| |
    
|
by Michelle Moriarity
College students measure success in two principal ways: their performance in college and their performance in the potential workplace. In college, students and faculty measure success by performance in their most challenging courses. In the professional world, success is measured by technical competence and communication skills.
John Broadhurst, a professor in the physics department, says that despite evidence of excellent oral communication in class presentations, he finds his students lacking skills necessary to research and write a scientific paper -- completeness, accuracy in presenting technical information, and readability. Classes such as his would probably be considered some of the most challenging in IT, and he emphasizes communication skills as well as the physics students expect to learn from his class. "On coming into the course, the students are deficient in writing compactly," Broadhurst says. But by the end of one of his courses, he says, most students improve their writing skills and meet his expectations.
Exams and grades are abandoned in favor of promotions and raises when it comes to judging a person's competence in industry. And workplace performance is judged not only on technical abilities, but also on an ability to communicate knowledge to colleagues and to clients, the general public.
Jennifer Ohm, staffing manager for Honeywell's corporate offices, says that interpersonal communication skills are crucial to an ideal technical candidate. She says, "[We have trouble] finding people that have both the technology background and the interpersonal skills. It's not an impossible task, but that's really where the challenges are."
Students with good communication and interpersonal skills that pursue technical careers are a rarity, say personnel directors. It seems that prepared students have a bright professional future ahead of them. That is, at least, what one University student, Bill Dupre, is hoping.
When Dupre began working at Northwest Airlines in 1989 as an aircraft mechanic, he had little idea that workplace challenges would land him at the University within five years. After a few years of deciphering aircraft maintenance manuals, Dupre enrolled as a student at the University to gain the qualifications to return to Northwest and write better manuals.
"A problem at Northwest is that engineers know engineering," Dupre says, "They're not very good at communicating. I saw continuous problems. ... The maintenance procedures were poorly written, hard to follow, [and] not complete enough for someone to really understand how to do it without having someone there who's been in that exact position for years to kind of walk you through it."
Now Dupre is working toward a degree in scientific and technical communication. Part of his program plan includes Technical Writing for Engineers, a course that he shares with many IT seniors.
Dupre's major concern about the technical writing he encountered in the workplace was that "The technica writers were former mechanics that had little, if any, formal education. [The company] tried to hire people from the outside who were English majors or journalism majors, but they don't know anything about aviation," he says, "They had no other option but to hire aircraft mechanics ... and hope like hell they could write fairly well and communicate with engineers [about] the procedures."
Career magazines and corporate recruiters alike parrot Dupre's message -- in order to succeed in the business world, scientists and engineers must possess not only the technical skills their duties require, but also the ability to communicate on many levels. Electronic Engineering Times called communication skills such as understandable oral, written, and visual communication, soft skills.
After paging through some of the free magazines available in the IT Career Services office, you would start to notice a pattern. "Employers look for job candidates who have good communication and interpersonal skills," asserts one publication. Another echoes it with, "Employers seek ... excellent communication skills to augment a candidate's technological experience." Promotion in technical industries depends on an individual's ability to communicate with others, with an emphasis in expression of technical ideas in simple, everyday terms. "[Technical workers] need to be able to relate to their customer," Ohm says. "Strong interpersonal skills [are necessary] because they're translating customer needs into hardware and software solutions."
"[We have the] expectation that people are fundamentally sound in their writing, that they can articulate their words on paper clearly, succinctly," Ohm says. However, she says, it's difficult to evaluate these skills through the interview process.
Tony Hoffman, technical staffing manager at 3M, agrees with Ohm. When candidates come from an accredited institution such as the University, corporate recruiters expect competence in basic skills in their field. "[We] assume that it has prepared the candidates properly for entering the work force," Hoffman says. "We feel that, by progressing through a fairly rigorous curriculum, that is evidence in and of itself that they're able to master those principles and [that] they would be reasonable candidates for us." But judging candidates' writing through their resumes has become more of a challenge, Hoffman says, because word processing technology like spellcheck and grammar programs coupled with the availability of resume critique services help polish and conceal writing insufficiencies.
"Communication is an integral part of any job," Hoffman says. He says that the ability to describe thoughts and ideas and sell them to colleagues is "probably more [important] as a new hire because you're not going to have the years of experience and credibility. You need to be able to think clearly and be able to process the data you're dealing with and put it into an organized format."
Though IT students receive rigorous technical training, they must meet only basic demands in terms of communication. The University requires all students to complete introductory composition and an upper-division composition class pertinent to their majors. For most IT students, "Your Portal to College" -- as the English composition 1101 Web page cheerily announces -- gives way to composition 3031: Technical Writing for Engineers.
Attitudes toward this requirement vary. Dupre, who is currently enrolled in 3031, says that, in terms of learning communication skills, "[Taking courses] is the best way to get prepared."
Steven Rouse, a senior in statistics who is also taking the course, disagrees. "Technical writing [the course] could be important. We're working on resumes right now," Rouse says, "[But] It is taken pretty lightly. We're usually pretty bored in class."
The senior design project, a requirement in many engineering majors, is one of few existing opportunities for IT students to write in a cross-curricular setting by combining practical technical skills with intensive writing in a hands-on environment.
"[There have] been a lot of communication components to the chemical engineering classes I've taken, particularly Chemical Engineering Laboratory," says Chris Damsgard, a senior in chemical engineering. Students must prepare an oral report every week and a final report every two weeks, and all assignments must be professionally written, he says, "They get really picky about our writing skills."
IT Director of Admissions Ben Sharpe says, "We've never had the faculty to teach intensive writing courses within the major." But plans on the horizon call for a revision in writing requirements. This change, Sharpe says, will dispose of the upper division composition requirement in exchange for several courses created within each major that would include tailored intensive writing components. Sharpe says that existing technical writing courses have done a fine job, but future courses would narrow the scope of writing.
David Weinlick, a composition instructor who has taught Technical Writing for Engineers and Writing in the Sciences, supports the proposed change in writing requirements. "It sounds like a good idea," he says, "If it's implemented properly, it could be a success."
Weinlick's main complaint is that the University lacks enough courses for developing writing skills. Despite students' grasp of the English language "They seem unsure of their writing," he says. "Very few students leave their last composition course truly prepared to write for a greater audience," Weinlick says, because they only have one course in which to polish their skills. Another obstacle he encounters as an instructor of scientific and technical writing courses is that students of all skill levels participate in composition courses.
"This is a difficult issue to come to grips with," Sharpe says. Many students enrolled in IT take all of their general requirements on a pass/fail basis. Under these circumstances, any English communication deficiency remains unaddressed, he says. His recommendation is comprehensive English testing for all University students, bu t costs prevent this from becoming a reality.
While administrators and instructors build the University's future writing requirements, Bill Dupre delights in digging through the current gold mine of courses at the University dealing with technical communications. Dupre's intention is to develop a specific set of skills to bring back to Northwest. He says, however, that "through taking courses in this degree, I've found out that there are endless opportunities for someone with good communication skills."
