DRAFT Proceedings of IMECE04 2007 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition November 11-15, 2007, Seattle, Washington USA

IMECE2007-41096 PROFESSIONAL AND SOFT SKILLS FOR ENGINEERING GRADUATE STUDENTS Nael Barakat, Ph. D., P. Eng. Assistant Professor School of Engineering Grand Valley State University 301 W Fulton St. – KEN 343 Grand Rapids, MI. 49504 Voice: 616.331.6825 Email: [email protected]

Abstract Graduate studies in engineering have always been a favorable choice for career advancement, in both the practice and the academic sides of the career. Graduate students constitute a significant population of engineering schools, which brings with it a whole spectrum of questions and issues. To verify the quality of students and their preparedness for graduate studies, checks and balances have been installed to filter these students through investigating their academic records. However, the soft and professional side of the skill set that these students have is not of much significance in these filters. These skills include, but are not limited to, communication, logical reasoning, management, autonomy, and ethics and professionalism. Embedded among these skills is also the intellectual and mental graduation of school. With most students realizing the importance of continuous education and life long learning, many of them are seeking graduate studies. The highly diverse background of these students creates an obvious differential in their ability to meet expectation at that level of academics. This has resulted in many issues arising in graduate schools about the preparedness of the incoming students. To better identify and treat these deficiencies, strategies and applications are being sought. In this paper, a list of the expected soft and professional skills in graduate engineers is provided. A discussion of the most common issues related to this skill set in incoming graduate students is presented. In addition, a strategy that has been designed and applied through a mandatory course in an

existing graduate engineering curriculum, at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) School of Engineering (SOE), dealing with these issues, is included. Reflections on the course outcomes and evaluations are also provided. Keywords Engineering professional skills, Engineering graduate students soft skills, Engineering graduates skills upgrade. Introduction Engineering graduate degrees are known to be a popular choice among engineering graduates seeking career advancement. This is mainly because such degrees have a significant effect in improving the knowledge and career status of engineers in both practice and academia. In addition, such programs in North America are known to be extremely reputable and attractive worldwide. This results in pools of graduate engineering students, in North American schools, that are international in nature. In 2003, throughout the USA, 46 percent of master’s degrees and 57 percent of the doctoral degrees in engineering were awarded to international students [1]. What is particularly remarkable about this diversity in a pool is the significant differential in the students’ individual skill sets and level of preparedness, as well as their cultural backgrounds, problem solving skills, and communication skills, among others [2]. It is important to note here that ABET criteria for accreditation emphasizes most of these skills [3], known as professional or soft skills, in engineering programs, but leaves the methodology and details of application to the individual schools to chose. This results in differences in the skill sets of engineering graduates not only Copyright © 2007 by ASME

due to geographical diversity, but even among engineering graduates from schools in the USA, or schools that are ABET accredited. These skills are not easily evaluated through the typical university graduate engineering program admission process. The same difficulty exists with the interviews by the entity employing a prospective engineer. In both cases, the embedded problems surface after the engineer has been commissioned in the workforce or admitted in a graduate engineering program.

accredited, despite the various backgrounds and cultures of these schools. This paper includes a list of the main expected professional skills in every graduate engineer and the impediments to the dissemination of these skills. This is followed by a summary of the common issues and challenges that have been observed among incoming graduate engineering students, related to professional skills. An opportunity to deal with these problems and improve the level of professional skills among graduate engineers was captured through a mandatory course in the graduate engineering curricula at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) School of Engineering (SOE) [9]. The course was planned and executed through two cycles. Extensive assessment mechanisms were employed and results were obtained to evaluate the course effectiveness and seek opportunities for improvement. The course details and results are presented with reflections on the outcomes and assessment results. Conclusions and future thoughts are also provided.

Diversity and differentials in the level of engineering students’ technical knowledge base have been known and treated for a long time [4]. Therefore, different methods have been traditionally utilized by universities, during the admission to graduate engineering programs, as means for evaluating the incoming student’s fitness to the program. Examples of these methods include standard and third party tests as well as personal interviews. However, these methods target mainly the students’ technical knowledge and competence in the subject matter, and some communication level in the language of instruction and conduct. Meanwhile, the other side of preparedness, which is hard to measure, in spite of critical importance, is left uncontested. In many cases the underlying assumption is that the level of students’ professional skills competence can be inferred based upon their level of competence in the technical skills. The missing pieces can be picked up later!

