Writing Across Engineering: A First Year Implementation

Ann Brown, Steve Luyendyk, and David Ollis
Department of English and
College of Engineering
NCSU, Raleigh, NC 27695

Introduction, or an accidental dilemma

During the development of a first year "take-apart" laboratory to serve as an introduction to engineering, books were acquired which dealt with the history of technology and engineering, including inventors and engineers, and their successes and failures. Much of this material was very well written, identified important issues and personalities of the day, and represented widely varying points of view.

From these aquisitions developed the challenge to incorporate such stimulating material into an introduction to engineering so that first year students would receive an early sense of identity and tradition in their chosen profession. Certainly, engineering faculty are poorly prepared to teach history, biography, or, unfortunately, even the broader social- technical issues of the day.

Technical disciplines beyond engineering, including all of the sciences, are similarly constrained in both instruction and written materials. No less an observer than Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, has commented on the narrowness of written sources in this latter portion of academia: "the single most striking feature of education in the natural sciences is that, to an extent totally unknown in other creative fields, it is conducted entirely through textbooks...there are no collections of ‘readings’ in the natural sciences." Kuhn should have included engineering in this professional scolding.

Given the monotonous tone of most technical textbooks, it seemed that readings in the history, triumphs, and criticisms of technology might provide the literate stimulus which is clearly needed in undergraduate technical curricula. Ric Porter, our Associate Dean of Engineering, made a simple but serious proposal: "Let English do it."

Contents:

Proposal: Use first year composition courses to motivate students to read and write about engineering
Argument (1): (Curricular) "Tell them early where you are going"
===>>>define engineering in the first year
Argument (2): (Personal) "Write about what interests you"
===>>>write about engineering
Argument (3): (Professional) "Demonstrate an understanding of the subject"
===>>>use the literature of technology and invention to define the profession of engineering
The initial trial: engineering and technology in literature and art
Implementation requires resources: who will teach writing ?
Assessment: a Student OPEN HOUSE
Implementation: Commitment to Equal Effort
The second and third trials: exposition, argument and engineering for everyone
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