Senior/sophomore co-class instruction: Teaching interpersonal management skills in engineering

The author describes the method of co-class instruction (CCI), an efficient educational structure to incorporate interpersonal management skills (IPMS) education into the existing engineering curriculum. Using CCI, seniors directly supervise project design teams composed of sophomores. As project leaders, seniors are responsible for overall project management, direct supervisory technical management, and formal performance evaluation. Sophomores apply thier current knowledge and skills, e.g., electronic spreadsheets to simulate economics and technical processes, computer-aided design, elementary mass and energy balances, etc., to accomplish project tasks. CCI was incorporated into senior design and sophomore thermodynamics/mass balance courses in the Biochemical and Food Process Engineering curriculum at Purdue University