Bean counters. Moneymakers. Corporate movers and shakers. Even high-rolling entrepreneurial inventors and adventurers. Financiers of all stripes emerge from the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. But writers? Of proper, readable English?

While the Iowa Writers' Workshop no doubt springs to mind when discussing writing at Iowa, the renowned workshop is not the only part of the campus dedicated to polishing the written word.

Words can make a world of idfference in the world of business, too. That's the philosophy embraced at the business college, where turning out leaders with communications skills as honed as their management prowess has become a primary goal. According to Nancy Hausermann, 76JD, dean of the college's Undergraduate Program Office, UI business professors have come to expect more than English that's merely proper and readable. Her faculty demand solid, coherent writing from their students—the kind of writing that commands and sustains attention, whether in an argumant in a marketing report, a pitch in a proposal to a potential client, or a nugget of copy in a magazine ad.

"Effective writing is at the heart of effective leading," Hausermann says.

These days, UI business undergrads interested in becoming better writers and leaders can take advantage of the college's Business Communications Program. Offered for the first time in the fall of 2000, the program propagates the fundamentals of good writing through tutoring and hands-on help with class reports and term papers.

The idea has roots in a writing initiative begun in 1998. Associate provost Lola Lopes (then associate dean of Undergraduate Business Administration), in cooperation with accounting department chair Dan Collins, 68BBA, 73Phd, developed a writing-improvement stratagem for the college's two hundred accounting students. They hoped to erase for good the stereotype of accountants as one-dimensional bean counters.

"Accountants today are much more like business consultants to their clients than people who only know how to keep the books," Collins says. "Because of that, we knew that it had become vital that our students learn how to communicate effectively as well as be proficient in the nuts and bolts of financial reporting."

Last year, Hauserman recognized the need to build a similar program that would reach the business college's other 1,200 undergrraduates. Execution fell to Jessica Renaud, a writer, editor, and former Coe College writing instructor.

"Success of students in the corporate world depends on a broader array of skills than has traditionally been expected," says Renaud, citing a nationwide survey that contains some startling statistics. Almost all managers at more than 400 firms report their employees need to improve their writing skills, a complaint made even more compelling in light of feedback from corporate executives who say they spend the equivalent of three months per year writing letters, memos, and reports.

In some seven years of editing, in higher education and at corporations and elsewhere, Renaud has worked on a wide variety of manuscripts, not only scholarly essays and professional articles, but also press releases and promotional material, business articles, and books. She's spent years rewriting writing, and some time training others to do so. She's now spending upwards of 60 to 80 hours a week attempting the latter with those 1,200-plus undergrads.

"My work involves getting business students past the attitude of, 'Oh, gosh, my instructor's ripped my papers to shreds. Now I have to do all this writing all over,'" she says. Instead, Renaud wants them to see each assignment as an important opportunity to develop and parctice a critical business skill—the ability to communicate their ideas clearly and concisely.

"Many of our students ask, 'Why do we have to spend all this time on writing?' But I want them to understand exactly what the national surveys and corporate research points out. Employees who write well succeed and get promoted, while employees who cannot communicate effectively get left behind."

In her second semester on the job, Renaud, who peppers her conversation with military metaphors, describes her program as "rough and tumble, but ready—and it's landing on several fronts." And, if she's meeting a little resistance, well, she says, c'est la guerre. "We're absolutely committed to helping our students achieve excellence."

From her ground-floor office in the west wing of the John Pappajohn Business Building, Renaud commands a three-pronged attack to writing repair. The Business Communications Program includes more than just a business writing center; it also features a Writing Across the Curriculum campaign and a peer tutoring effort.

Each semester, Renaud hires about a half-dozen graduate students from the English education department to serve as consultants. "The hard part isn't telling people what makes good business writing; we can do that. It's thesis-driven and it gets to the point," she says. "The difficult part is showing each and every student what this means for his or her own writing."

Renaud understands that a knowledge of principles does not necessarily confer the ability to put them into practice. It takes nitty-gritty work at the writer's desk, so she and her graduate student consultants are available for individual instruction. Adjoining her office, a small room functions as a barebones laboratory. In this room, the writing consultants meet for half-hour one-on-one sessions with business majors to shape their writing into the effective and tightly constructed prose their employers will demand.

Unquestionably, Renaud says, the Communications Program will owe its success to individualized teaching according to student ability. "Even the most experienced authors who know the principles of good writing nonetheless learn from reviewing their copy-edited manuscripts," she says.

This semester, though, Renaud is also casting her consultants out of the safe environs of their writing lab, "to boldly go where no English student has gone before!" (There's an 8x10 black-and-white glossy of a certain pointy-eared Star Fleet officer tacked to the wall behind her desk.) She's sending them into the offices and classrooms of the business professors themselves.

"The professors come up with fantastic writing assignments, but some of the students just aren't connecting with them," says John Wolfe, 89BA, the head consultant in Renaud's Writing Across the Curriculum endeavor. "If we can get the students to really engage the issues built into the assignments, then we're going to see some world-class learning."

To encourage that engagement, Wolfe and Renaud pore over the writing assignments. "Our job," Wolfe says, "is to understand averything. We try to understand what the professor is asking for, what the students must do to succeed at the assignments, what the students were thinking when they took the wrong turn. We then take all of that back to the professors and discuss with them how to fine-tune the assignments."

On a harsh January morning, Renaud paces back and forth in front of a bright magic-marker board. Around a table with a pencil-jar centerpiece sits a fresh group of recruits, who comprise Renaud's third tactical front.

Renaud believes her best tack is "to come in under the radar." This cadre taken from the "best and brightest" business undergraduates will work three hours per week (and earn three semester hours of redit for their efforts) as peer tutors. Most of them sought help from Writing Across the Curriculum consultants last semester, and they all stand out as top-notch writers. Their personalized feedback, Renaud says, will provide hundreds of their fellow students with a consistent voice throughout their writing assignments—a kind of "stealth strategy" she hopes will inspire other students to appreciate skillful writing.

"If I can get in at that level, then students start talking to students, who start talking to other students, and then the perception could shift to one of writing not being such a dreaded task," she says.

What's it like for undergraduate tutors to sit down with their peers and take apart their homework? Kristy Cole, a sophomore from Bettendorf, admits the experience opens her eyes to anxieties unique to teaching. But she remembers marveling at the improvement of her own writing under the blue pencil of a savvy student-editor last semester. "I want to give other students that same kind of help," Cole says.

While recognizing that altruism plays a part in his tutoring others, Ed Underberg,a senior from Fort Dodge, also likes the leadership experience he's gaining. "We'll be mentors on the job, too, no doubt, and this is the perfect opportunity to learn that social reality of the workplace, the coordination of an organization's goals or the construction of a piece of corporate communication," he says.

Renaud knows the editor's blue pencil is no magic wand. "Those of us in the business of wielding that pencil know that most of the wonders we work are the routine adjustments of trained specialists," she says. "This program will demystify the writing and editing process, and we're going to produce corporate leaders who know how to communicate."