I am reading a new book on Engineering Education called, A Whole New Engineer. My years of professional experience give me cause to agree with many of their conclusions and propositions. I will post occasionally from this book. Speaking of current engineering education practices, authors David E. Goldberg and Mark Somerville state, “Once students are studying engineering, there is a heavy emphasis on development of logical and mathematical capacities, to the exclusion of the other intelligences. Too often this is reflected in students’ attitudes: ‘I don’t need to learn to write–I’m an engineer!’ This single-minded focus in engineering is in part due to the emphasis on depth in engineering education. There’s a sense that because there’s so much technical stuff to learn, we can’t afford to spend time developing students’ other intelligences.” (David E. Goldberg and Mark Somerville, A Whole New Engineer, The Coming Revolution in Engineering Education, ThreeJoy Associates, Inc. Douglas, Michigan, 2014)

I have personally found that, being willing to write, proactively learning to write, and striving to write well, have opened doors of engineering opportunity that I would not have otherwise had, if not for a pursuit of improved writing skills. Math and science are important, even expected, but communication skills brings power to an engineers ability to move projects and ideas forward.