About the Authors:
Teressa (“Terry”) Murphy
has extensive experience in the technology industry, retiring as a Vice
President from International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) Global Network
Services. She holds a B.S. in
Mathematics from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame and an M.A. in Mathematics
from the University of Kansas.
After teaching mathematics at the college level, Ms. Murphy became a systems
analyst, consultant, project manager, and director for several companies
including Northrup Grumman, Bell Atlantic Systems Integration, American
Management Systems (AMS) and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).
Her experience includes a diverse set of projects including software
development, network integration, systems requirements analysis and global
network customer support. She has
been responsible for countless proposals, plans, documents, and reports over her
career, both as an author and manager.
After considerable experience training and supervising technical
professionals, Ms. Murphy firmly believes that good communication skills are
essential for a successful career in the technical and engineering professions.
In fact, her desire to help technical professionals better leverage their
skills with improved communications inspired her to create this book.
Dr. Martin S. Roden
began his professional career as a Staff Engineer at Bell Telephone Labs (now
Lucent). He then joined the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department at California State University, Los Angeles, where he has been
teaching for almost four decades. He has a reputation as a student-oriented
professor, and this is evidenced by his many awards. Among these are the 1981
California State University LA Outstanding Professor Award, the 1984
IEEE National Outstanding Adviser Award, the 1992 Outstanding Educator
Award from the Institute for the Advancement of Engineering, the 1997
Engineering Educator of the Year Award from the Engineers' Council, Inc. and
the 2002 President’s Distinguished Professor Award. He is a recipient of
an IEEE Millennium Medal, and in 2002 received an IEEE Distinguished
Service Award. Professor Roden has authored 18 textbooks in the areas of
Communications and Electronics. He was the founding Chair of the University’s
Writing Skills Committee, and ran the writing program for Electrical Engineering
for 15 years.