The rhetoric of the capstone project: working towards an explicit definition of the capstone project writing process

The capstone course in civil engineering is a particularly important and challenging course for seniors, especially with respect to their writing and oral presentation skills. Over the past three years, working at the interface of communication and engineering content in this course, we have iteratively shifted the role of the rhetoric consultant from giving only feedback to designing written assignment handouts that guide the students through the project development process and presentations. We describe the course, share some of the materials that we have developed, and discuss our successes and challenges as we work together helping students move to a clearer understanding of what is expected of them as practicing engineers.