The triple constraint of the document: coordinating concepts in rhetoric and project management for engineering students

In the project management course at the University of Minnesota, Civil Engineering students are learning the vocabulary and concepts for managing projects, engineering economics and writing together. Often they have difficulty seeing the connections between the actions involved in managing projects and their writing assignments. We present our strategies for coordinating concepts and connecting writing assignments to action. We include examples of assignment guidelines that we have developed and refined over time, explicit links from the writing assignment to the project management process, and a discussion of our successes and challenges as we work across disciplines and try to present the information in an integrated manner.