Impediments of professional skills dissemination Professional skills or soft skills, in general, are the set of skills that are not directly technical but are extremely critical for the career success of the professional as well as the proper practice of the engineering profession. Most of these skills are listed as required by ABET for accreditation in criterion 3 [3]. According to criterion 3 listing, a summary of these skills includes: 1. Analytical, design and build, and engineering problems solving skills. 2. Communication skills. 3. Knowledge and consideration of the context of engineering endeavors and its interaction with areas like law, economics, the environment, society, politics, health and safety, globalization, and sustainability. 4. Awareness of ethical and professional responsibility.

The outcomes of these practices expand over the lifetime of the career of these engineers, influencing their individual growth, competence, and effectiveness. Moreover, its collective impact becomes evident in the perception and value of the profession itself, and the programs producing these engineers, among the public and other professionals [5]. The effects of professional skills, or lack there of, can be felt as early as during attempting writing the first proposal for a publishable piece of work by these graduate engineering students, or during the early attempts of these engineers to present and sell an innovative idea to upper management. These problems can strongly influence the public perception of the profession, the profession’s influence in public policies, its growth and advancement, and its appeal to new generations [6]. The quality of the product, whether it is intellectual or material, would significantly reflect these skills and its level of mastery. When ABET emphasized these skills, it was because they are as critical and necessary as technical skills.

In addition to this list, some other skills have been identified by leaders in the industry and educators as belonging to the professional skill set category. These include the logical thought process, good work ethics, team work, and business aspects awareness of engineering projects [5], as well as the ability t deal with global and ethical issues [9].

Graduate school provides an opportunity to treat this deficiency in engineering graduates [7]. Some universities have attempted solving the communication problem by introducing courses that target it, like teaching the students publishing skills [8]. Others try to treat deficiencies on caseby-case bases. From a general perspective, such measures help bring the students level of preparedness closer to the standard of the school, if not most schools that are ABET

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These skills can be divided based on different grounds and theories. The following division is based on the necessity and need of the skill category for the engineer and the profession, combined. As was mentioned, other divisions can be used and can possibly be even more detailed and inclusive. However, from a general point of view that is integrated in a context of either a general engineering practice, or graduate engineering studies, a suggested division includes following three categories: a) Basic skills: these are absolutely necessary to have, and can not be compromised. Examples of those Copyright © 2007 by ASME

include analytical, design and build, problem solving, and innovation skills. b) Critical skills: these are vital for success and career advancement. These skills are expected of any competent professional engineer and have a significant impact on the profession as a whole. They include: communications, logical and critical thinking, and awareness of the profession contextual interactions (e.g. health and safety, economics, societal, environmental, and global), as well as the knowledge of legal, professional, and ethical responsibility. c) Advantageous skills: these are skills that are needed for the betterment of the professional and the profession. Examples of which are good work ethics, legal depth, and management techniques.

Neither is wrong, but the focus and applications can be completely, and overwhelmingly, different. Challenges in professional skills among graduate engineering students The collective of the previously mentioned challenges produces engineers with significant differences in their level of mastery of professional skills; even if they were from the same state. Add to the previous picture a geographical and cultural dimension; the outcome is a typical pool of graduate students in an engineering program [4]. Some common challenges and problems related to professional skills that are usually observed in this pool have been identified and collected in the following three categories. The first among these is the problem of autonomy and academic maturity. Graduate students asking for detailed directions, recipe lab instructions, and specific relevant pages in a specific text book, make questioning the status of their graduation from the undergraduate level unavoidable! This also raises questions of whether these students would be able to graduate intellectually and function autonomously in an academic environment or in the workplace.

