Communication skill has always been one of the first things that is considered when deficiencies within engineering programs are evaluated. Over the past years many strategies have been undertaken to address these concerns. The Writing Across the Curriculum movement has focussed on making writing a part of every classroom. Writing Centers have taken the role of guides to writers who need additional audience for their text. Freshman composition courses have tried to get students involved with writing as they enter colleges and universities. And lastly, writing intensive courses have been designated by departments to handle the writing experience for the department's students. With these strategies in place, another idea is being generated that may provide additional support for engineering students, both undergraduate and graduate alike. The Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University has implemented a plan that focuses on communication needs by having the majority of the 25 teaching assistants employed by the department become the principal readers for text produced in the Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, Vibrations, and Controls laboratories. These graduate students critique, comment, and grade in both the technical and communication areas while also teaching the above laboratories. The issues regarding faculty support for the plan, preparation of the graduate students, and orientation for the undergraduates who are impacted by the plan will be addressed. The ultimate goal involves leading engineering students into the realization communication is important because it is being evaluated by fellow engineers and that those evaluators will also improve their own skills because of their need to focus on how they communicate.

It is highly unlikely that anyone can be found who doesn't have something to say about communication. It can be broad generalizations about speech patterns or highly specialized notions of exactly what word to use in a technical document. Communication is part of our existence. From our first cries when we are born to the movements we make as we leave the world, we are communicating either to ourselves or to the world around us. Because this activity is so much a part of our lives, we cannot separate it from any of the other activities that we perform. Communication is not an entity unto itself. Ronald L.Miller and Barbara Olds in "A Model Curriculum for A Capstone Course in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design". Journal of Engineering Education report that at Harvey Mudd College, engineers enrolled in design classes must, as part of their design experience, " interact with their client in a professional manner and communicate with a variety of audiences (peers,faculty members,clients,etc.) orally and in writing." It is embroiled in all the activities of existence. It is, therefore, vitally important that engineers realize the place of communication in their lives. This realization appears to be awakening in students because in the above article a survey done by The Colorado School of Mines shows that 95.3% of students in multidisciplinary Senior Courses felt " Good communication skills are an essential attribute of a professional design engineer." Without communication there is no engineering. The two must work in concert to provide the world with the expertise that engineering offers.

It is important, therefore, that engineers constantly monitor their own written and spoken output. On a simple level this means looking at what is written or going to be spoken and deciding if it is correct, professional, and appropriate. Using whatever tools are available to the writers, text can be investigated for how well it fits into those categories. On a higher level, outside help can be approached to provide greater expertise in making changes in text and spoken words. This pattern seems to be fairly prevalent in most schools: you write the text; you edit and proofread; and (if there is time) you get someone who can correct all the grammatical mistakes. The text is then handed in to sink or swim. In this process the art of communication seems to be an afterthought. It involves correcting the periods and commas, making subjects agree with their verbs, and a myriad of seemingly non-related items. When the text fails to receive a high grade, it is always the fault of the misused colon or the dangling participle. Technical knowledge in these cases does not in any way shape or form exist equally with communication. The need, then, is to provide a mechanism in which there is no discernible delineation of power: technical knowledge and communication skill are used in concert to improve the overall presentation of the text. It is also important to realize that it is much more effective to somehow provide readers for technical text from a readership that is close to the knowledge base. This has been the professor in the past, but many professors do not want to venture outside the technical areas. They are uncomfortable with the issue of talking about "English Things." Therefore, some mechanism needs to put in place to create a greater awareness of communication, provide readership in the engineering area, and obtain feedback that will be valuable to the writer. It is with these ideas in mind that graduate students in mechanical engineering were chosen to provide the means by which to accomplish the above tasks.

Graduate students in MSU's Department of Mechanical Engineering have for many years been evaluating the technical content of reports in a variety of courses. Using their own expertise they read text, make appropriate comments on technical content, and suggest ways to improve the content material. The act of critiquing and correcting as a process is an integral part of the system. It has become apparent that a connective way was needed to bring the communication skill evaluation into line with the technical evaluation and have the engineering graduate students take responsibility for doing both evaluation. For some of the 16 mechanical engineering graduate teaching assistants involved in the project there was no question as to their reaction to the request. "I already do it and have done it since the time that I started as a TA." "I can't stop myself from commenting. I can't let something slide when it sounds bad or makes no sense." "I'm carrying on what others have told me." Perhaps graduate students are not usually asked to provide the critiquing on communication issues because they are "engineers", and everyone knows that engineers can't communicate [sic!]. The reality is that our graduate students are highly competent individuals who have reached the graduate ranks because of their skills, both in the technical areas and in the ways that they communicate the technical material. They write, they speak, they teach, they provide an enormous body of information through their very existence as graduate students. It would be foolish indeed not to tap this source of valuable expertise and use it to improve communication skills at the undergraduate level. It is important, though, to make suitable plans to place graduate students into the role of communication mentors.

A method in the early stages in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MSU gives graduate teaching assistants who act as teaching assistants in the department the chance to not only grade the technical abilities of undergraduates but also the methods that these students use to present that information completely, clearly and competently to a selected audience. Four laboratory courses in Heat Transfer, Vibrations, Controls, and Fluid Mechanics are targeted in the communication effort. 25 teaching assistants will eventually grade both technical and composition areas. The reasoning behind the move is three-fold: graduate students interact with undergraduates on a much greater scale than faculty, undergraduate engineers have a tendency to listen to the comments of fellow engineers who have gone through the system, and graduate students will benefit from the added focus on communication skill. Since most of the graduate students are working on either a thesis or a dissertation, the responsibility of making comments on undergraduate text should help the graduate students to more intently look at what they produce.

All of this commentary and grading cannot be done without a fair amount of preparation and careful monitoring. Faculty must be comfortable with the role being taken by graduate students, undergraduates must be clear as to what is being asked of them on any text that they produce, and graduate students must receive enough training and support to make the process viable for both them and the undergraduates to whom they are responsible. faculty members gave ample suggestions to the number of assignments, the way in which reports would be handled, and the amount of preparation and support needed by their graduate students. Training sessions were planned to acquaint graduate students with the added responsibilities that they would encounter. Lastly, undergraduates were not excluded. The overall plan was presented before it is was implemented. Student concerns were addressed, and the semester's trial began with all parties cognizant of their role in the process. Instead of an assignment being handed down from above with no real sense of vested interest, all parties involved were apprised of the benefits of the plan.

Constant monitoring of the program, detailed instructions, support materials that included guides to areas of common concern, and an enormous amount of on-on-one contact hours for discussion have given a positive outlook to the future of utilizing ME graduate assistants in a new position of responsibility.

Within the educational system today, any methods that can be used to aid in the competence and experiences level of engineers must be undertaken. With all the forms of constraints on time, money, and resources it is necessary to utilize whatever means can be found that provide the best return for the time and money expended. The utilization of graduate assistants in an engineering major to become the principal sources of comment and graders of technical reports from both a technical and presentation perspective is a means to more efficiently use an existing resource. Careful planning to provide a clear perspective of how the program works to faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates will generate a valuable experience for all involved.

Barbara Gross Davis, Tools for Teaching, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993.

Norbert Elliot et al. "The Assessment of Technical Writing: A Case Study", Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Vol.24, No.1, Winter 1994, p.9.

Ronald L. Miller and Barbara Olds, "A Model Curriculum for A Capstone Course in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design". Journal of Engineering Education, Vol.83, No.4 October 1993, pp. 311-323.

Peer commentary on Peer Review : A Case Study in Scientific Quality Control, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Iris M. Tiedt, Writing: From topic to Evaluation, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1989.

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