'm not interested in getting into a byplay about certification
anymore, so please don't take this thread as an invitation to
do so. What I will say is that a large number of our
prospective clients are asking for either education or
certification, or at least a formalized testing process for our
contractors. We are a contract house, keeping no writers on the
bench. We have decided that we probably need to certify writers
ourselves, but we will only do so if the writer goes through a
course of technical writing that, at minimum, gives him the
basics of writing, organizing, and desktop publishing, along
with some technical expertise. And since we in Indiana don't
have a single, solitary technical writing program at ANY
COLLEGE, we at Simply Written seem to be driven into the
position of holding classes ourselves. It's going to be a
gold-plated female mutt, and we know it, but we don't see any
other way. We don't envision this as a program to replace a
good higher education, but as a course that will turn already
adequate writers into barely adequate junior technical
communicators. To that end, the course would probably be about
six weeks, part-time, in the evening.

I'm asking anyone out here who's interested in this project
some questions:
1. Has anyone ever heard of anything like this, and if so,
where?
2. Does anyone have advice about curriculum, references, or
topics?

We're just getting ideas firmed up, so if you have something to
contribute you'll be in on the ground floor. We'd appreciate
input from our colleagues about this, because we're not
hell-bent to reinvent any aspect of the wheel. You can reply by
email, if you don't want to post.

Thanks in advance,

Tim Altom
V.P.
Simply Written, Inc.