Comprised of a study spanning over five years, this text looks at four engineering co-op students as they write at work. Since the contributors have a foot in both worlds -- work and school -- the book should appeal to people who are interested in how students learn to write as well as people who are interested in what writing at work is like. Primarily concerned with whether engineers see their writing as rhetorical or persuasive, the study attempts to describe the students' changing understanding of what it is they do when they write. Two features of engineering practice that have particular impact on the extent to which engineers recognize persuasion are identified: * a reverence for data, and * the hierarchical structure of the organizations in which engineering is most commonly done. Both of these features discourage an open recognition of persuasion. Finally, the study shows that the four co-op students learned most of what they knew about writing at work by engaging in situated practice in the workplace, rather than by attending formal classes.

Everyone knows that engineers must be good at math, but many students fail to realize just how much writing engineering involves: reports, memos, presentations, specifications—all fall within the purview of a practicing engineer, and all require a polished clarity that does not happen by accident. A Guide to Writing as an Engineer provides essential guidance toward this critical skill, with practical examples, expert discussion, and real-world models that illustrate the techniques engineers use every day. Now in its Fifth Edition, this invaluable guide has been updated to reflect the most current standards of the field, and leverage the eText format to provide interactive examples, Engineering Communication Challenges, self-quizzes, and other learning tools. Students build a more versatile skill set by applying core communication techniques to a variety of situations professional engineers encounter, equipping them with the knowledge and perspective they need to succeed in any workplace. Although suitable for first-year undergraduate students, this book offers insight and reference for every stage of a young engineer’s career.

A classic work in the field of practical and professional ethics, this collection of nine essays by English philosopher and educator Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) was first published in 1898 and forms a vital complement to Sidgwick's major treatise on moral theory, The Methods of Ethics. Reissued here as Volume One in a new series sponsored by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, the book is composed chiefly of addresses to members of two ethical societies that Sidgwick helped to found in Cambridge and London in the 1880s. Clear, taut, and lively, these essays demonstrate the compassion and calm reasonableness that Sidgwick brought to all his writings. As Sidgwick explains in his opening essay, the societies he addressed aimed to allow academics, professionals, and others to pursue joint efforts at reaching "some results of value for practical guidance and life." Sidgwick hoped that members might discuss such questions as when, if ever, public officials might be justified in lying or in breaking promises, whether scientists could legitimately inflict suffering on animals for research purposes, when nations might have just cause in going to war, and a score of other issues of ethics in public and private life still debated a century later. This valuable reissue returns Practical Ethics to its rightful place in Sidgwick's oeuvre. Noted ethicist Sissela Bok provides a superb Introduction, ranging over the course of Sidgwick's life and career and underscoring the relevance of Practical Ethics to contemporary debate. She writes: "Practical Ethics, the last book that Henry Sidgwick published before his death in 1900, contains the distillation of a lifetime of reflection on ethics and on what it would take for ethical debate to be 'really of use in the solution of practical questions.'" This rich, engaging work is essential reading for all concerned with the relationship between ethical theory and. practice, and with the questions that have driven the study of professional ethics in recent years.

This text is designed to help the young engineer make the transition from student to practicing professional. It provides experience-based suggestions and helpful warnings to guide new engineers in taking the first steps to successful project leadership and group management. Contents include: Chapter 1: What Engineering Is; Chapter 2: The Engineer; Chapter 3: The Project and the Project Team; Chapter 4: Project Control; Chapter 5: The End Product: Drawings and Reports; Chapter 6: Problem Solving; Chapter 7: Laboratory Work and Experiment; Chapter 8: Design; Chapter 9: Manufacturing and Quality Control; Chapter 10: Research and Development; Chapter 11: Studies; Chapter 12: Systems; Chapter 13: Proposal Work; Chapter 14: The Project Engineer; Chapter 15: Human Relations in an Engineering Organization; Chapter 16: Engineers and the Marketing Function; Chapter 17: Professionalism, Self-Development, Education; Chapter 18: Creativity; Chapter 19: The Engineering Manager.

