Cultivating Scientific Communication Skills through Professional Development Course Series for the Graduate Curriculum

Abstract Over the past few decades, effective scientific communication has become a critical skill to develop for graduate students across all engineering disciplines. A robust publication record in reputed journals, embellished with outstanding conference presentations, is a benchmark for a productive graduate degree that translates to job opportunities and visibility in the engineering field. In addition, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) ranks communication skills as one of the top core competencies for college graduates nationwide. As such, graduate students must communicate their research in an articulate style to audiences at all levels so that scientific knowledge is shared and understood by society at large. Engineering schools emphasize technical writing and presentation for their undergraduate curriculum through junior writing, capstone, and senior design in every field. Such resources are limited and often need to be more organized for the graduate curriculum, needing a systematic approach to address the diverse aspects of communicating science effectively to different audiences. Besides, the diverse and multilingual backgrounds of graduate students should be noticed when students are expected to present and publish their work in the field. Therefore, there is a need to infuse the graduate engineering curriculum with well-designed scientific communication courses to ensure the productivity of students. The University of Connecticut identified this significant gap in providing structured support to the graduate student community in scientific communication. This evidence-based practice paper describes the implementation of a unified "Professional Development" (PD) course series to support the success of graduate students. This PD program features a course to enhance the students' verbal scientific communication skills through a practical, feedback-driven, and peer-reviewed format. A scientific writing course, a course complementary to scientific communication, is being developed to help students improve their writing skills. A key objective of both these communication courses is to teach graduate students how to use storytelling in speaking and writing to make their scientific findings clear and engaging for all audiences. It also explains how storytelling can be a tool in their career proficiencies and further strengthen the NACE Career Competencies. The university's initiative underscores its commitment to bolstering scientific communication and is a model for other institutions.