Some of these skills can belong to two of the above categories and some can be categorized differently [4]. However, the previous three categories present a collection of the professional skills expected to be found in every incoming graduate students in engineering. The fact is that such expectation would not be realistic if it is at a 100 percent target. This is due to multiple difficulties and impediments to teaching and emphasizing professional skills. These impediments can be either: student and cultural related, or institutional and educational-system related. Proper time management, good work ethics, and the value of professionalism, are related to individual students and their cultural context and background. However, pedagogical and logistical impediments are institutional and education-system related. At one hand, the jammed curricula in engineering form a logistical difficulty opposing the education and dissemination of professional skills, resulting in embedding them in other courses. On the other hand, the lack of modules, tools, assessment instruments, and experience among engineering educators, for teaching these skills to students forms another major difficulty. To alleviate this problem, a lot of engineering programs rely on general education courses to fulfill the requirement of professional skills education. This results in adding another order of magnitude to the problem, for multiple reasons. Some of these reasons are: first, these courses are mostly taught by non-engineering educators, mainly from liberal arts. Knowing that there are fundamental differences of views about the basic definitions and emphases of these skills (e.g. definition and emphasis of writing!) between engineers and liberal arts educators explains the related problems. Second, general education courses are normally out of the realm of engineering programs and that makes them hard to assess and direct. Third, general education courses are offered to the university population, not targeting just engineering students, causing a loss of focus and an expansion of the pool to accommodate as many disciplines as possible. A good example to explain this issue is the experience of teaching ethics to engineers from an engineering educator’s perspective, versus a philosopher’s perspective.

The second challenge is in communications, both oral and written, and reasoning. Oral communications are not as problematic as writing, since most students had multiple chances to practice some of these. Most of the graduate engineers have been observed to struggle heavily with technical writing, sequential thinking, building up of ideas towards a focal point, and transitioning between ideas. The third challenge is related to the graduate engineers’ awareness of the ethical and professional dimensions of engineering. Questions of ethical versus legal and impact of the profession on society and the environment, as well as issues related to the globalization of the profession and the increased level of competence, are always a source of surprise and novelty to these students [9]. These categories encapsulate most of the challenges observed among engineering graduate students, in a typical engineering graduate program. The overall challenge that is consistently present is the diversity of these students’ backgrounds and the significant differences in the level of these challenges from one individual student to the other.

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A course dealing with the challenges and expectations The existence of the previous challenges and expectations provides an excellent opportunity for improvement. Capitalizing on this opportunity, a mandatory course was added to the graduate engineering program at GVSU-SOE. The course was planned and conducted, to overcome the majority of these challenges and fulfill the expectations related to professional skills, among incoming graduate engineering students. Moreover, this course helps significantly in bringing Copyright © 2007 by ASME

the level of professional skills mastery in individual students to a common acceptable level. The course is entitled: “EGR 602 - Engineering and Society,” and meets once a week for three hours. The course objectives are that by the end of the semester the students should e able to: 1. Write, reason, and communicate engineering and relevant topics appropriately. 2. Identify and analyze ethical and professional issues in the engineering profession according to a particular frame of ethical code and a clear understanding of professionalism. 3. Define and judge situations involving ethical dilemmas and conflicts based on an informed background. 4. Recognize the major legal issues and principles related to the engineering profession. 5. Plan projects and utilize project management tools and methods. 6. Make informed engineering decisions regarding contemporary issues such as globalization, sustainability, the environment, and others relevant to these topics. 7. Understand and realize the impact of engineering on the society and the importance as well as the knowhow of assuming a responsible and moral leadership role in the society.

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Contemporary issues: including globalization of engineering ethics, environmental issues, sustainability, life-long learning and continuous education, societal impact, public policy, ethical design, green design, and moral leadership.

The course utilizes multiple pedagogies that were integrated within the topical modules. These pedagogies vary among active learning exercises, self guided exercises, team exercises, case studies, and term-long modular exercises. The topical modules are designed to handle multiple professional skills in the context of the course topics. For example, written communications are taught at the beginning of the course and an individual, guided exercise is conducted within the same lecture, to write a business memo that accompanies a lab report. An exercise is also assigned during the same lecture for submission in the next meeting, to fill in the missing parts of a lab report. These missing parts are: the executive summary, the discussion, and the conclusion. The rest of the report elements are provided and the experiment is a common junior engineering level experiment. The class exercise is of the short and constrained type while the home exercise is longer and less constrained. Feedback for these emphasizes the unique focus of each. Linguistic and coherence elements are checked and relevant skills are superimposed on every piece of writing that the student performs. This exercise and its feedback provide the students with a first detailed evaluation of their writing and thinking skills, by the second meeting in the semester. It also highlights their respective deficiencies in these skills. The exercise is repeated using a different pedagogy, in a different targeted topical context, and the feedback continues. Other written exercises include: a summary of a chapter on ethics constrained by quantity, a discussion and analysis of an ethical case, constrained by quality, judging an ethical problem posed by the a professional society according to constraints set by the society [10], and a term paper researching and discussing a contemporary issue. The main idea among these exercises is to develop multiple writing skills while practicing reasoning in the general thought process. The final goal is to bring these students to the level of being able to move comfortably, back and forth, between abstract thoughts and general patterns, at one end, and details and examples, at the other end. In addition, these students will be prepared to write at a thesis or publishable level while keeping all the writing elements and style in view.

