Mary Toole

Mallory Pappas
ENGL297 (0101)
Professor Bialas
Mrs. Jennifer Toole
Toole Design Group, LLC
8484 Georgia Ave #800,
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Oct. 15th, 2016
Ethnographic Research Project
Dear Mrs. Toole,
My name is Mallory Pappas, and I am a student at the University of Maryland, College Park. As
part of my professional writing class, my partner and I are conducting ethnographic research on
technical writing for engineering projects. We are interested in your company because you do a
significant amount of writing for technical guidelines that are based on engineering design
concepts. This presents an intersection of writing and engineering that we hope to follow in our
respective careers. My partner, Mary Kate, has worked with Toole Design Group for a long time,
and she believes that this project, which analyzes the culture and process of professional writing
in a workplace, will provide valuable feedback on the internal workings of your technical writing
staff. We are writing to ask you if you would permit us to conduct our research on the TDG
writing staff.
This project examines the writing environment of a professional industry through observations
and one-on-one interviews. Our project investigates the interface between technical writers and
engineers to create professional documents. This interface may include the communication in
and out of the office, individual and group work, and the collaborative process. All of this will
help us answer our research question in the scope of our ethnographic project, which is the
specific relationship between a technical writer and a civil engineer at Toole Design Group.
We hope to be able to shadow one or more of your writers and observe their collaborative
interactions during a project with an engineer. While conducting our research, all subjects will be
anonymous, and all confidentialities will be respected. TDGs private information will not be
disclosed to outside sources, and a final copy of our findings will be made available to your
administrative staff.
This is a semester-long project that includes a final report due in mid-December. After our initial
research has been completed, we would appreciate the opportunity to come into TDGs Silver
Spring office for an afternoon of interviews and shadowing to collect observations. Our site visit
would occur in early November. My partner and I were wondering if you could provide any
insight for our project that directs us to an employee who might fit our projects aims, allowing

us to hit the ground running! We are excited to get to know you and your company, Mrs. Toole,
and I hope to hear from you soon!
Sincerely,
Mallory Pappas