Collection

15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE)

Authors

Atheer Almasri, West Virginia University; Akua B. Oppong-Anane, West Virginia University; Carter Hulcher, West Virginia University; Todd R Hamrick, West Virginia University; Xinyu Zhang, Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE); Lizzie Santiago, West Virginia University

-technical skills aretaught in first year courses and are further reinforced in upper-level engineering courses. Examplesof soft skills taught in first-year engineering courses include oral communication, presentationskills, teamwork, and project management.Soft skills are interpersonal skills that support the relationship with other people and complementthe technical skills and are essential skills to achieve organizational development andeffectiveness. Soft skills can be divided into two categories, functional and adaptive skills[1].Functional skills are related to tasks and how to solve new problems, and adaptive skills are relatedto the way in which the engineer conduct themselves and interact with their peers and theenvironment[1]. Examples of

Collection

15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE)

Authors

Angela Jin Sadlowski, The Johns Hopkins University; Eileen Haase PhD, The Johns Hopkins University; Gyeongtae Sun Moon, The Johns Hopkins University; Meera R Bhat, The Johns Hopkins University

development, peer review, public speaking, and technicalcommunication to support BMED students successfully. Principles such as group design, peerreview, and group development were included to promote core collaboration and cooperationskills between first-year BME students. Also, soft skills such as public speaking, engineeringethics, and technical communication were provided to support LMs in their own keydevelopment as biomedical engineers. Park et al. [1] corroborated positive association betweennon-technical professional skills, such as effective communication and teamwork, andengineering leadership self-efficacy, essential for effective leadership. After the BMED course,many LMs become teaching assistants and these skills are foundational in