The methodology of the course includes guiding the students through practicing a combination of professional skills in the context of engineering ethics and other qualitative topics while providing them with intensive, gradual, and timely feedback. The course also contains many contemporary and professional engineering topics that are not usually treated in undergraduate curricula. Some schools incorporate parts of these topics in their undergraduate engineering courses, per ABET requirements, as an add-on component. However, they still lack proper depth due to the previously mentioned logistical and pedagogical problems, combined with students’ lack of academic and intellectual maturity, during the undergraduate years. The course topical content can be divided into the following general categories: 1. Communications: including oral communications, writing, business memos, technical writing elements, the thought process and reasoning, publishable writing and document design. 2. Engineering ethics: including ethics background, professional responsibility, codes of ethics, ethical problems analysis, ethical problems solving techniques, and communication ethics. 3. Professional issues: including project management, legal dimensions of the profession, rights and responsibilities, integrity and reliability, risk and safety, and good works.

The term paper exercise is conducted as a project with timelines and milestones. The students are invited to select a contemporary issue related to the engineering profession from among a list or bring their own relevant topic, conditional on approval of the instructor. Once the topic is selected, the students are instructed to write a paper, at a publishable level, and prepare an oral presentation of the topic. The list for this year included the following topics: 1. Globalization of engineering ethics.

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2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Environmental issues in engineering and sustainable development. The rights of engineers vs. their obligations. Engineering influence on local and international societies. Ethical design. Engineers’ role in the policy making process. Engineers and issues of professional development, life-long learning, and continuing education. Open topics related to the course content.

the students in the graduate engineering program at GVSUSOE are practicing engineers and a minority are preparing to continue in the academic field. Therefore, while choosing the paper topic, most students picked their topic to be relevant to an experience they had, an event that they witnessed at their place of work, or an idea that they were exposed to during their undergraduate years. Nevertheless, as they went digging deeper in the topics and attempted to put together their research findings, they discovered more dimensions and issues related to the profession and they autonomously showed appreciation of the professional side of engineering and its ethics. Moreover, some of them expressed their need and desire to go further and be professionally active through a professional society or publicly, to promote the profession to other engineers and to the public, and to take on their professional responsibility.

Pre-defined milestones for achieving the final paper are set and a timeline is followed closely to deliver these pieces and obtain relevant feedback. A typical publication format following a known forum or conference (e.g. IMECE) is also provided to be followed closely. Table 1 includes these timelines and milestones which are usually declared at the beginning of the course.

At the last third of the course, it has been noticed that most students developed a confidence and autonomy level in the thinking process and reasoning. This was evident in their written materials and the quality of their products. Some of the final papers presented were at an excellent quality and will be sent for publication. Other topics were more suitable for seminars and lectures.

Table 1 Timelines and milestones for the term paper.

DELIVERABLES Topic selection and request for approval Outline due Rough abstract due Actual abstract due Paper draft due Final paper due

