Engineers 'learn to learn how' in communications course

On the first day of Engineering Communications 3500 when senior lecturer Rick Evans asks his senior-level engineering students how many consider themselves to be "communicators," few respond.

"You are all communicators," says Evans, director of Cornell's Engineering Communications Program, who works to make students appreciate just how much they will communicate every day as engineers. The course is one way in which their entry into industry or academia is balanced not just by learning, but "learning to learn how," Evans said.

As part of Cornell engineers' rigorous academic coursework, every student must fulfill a technical writing requirement. One way to do so is through the engineering college communications program, whose purpose, its website declares, is to "enable undergraduate engineering students to develop strategies for learning to learn how to act effectively and efficiently as communicators."

In other words, said Evans, it's not just about learning to write a technical report or memorizing tips on effective public speaking, but an integral aspect of a professional engineer's life.

"What we talk about is using language as a form of social action," said Evans, whose teacher-colleagues are senior lecturer Penny Beebe and lecturer Sharon Ahlers. "We are trying to modify our students' notion of language use as either simply an exchange of information or a skill."

This theoretical framework is borne out in project work the students must complete in Evans' course. Requirements include taking on a "client" and managing a project with practical applications; often, this practicality becomes reality. For example, an earlier generation of students researched the feasibility of a new minor in sustainable energy systems. The students' proposal, which included comparison data from similar institutions and interviews with faculty in related disciplines, helped form the basis for a new minor just approved by the college this year.

Other students redesigned the website of AguaClara, a student engineering group that designs water treatment plants in Honduras. The communications students shifted the website's focus from internally driven content to a more open, outreach-oriented site that could be useful for finding potential donors.

'"The strategy is not to create good writers, but to create effective doers and effective communicators in particular contexts," Evans said.

One former student, Christine Pitner '11, helped write a grant on behalf of the Cornell Society of Women Engineers. She credits the course with making her a better communicator and a better judge of how others communicate.

"Grant writing is not just about content, but how effectively that content is presented, and how the argument is communicated to the readers," she said.

Students also are exposed to such concepts as contextualization of "genres" of communication, such as e-mail. A common complaint among industry professionals is that newly minted engineers don't know how to write e-mails that sound professional. The reason for this, Evans explains, is that the antecedent genre of e-mail is conversation for students. For an older generation, the antecedent is a letter -- more formal and rehearsed.

This notion of language, and the many different languages students will have to become versed in as they mature, are among the ideas Evans hopes to instill in his students.

"Nobody builds a bridge or shoots off a rocket without using language," he said.

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Blaine Friedlander