Students polish 'the write stuff' at engineering communications center

	Scott Coffel, coordinator for the College of Engineering’s Center for Technical Communication, consults with peer tutor Jessica Leinen. Photo by Tim Schoon.

It’s that last stereotype that the College of Engineering would like to change. With the advent of the Center for Technical Communication (CTC), coordinator Scott Coffel and his staff of professional and peer tutors are working to create “articulate technologists.”

“This program is unique,” says Coffel, a Writers’ Workshop graduate who worked for five years as a technical writer for the Boeing Corp. in Seattle. “There are programs, like the one at Iowa State, where you can earn a Ph.D. in technical communication. But our focus is on engineers as communicators.”

Established in April 2001, the CTC grew out of a request from industry, according to Fred Streicher, the college’s director of external relations.

“ ‘Give us an engineer who can speak and write’ is what we kept hearing,” Streicher says. “We started the center as part of our mandate to build a communications culture.”

The value of being able to explain engineering concepts is becoming increasingly important—engineers must communicate clearly and persuasively, in order to share their expertise with those both inside and outside the industry.

“Writing is a fundamental part of what you do as an engineer,” says Mike Keller, a junior engineering student and a peer tutor at the CTC, who adds that clear communication can be crucial to obtaining funding for a project. “Writing well may be the means to getting to do the stuff you enjoy.”

To help drive that point home, Coffel and the CTC have teamed up with faculty in four courses to create writing-intensive assignments. One of those courses is Statics, taken by all engineering students in their first or second year. Students are assigned to choose a landmark of engineering interest and then must write a proposal for the funds to lead a team to investigate the site.

“In writing this kind of proposal, students must understand the statics involved in the structure, but they also have to do a literature search, organize their ideas, and explain what’s in it for the team who would accompany them on the site visit, as well as for the corporation from whom they’re seeking funding,” Coffel says.

As part of the assignment, students visit the CTC, where they receive writing assistance from CTC staff members. In addition to Coffel, the staff includes Lezlie Hall, assistant coordinator, ten writing consultants—professionals who work part-time for the CTC, and eight peer tutors— engineering students identified as strong writers.

For her Statics proposal, Jessica Leinen, a sophomore engineering student, chose Hagia Sophia, an enormous mosque that was consecrated in December 532, in Constantinople. She sought input from the CTC staff several times.

“The center is in a great location, and the staff is very available and very accommodating,” Leinen says. “My writing was kind of flowery and they helped me tighten it up. They helped me with web citations too—knowing when and how to cite a source.”

Leinen obviously was convinced of the importance of technical communication—she has since become a peer tutor.

“If you can’t communicate your ideas to others, they’re not really worth anything,” she says.

The peer tutoring concept is one that is used by several other writing centers on campus, Coffel says. Potential peer tutors are identified by professors, the CTC staff, or come to the center on their own. They work side-by-side with students, helping them with organizational issues, under the supervision of Coffel and Hall.

“There’s a credibility the peer tutors have with other engineering students that helps,” Coffel says.

“Talking about writing is very different than talking about engineering,” says peer tutor Keller. “And this kind of writing is very different than what you do in Rhetoric. It’s a goal-oriented approach, where you write for a specific purpose. These are all engineering students who think like I do. I enjoy feeling that I can really help them.”

And junior Jenna Hetland has discovered an unexpected bonus to her role as a peer tutor.

“When I went on interviews, my being a peer tutor always got lots of attention and questions from interviewers,” Hetland says. “Companies thought it was very important.”

The role of peer tutors will be expanding, thanks to a grant written by Coffel that will be funded by the 3M Corporation. The grant will allow the CTC to create an OWL (on-line writing laboratory,) in which peer tutors staff two desktop computers dedicated to fielding questions about technical communication projects.

Coffel hopes to expand the role of the CTC in other ways as well. Currently, he and John Forys, the director of the Engineering Library, are team-teaching a new course, Essentials of Technical Communication. Coffel also hopes to expand the services of the CTC to include other forms of communication, including PowerPoint demonstrations and public speaking. The CTC web site, www.engineering.uiowa.edu/~ctc, is undergoing updates, including a page of writing tips and strategies created by the peer tutors. And there is discussion of offering communications workshops for professional engineers.

“We’d like to reach out to the constituency who may not have had the opportunities our students have today,” Coffel says.

“Engineers have to be very agile writers, from writing technical instructions to explaining a project to non-engineers. We’re here to help them communicate their expertise.”

Article by Linzee Kull McCray