DATE Jan. 30/31

GRADE N/A

TOOLS Electronic

Feb. 6/7 Feb. 20/21 Mar. 13/14 Mar. 20/21 April 10/11

5% 2% 3% 15 % 40 %

Presentations

April 17/18

35 %

Electronic Electronic Hardcopy Hardcopy Hardcopy & Electronic Power point

Assessment results of the course were collected using the standard assessment format provided by the university and additional assessment instruments employed by the instructor. One assessment results are provided in figure 1. This assessment was conducted at the end of the semester, where the students were asked to anonymously rank the worthiness and usefulness of course topics, and the adequacy of their relevant methods of instruction, on a scale from 1 to 5, where 5 is most worthy and most adequate. The results show that the students appreciated most of the content and pedagogies with some minor exceptions. A parallel indirect assessment was conducted by surveying the students’ knowledge and thoughts on ethics and professionalism elements that are globally relevant or necessary for success in changing globe [9, 11]. The survey was conducted at the first day of class and again at the last day of class. Most remarkable about the answers collected at the beginning of the course was the lack of most knowledge or background elements regarding contemporary and qualitative issues in engineering. Changes in answers between the two surveys were strongly and positively indicative of the significant learning that the students achieved regarding qualitative issues in engineering that were handled by the course. Even the writing style, content coherence, and focus, were noticed to have improved significantly compared to the beginning of he semester.

To help the students graduate intellectually and function autonomously, the level of both feedback and instruction on class activities and exercises is administered in parallel they start as extremely intensive at the beginning of the course then feedback is steeply reduced to hints and main points while instruction is significantly moved to open discussions and general open ended ideas. This is by design to guide the students into autonomy and academic maturity. Along the same lines, the ratio of lecturing to discussions and active learning is reduced gradually to allow the students to grasp the topics and master the skills. The course was conducted twice and assessment was carried out for both times to obtain feedback. Results, conclusions, and final thoughts The course: Engineering and Society, was conducted twice and feedback from the first cycle was incorporated to improve the second cycle. In the first run the number of students was 16 and in the second run the number was 43 students, which was a record enrollment that forced the class to be divided into two separate sections. It is to be mentioned here that most of

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On a final note, this course can be adopted or used as a guideline, in graduate engineering schools, to help install a mechanism targeting the professional skills, which are difficult to measure and treat. Moreover, the course toggles a multitude of topics that are critical to the engineering Copyright © 2007 by ASME

Level of agreement (5 = High, 1 = low)

5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5

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Figure 1 Average ranking of course modules worthiness and instruction methods adequacy by students for EGR 602, Engineering and Society, winter 2007.

profession but can not be included in depth in a typical undergraduate engineering curriculum. As a result, significant improvement in incoming graduate engineers performance can be realized by bringing their highly diverse professional skills to a comparable level of competence, if not the same. The course syllabus and topical outline can be obtained by contacting the author.

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5. Acknowledgement The author would like to acknowledge the Faculty Teaching and Learning Center (FTLC) at GVSU for their help, in the form of a “Scholar-Teacher” competitive grant to the author, during the summer of 2006. The course material and preparation were partially supported by this grant.

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References 1. Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies, Engineering and Technology Degrees, 1973–2003. 2. Felder, R.M., and R. Brent, “Understanding Student Differences,” Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 94, No. 1, 2005, pp. 57–72.

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ABET (2004-2005), Criteria for Accreditation of Engineering Programs, http://www.ABET.org/criteria.html. Beth A. Fischer, Michael J. Zigmond, “Survival Skills for Graduate School and Beyond,” New Directions for Higher Education, Volume 1998, Issue 101, Date: Spring 1998, Pages: 29-40 Hissey T. W., “Enhanced Skills for Engineers,” Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 88, No. 8, August 2000. Davis B., “The Recognition of and Increasing Value of Professional Engineering Skills,” ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings, 2004. Jason L. Pontius, Shaun R. Harper, “Principles for good practice in graduate and professional student engagement,” New Directions for Student Services, Volume 2006, Issue 115, Date: Autumn (Fall) 2006, Pages: 47-58. Leydens J. A., and B. M. Olds, “Publishing in scientific and engineering contexts: A course for graduate students,” IEEE transactions on professional communications, Vol. 50, Issue 1, March 2007, Pages 45-56. Copyright © 2007 by ASME

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Barakat N., Upgrading Engineering Graduates for a World Class Practice,” Proceedings of the ASEENCS conference, Charleston, WV, March 2007. 10. National Society of Professional Engineers NSPE, 2007 Milton F. Lunch Ethics Contest, http://www.nspe.org/ethics/. 11. Barakat N., and M. Carroll, “Globalization of Engineering Ethics Education,” proceedings of the ASEE annual conference and exposition, 2005.

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