Integrating technical communication into engineering education: a case study
The ability to communicate effectively is a critical skill for today's engineer, and the ABET 2000 curricular initiative reflects this requirement. The authors discuss how Mercer University's School of Engineering integrated technical communication into its engineering curriculum, beginning at the freshman level. We believe the level of integration of writing and speaking with traditional engineering fundamentals is unusual and is a reflection of the fact that the Department of Technical Communication resides within the engineering school. We describe how and why we changed the way we educate engineers to communicate.