Integrating Written Communication within Engineering Curricula

The University of Delaware has a strong, proud tradition of educating students to become engineers. As for any educational institution, however, we also strive to improve our curricula to keep in step with the demands of the engineering profession. One skill well recognized as needing improvement for engineering ~and most other! students is writing. Fortunately, the University of Delaware also has a strong, proud tradition in technical writing as a discipline within the English Department. At the University of Delaware, we thus pooled our efforts between the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Business and Technical Writing Program of the English Department to integrate writing skills more fully into the engineering curricula. Communication skills, both written and oral, remain key to professional success within the engineering profession. Moreover, a call for collaboration between engineering and English departments was sounded as far back as 1911 by Samuel Chandler Earle, at Tufts University ~Kynnel 1995!. A century later, this need for stronger communication skills among engineering students, and for evaluation of programs to foster these skills, has been formally identified by the Accreditation Board in Engineering and Technology ~ABET! as one of 11 key attributes. Specifically, the ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 emphasize communication skills within an integrated education for engineering students ~Engineering 1998!. At the foundation of this education initiative stands a clear understanding of differences between simple data collection or compilation and complex knowledge transfer ~Piirto 1996!. In other words, simply amassing data is not sufficient; rather, today’s professionals must be able to interpret and repackage the data for audiences. Hence, students need to move beyond the first stage so that they can begin to assess, interpret, and shape messages. Components of format and design, audience analysis, argument strategy, and related topics can be handled through not only technical matter in advanced courses, but also nontechnical topics