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Graduate Certificate in Technical Communication

College of Liberal Arts / Technical Communication and Interaction Design
Graduate certificate

About The Program

Make complex information clear—advance your career with practical, high-impact skills

The Graduate Certificate in Technical Communication is designed for professionals who want to strengthen their writing, editing, and content design skills for the workplace—especially when working with complex topics, digital tools, and diverse audiences. Whether you're new to the field or looking to deepen your expertise, this certificate offers a flexible, applied, and academically grounded pathway into one of today’s most in-demand communication careers.

This hybrid program includes in-person seat time, meaning you’ll benefit from face-to-face engagement with faculty and peers while also enjoying the flexibility of online components. You’ll join a learning community that values collaboration, creativity, accessibility, and real-world application.

In just three graduate-level courses (which also make up the core of the MS in Technical Communication program), you'll gain essential skills in:

  • Writing task-oriented and procedural documents, like instructions and user guides
  • Creating content that meets regulatory and industry standards
  • Designing reusable and intelligent content
  • Preparing documents for translation and localization
  • Collaborating effectively with subject matter experts and cross-functional teams

This certificate is a great fit for:

  • Professionals entering or transitioning into technical communication
  • Writers, editors, educators, and designers who want to enhance their workplace communication skills
  • Employees in tech, healthcare, nonprofit, or corporate settings seeking formal training in user-centered communication
  • Prospective MS students—this certificate serves as a strong entry point, with all credits transferable toward the full degree

Graduates will be equipped to produce clear, accessible, and actionable content that meets the needs of real users—and advances the goals of the organizations they serve.

Student outcomes

  • Create and revise inclusive and accessible text and data visualizations for technical documents
  • Apply best practices for creating task- or procedure-oriented documents, such as instructions and product documentation
  • Determine user needs for technical documentation
  • Write or revise content for products or services
  • Create standardized content that can be reused within publication workflows
  • Work with subject matter experts to gather in cross-functional teams
  • Apply fundamentals of project management to documentation projects

How to enroll

Program eligibility requirements

  • Bachelor's degree earned from an accredited institution (or a foreign equivalent)
  • Cumulative GPA of 2.75 or higher
  • Digital literacy and desire to learn new digital applications

International Students

Because this is not a degree-granting program, the certificate may be earned by international students studying on a student visa only if they are admitted into a degree-granting program. However, overseas students may complete the certificate online without traveling to the United States. In such cases, overseas students must meet the admission requirements and present evidence of language proficiency. We accept TOEFL score of at least 550 (PBT) or 213 (CBT) or 80 (IBT); IELTS score of at least 6.0; and Duolingo English exam score of 105 or higher. Official score report comes into the Metropolitan State University dashboard from Duolingo.

International Students

This is not a degree-granting program, therefore applications from international students studying on an F-1 student visa cannot be accepted into this program.

Application instructions

Metro State University is participating in the common application for graduate programs (GradCAS). Applications are only accepted via the CAS website.

CAS steps

  1. Select the term for which you are seeking admission (below), and navigate to the CAS website. Open applications include:
  2. Create or log in to your account and select the Graduate Certificate in Technical Communication program.
  3. Carefully review all instructions and complete all four sections of the application.

Specific application requirements for individual programs can be found on each program page in CAS. Carefully read the instructions that appear throughout the application pages. You can only submit your application once. If you need to update information you have submitted, please notify graduate.studies@metrostate.edu

Application fee

A nonrefundable $38 fee is required for each application.
Applications will not be processed until this fee is received.

Active-duty military, veterans, and Metro State alumni can receive an application fee waiver. Contact graduate.studies@metrostate.edu.

Courses and Requirements

SKIP TO COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Academic Standing/Satisfactory Academic Progress

You must maintain satisfactory academic progress to remain in the Technical Communication graduate certificate program. Only courses for which you receive a letter grade of C (2.0) or better count toward certificate requirements, and a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 is required for graduation. If you receive a letter grade of C- or below in any graduate course, you may be placed on academic probation. If you receive a letter grade of C- or below in two courses, or if your cumulative GPA is below 3.0 for two consecutive semesters, you may be dismissed from the program.

Appeal of Unsatisfactory Academic Progress Removals from the Program

If you are removed from the program for unsatisfactory academic progress, you may appeal the removal to the Technical Communication graduate program director, who has 30 days to respond, in writing. The appeal must be in writing, it must provide specific reasons for the appeal, and it's due within 30 days of the date of the letter notifying you of the decision to remove you from the program.

Time to Completion

You have two years from your first semester in this program to complete your certificate requirements. You may request an extension of the time limit by writing to the Technical Communication graduate program director, and your request must be received before the two years pass. Requests for extensions should include your reason(s) for requesting the extension, a summary of your plan to finish graduation requirements, and a specific date for the extension to expire. Extension decisions are made by the certificate program director and are not automatic.

Reactivating into the Program

If you are a student in good academic standing who has not registered for courses for three or more consecutive semesters, you must request to reactivate into the certificate program. Submit your request in writing to the Technical Communication graduate certificate program director. The program director will review your request and respond in writing, specifying certificate completion requirements and deadline for completion. You may be required to satisfy certificate requirements in force at the time of reactivation, even if those requirements differ from those in force at the time of original admission to the certificate program.

Requirements (12 credits)

+ Required Courses

Technical Communication focuses on creating and reshaping content to make it usable and accessible to the people who need this content to achieve their goals. The course combines a survey of scholarship in the field of technical communication with practice in creating various types of goal-oriented, often task-based, content. Students learn how to use research tools to gather information on technical topics and from subject matter experts.

Full course description for Technical Communication Practice and Applied Theory

TCID 673 is designed to prepare students to write, create, and communicate in an international context and with an international audience. This course will focus on following content areas: cultural influences on technical communication; issues in technical translation, localization, and globalization; communicating in multinational corporations; and creating usable graphics and visuals for international audiences.

Full course description for Technical Communication in International Contexts

Intelligent content is all around us, working behind the scenes to produce instructions that come with our lawnmowers, explanations for medical devices, and user manuals for laptops, to name just a few examples. We create intelligent content through structured writing/authoring, which is both the creation of content and the method for managing this content. Because structured authoring creates controls for analyzing, organizing, and displaying content, it is key to publication workflows in organizations that provide a large amount of content. While learning a standardized approach to writing structured content, students also learn to apply rhetorical problem solving and computational thinking that results in content that is intelligent because it is adaptable, creates patterns of reuse, and results in consistency of content across documents/publication outputs.

Full course description for Creating Intelligent Content