Thinking Like an Engineer focuses on high-interest, career-related topics in the elementary curriculum related to engineering. Students will explore interdisciplinary content, foster creativity, and develop higher order thinking skills with activities aligned to relevant content area standards. Students will complete design challenges, visit with an engineer, and investigate real-world problems to plan feasible engineering solutions. Thinking Like an Engineer reflects key emphases of curricula from the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary, including the development of process skills in various content areas and the enhancement of discipline-specific thinking and habits of mind through hands-on activities. Grade 4

Engineering Writing by Design: Creating Formal Document of Lasting Value, Second Edition shows how effective writing can be achieved by thinking like an engineer. Based on the authors’ combined experience as engineering educators, the book presents a novel approach to technical writing, positioning formal writing tasks as engineering design problems with requirements, constraints, protocols, standards, and customers (readers) to satisfy. Specially crafted for busy engineers and engineering students, this quick-reading conversational text: Describes how to apply engineering design concepts to the writing process Explains how engineers fall into thinking traps, and gives techniques for avoiding them Covers the essentials of grammar, style, and mathematical exposition Highlights topics in writing ethics, including copyright, plagiarism, data presentation, and persuasion Engineering Writing by Design: Creating Formal Documents of Lasting Value, Second Edition addresses the specific combination of thinking and writing skills needed to succeed in modern engineering. Its mantra is: to write like an engineer, you must think like an engineer. Featuring illustrative examples, chapter summaries and exercises, quick-reference tables, and recommendations for further reading, this book is packed with valuable tips and information practicing and aspiring engineers need to become effective writers.

Helps both engineers and students improve their writing skills by learning to analyze target audience, tone, and purpose in order to effectively write technical documents This book introduces students and practicing engineers to all the components of writing in the workplace. It teaches readers how considerations of audience and purpose govern the structure of their documents within particular work settings. The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields is broken up into two sections: “Writing in Engineering Organizations” and “What Can You Do With Writing?” The first section helps readers approach their writing in a logical and persuasive way as well as analyze their purpose for writing. The second section demonstrates how to distinguish rhetorical situations and the generic forms to inform, train, persuade, and collaborate. The emergence of the global workplace has brought with it an increasingly important role for effective technical communication. Engineers more often need to work in cross-functional teams with people in different disciplines, in different countries, and in different parts of the world. Engineers must know how to communicate in a rapidly evolving global environment, as both practitioners of global English and developers of technical documents. Effective communication is critical in these settings. The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields Addresses the increasing demand for technical writing courses geared toward engineers Allows readers to perfect their writing skills in order to present knowledge and ideas to clients, government, and general public Covers topics most important to the working engineer, and includes sample documents Includes a companion website that offers engineering documents based on real projects The IEEE Guide to Engineering Communication is a handbook developed specifically for engineers and engineering students. Using an argumentation framework, the handbook presents information about forms of engineering communication in a clear and accessible format. This book introduces both forms that are characteristic of the engineering workplace and principles of logic and rhetoric that underlie these forms. As a result, students and practicing engineers can improve their writing in any situation they encounter, because they can use these principles to analyze audience, purpose, tone, and form.

Written by America's most famous engineering storyteller and educator, this abecedarium is one engineer's selection of thoughts, quotations, anecdotes, facts, trivia and arcana relating to the practice, history, culture and traditions of his profession. The entries reflect decades of reading, writing, talking and thinking about engineers and engineering, and range from brief essays to lists of great engineering achievements. This work is organized alphabetically and more like a dictionary than an encyclopedia. It is not intended to be read from first page to last, but rather to be dipped into, here and there, as the mood strikes the reader. In time, it is hoped, this book should become the source to which readers go first when they encounter a vague or obscure reference to the softer side of engineering.

This collection explores why engineering communication constitutes sociotechnical communication. Sociotechnical communication acknowledges that engineering communication occurs not in a vacuum but shapes and is shaped by multiple social forces. Through diverse research cases, the authors show how sociotechnical communication disrupts common myths in engineering communication: the myth that communication can be purely technical and neutral, and that data speak for themselves. The book highlights these myths, considering first how styles, types, and means of sociotechnical communication played pivotal—and differing—roles in the evolution of wind power technology in Denmark and Germany. The role of myth in engineering blogs in also examined, wherein the effect of engineers maintaining "objective" or "neutral" personae, accentuating technical facts over their social relevance, and eschewing controversy, is to decrease public interest in engineering issues. We see the myths emerge again via product development engineers, whose narrow technical roles constrain their identities and may contribute to constraining their design innovation capacities, in contrast to more holistic, flexible spaces that foster innovation. The myths are also apparent in constructing bridges across Millennial-Baby Boomer generational divides, to facilitate engineering collaboration and knowledge transfer among engineers. Finally, the myths are situated in light of related myths and broader research trends in engineering communication. This book was originally published as a special issue of Engineering Studies.

This textbook is designed for non-native English speakers who need to write scientific and engineering research articles, technical reports, engineering thesis, academic books, and other technical documents in English. The author focuses on formal academic writing in a professional language and frame. The book is written in standard English and provides useful guidelines on development of thoughts, organization of ideas, construction of paragraphs and sentences, and choices of precise words. It also pays attention to details such as visual creation, punctuation, and format. Informal writing is excluded from the scope of this practical guideline.