Collection

2009 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Bruce Dvorak; Dennis Schulte; Mary Garbacz; Shari Aldrich; David Admiraal; Julia Soulakova

rubric was integrated into the capstone presentations from thetwo departments. The three primary findings from this study were that (1) many engineeringstudents start college with weak writing skills; (2) a significant number of engineering studentsare graduating with writing skills below the desired level; and (3) based on the ACT score, abasic writing skills test and a writing sample, a heuristic can be developed to effectively identifystudents required to take an additional writing course at the start of his/her college career.IntroductionA one-year pilot study was performed to assess the undergraduate written and oralcommunication skills from two departments, Civil Engineering (CIVE) and Biological SystemsEngineering (BSEN), at the