Establishing School Wide Standards For Engineering Writing: A Data Driven Approach

As a result of concerns about communication at our engineering school, this study explores the written communication standards that engineering faculty and undergraduate students consider most important. Concerns about communication surfaced in several ways. For example, according to several professors in engineering, students sometimes complain of receiving inconsistent advice about their writing and of being evaluated according to professors’ “idiosyncratic” standards. In addition, surveys of alumni show that although they consider communication of the “highest importance,” they are not satisfied with the education they received in this area. In general, the engineering faculty at Northwestern believe that their students receive a strong writing education in their freshman year, when they take a required course in Engineering Design and Communication, but lack sufficient follow-up opportunities to improve their writing as sophomores, juniors, and seniors. In particular, several faculty participating in the VaNTH (Vanderbilt-Northwestern-Texas-and Harvard/MIT) Engineering Research Center (www.vanth.org) are concerned about how their innovative efforts to integrate communication instruction into their classes can be promulgated throughout the curriculum.