(213a) Professional Skill and Attribute Instruction in a Capstone Design Course at an Hispanic-Serving Institution

The senior design course of our chemical engineering curriculum serves as a transition for students completing their undergraduate studies and preparing to enter the engineering workforce. Therefore, the capstone course is a logical place for several professional skills and attributes to be developed by the senior students. The instructor draws on his 25 years of industrial experience for teaching and mentoring communication skills, teamwork, consideration of engineering registration, and the importance of life-long learning. This talk with present the instructor’s strategies for developing these skills and attributes in the senior students that will directly benefit them as they enter the professional work force.

Both oral and written communication skills are emphasized in the capstone course, by assigning multiple project reports, technical memoranda, and oral presentations. The extent of communication-based assignments in the course is high for two reasons, namely first because it is the senior design course, and thus project reporting occurs regularly, and second because the course is also the writing intensive course for our chemical engineering curriculum, and thus requires extensive writing requirements to be completed on an individual basis. The expectations for all three of these types of communication assignments are provided by content outlines and grading rubrics provided by the instructor. The students gain experience completing these assignments as both group and individual work, and therefore gain experience akin to a professional environment of the engineer. The group-based senior design project is the course activity the provides a teamwork experience, typically of a longer duration than any previous teamwork experience the students have encountered to date in the university academic career. The students are assessed on their teamwork skills and cooperation by observation from the course instructor, and by completing group contribution ratings of their peers several times a semester.

The students are introduced to the purpose and benefits of professional engineering licensure in our state through a lecture and a visit (face-to-face or webinar) from a representative of the state PE registration board, followed by a topical writing assignment. This instruction is necessary as students consider taking the Fundamentals of Engineering exam at the end of their senior year, and initiate the process of deciding whether to pursue licensure over their early career years. Although the students are all chemical engineers, which is a discipline that has a low level of registration nationally, the instructor emphasizes that our state registration board has recent regulation interpretations stating that chemical engineers working for a consulting or design firm are required to hold a license and sign and seal design documents provided under contract for a refinery or chemical plant operating company. Additionally, the instructor relates his experiences as a registered PE in multiple states over the last 20 years. The concept of life-long learning for those in the engineering profession goes hand-in-hand with professional engineering registration, especially now that most state registration boards also have professional development activities that are required for annual license renewal. Thus, the instructor identifies life-long independent learning as necessary in the professional work environment, and conducts the monitoring of the group senior design projects in a manner that emphasizes the students finding and implementing necessary information on their own.