A professional writing course can be both technical and humanistic by incorporating into the course a formal report assignment in which students pick a subject in the humanities about which they wish to know more. Once the students decide on topics to research, they develop a scenario in which they define a person or group who needs the information to guide their decision-making processes. After the topic is researched, students are asked to present their findings, conclusions, and recommendations to the fictional client in the form of a formal business report. By being forced to clearly define a rhetorical situation that is task-oriented rather than entirely speculative or theoretical, the students have a much clearer sense of how to select and arrange the information they have gathered. Regardless of how fictional the scenarios might be, they make plausible connections between the world of business and the study of the humanities, thus gaining a better understanding of the relationship between economic decisions and human values. (HOD)