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College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Peter Hager PhD

PH
Headshot of Peter Hager

Lecturer

Tompkins Hall NA

View CV 

Bio

As a lecturer in the Professional Writing Program in the Department of English at NCSU, I focus my teaching and research on various areas of technical, scientific, and business communication. While my undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina is in journalism, both of my graduate degrees are in English and American literature. Following 13 years of university teaching at the University of Texas – El Paso, Johns Hopkins University, and James Madison University (where I founded and directed new degree programs in technical and scientific communication), I lived for nearly 20 years in Basel, Switzerland, where I worked in corporate communications with one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world — F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG. After leaving my position as Director of Communications for the Roche Pharmaceutical Medicines Division, I returned to teaching in the U.S. My university teaching focuses on business and managerial communication and technical communication. Being a former pharma executive, I also enjoy teaching communication in the health science professions — an area in which I was heavily involved while teaching at Washington State University from 2019 to 2021. My publication profile reflects my interests across these three areas of professional communication. I have published three books centered on managerial communication — Managing Global Communication in Science and Technology; Designing and Delivering Scientific, Technical, and Managerial Presentations; and Report Writing for Management Decisions. I have been fortunate to have published a number of articles in these same teaching and research areas in a variety of refereed journals, including the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Technical Communication, and The Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication.

Publications

Books on Technical, Scientific, and Professional Communication

  • Managing Global Communication in Science and Technology.
  • Designing and Delivering Scientific, Technical, and Managerial Presentations.
  • Report Writing for Management Decisions.

Scholarly Articles

  • “Oral Communication in Business and Industry: Results of a Survey on Scientific, Technical, and Managerial Presentations.”  Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.
  • “Chaucer’s A Treatise on the Astrolabe: A 600-Year-Old Model for Humanizing Technical Documents.”  IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.
  • “Oral Communication in Business and Industry.”  Proceedings of the International Professional Communication Conference.
  • “Writing Usable User Manuals for On-Campus Clients: Teaching Students the Verticality of Technical Documentation.”  Technical Communication.
  • “Simulating the Corporate Strategic Planning Function in the Business Communication Curriculum.”  The Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication.
  • “Revising Business Documents with Writer’s Workbench: An Examination of the Organization and Development Diagnostics.”  The Writer’s Workbench Journal.
  • “Reading Smoke and Mirrors: The Rhetoric of Corporate Annual Reports.”  Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.
  • “The Journal Article Assignment: A Work-World Method for Teaching Audience Analysis.”  IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.
  • “Mini-Internships: Work-World Technical Writing Experiences without Leaving Campus.”  The Technical Writing Teacher.
  • “The Journal Article Assignment: Coda to the Research Report.”  Minnesota English Journal.
  • “Strategic Planning in the Business Communication Classroom.”  Issues in Writing.
  • “Incorporating the Journal Article into the Business Communication Classroom.”  The Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication

Groups