Minutes 03/21/2022

Date

Mar 21, 2022

Attendees

C. Bayram, U. Bohwmik, S. Bogdanov, P. Dragic, B. Hajek, R. Iyer, N. Kani, J. Kim, V. Kindratenko, E. Kudeki, S. Lumetta, T. Moon, U. Ravaioli, J. Schuh, A. Schwing, P. Song. Guest: Prof. Philip Hillmer.

Minutes

The entire meeting was dedicated to a conversation with Prof. Philip Hillmer on the importance of writing and presentation skills for the engineering profession and on the advanced composition requirements in the professor.  Professor Hillmer described the activities and experiences with engineering students through the course ECE/PHIL 316 "Ethics in Engineering" which awards advanced composition credits.  Extensive material describing the course objectives was provided by him earlier and distributed to the committee members for their perusal.  

The committee chair had provide a series of possible themes to guide the conversation, which Prof. Hillmer distilled into the following questions (with specific reference to his ECE 316 course): 

1) What are the writing and presentation abilities of enrolled course members? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

2) What are the proportions of domestic and international course members? Do international students encounter particular problems?

3) At what time in a student’s linguistic development would an additional advanced composition course be most beneficial? Junior year — or earlier?

4) How can we implement additional writing components in existing courses?

As discussed in his there has been a decline in students' writing abilities which he could observe over the nearly 20 years of his involvement with ECE 316.  These shortcomings include both formal aspects (grammar, syntax, choice of words and terminology) and structural/logical organization of writing to produce effective instruments of communication.  A course like ECE 316 is fairly intensive and he is able to observe definite improvements at the end of the semester, reinforcing the notion that it is possible to formulate positive interventions for students at the college level.

The percentage of international students taking the course is small, most of the time consisting of exchange students rather than degree-seeking individuals enrolled in our curricula.  International students generally tend to have more difficulties with the language.  For students whose mother tongue has considerable structural differences, it is often a challenge to construct sentences and link them together correctly because of the absence of certain constructs and particles in their respective languages. Therefore, besides writing, intensive reading and listening is important to learn how to structure properly English in academic form.  There was a robust conversation on possible interventions and activities to promote better assimilation of the language.  Of course, the intensive technical nature of engineering curricula remains a severe obstacle because there is little spare time that could be dedicated to the study of the language.

Junior year and even the end of sophomore year were indicated as the preferable timeframe to introduce additional advanced composition experiences.  There could be additional formal writing and presentation activities introduced in (at least some) courses, the caveat being existing time constraints.  Also, engineering faculty may not always be in a position to develop literary oriented activities and external guidance/support is needed, including qualified TAs specifically trained in writing pedagogy.  The possibility of developing "informal" activities, including workshops and writing consulting services open to students were also discussed.