Facilitating interpersonal communication between students and faculty in an engineering design project

Traditional engineering education has focused on instructing students in the fundamentals of engineering and applying these principles in the solution of engineering problems. While it is important for engineering education to continue providing a strong technical background, recognition of communication skills (e.g., oral presentations, technical reports, memos) are becoming increasingly important in the current business environment. At Michigan Technological University, students complete these activities, but we have also included communication that has traditionally been used primarily in the workplace environment: the interpersonal communication that occurs between supervisor and employee. As part of their first-year engineering classes, student teams complete design projects, which consist of a series of deliverables throughout the semester. Beginning in the fall of 2008, students in several sections met with their instructor during the design process for a progress meeting. This paper discusses the dynamic experienced between different instructors and their student design teams as this concept was implemented into the first-year program.