Preparing Engineering Graduate Students to Engage in Scholarly Communications

Abstract The typical engineering degree plan has several important gaps when reviewed against the research lifecycle. These gaps are often filled in by students themselves learning ad hoc, by overworked faculty over numerous mentoring sessions, or – more often – by the engineering research librarians in workshops and consultations. Purposeful incorporation of a curriculum that fills those gaps, though, can prepare students better for the norms of academia, for the process of research publication, and for critical review of scholarship. Research librarians with both engineering and scholarly communication expertise are uniquely situated to fill in the gaps of the research lifecycle. Scholarly communication skills are vital for high-impact research writing – understanding and critically evaluating scientometrics, reviewing conferences and journals, evaluation and review of literature, navigating authorship, planning for data management, understanding various paper types, interpreting disciplinary norms, and more. In 2022, the author designed and proposed the semester-long course "Research Lifecycle and Publication in Engineering" to the Multidisciplinary Engineering Department. The first course offering was in Spring of 2023, and the students (and their mentors) had overwhelmingly positive evaluations. Student comments showed that an introduction to scholarly communications at the early PhD stage was also an introduction to the culture and norms of academia. Many of the students submitted their course papers to conferences or journals (some here at ASEE!), practicing some of the scholarly skills learned in this first-year PhD course. The department made the "Research Lifecycle…" course mandatory for all Interdisciplinary Engineering PhD students, after its first semester. This paper will present the course design for "Research Lifecycle and Publication in Engineering". It will encourage engineering research librarians, teaching faculty, and curriculum committees in engineering to collaborate to prepare their students to engage in the full research lifecycle.