Designing a Writing Across the Curriculum program at the University of Michigan´s College of Engineering

At the University of Michigan\´s College of Engineering there has been a call to better prepare students with the skills that they will need in business and industry. As a result, the Program in Technical Communication is reevaluating its Writing Across the Curriculum program. The complex nature of the program, which involves faculty members across the college and a wide range of topics, often leaves faculty members with too little guidance and students who often complain that the courses are a "patchwork of unrelated topics." In order to meet the challenges of running this complex program, the Program in Technical Communication is running a pilot project in the Department of Bioengineering. In this project, we are working together with engineering faculty in order to establish a clear set of outcomes and objectives. Our goal is to design curriculum that seamlessly integrates the communication and technical learning activities. We reflect on issues involved with designing curriculum as well as implementing our Writing Across the Curriculum reform.