2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In the 2017-18 academic year two faculty began what has become a standing collaboration between technical communication and materials science and engineering (MSE) faculty members. The goal of this collaboration is to prepare undergraduate MSE students as proficient technical communicators for future workplace success. The purpose of this paper is to report on the efficacy of this collaboration using preliminary survey data from alumni who are two to five years out from graduation as well as data from two qualitative studies that involved graduates of the program.

For over seven years, the materials science program has invested in intentional development of professional skills including teamwork, engineering leadership, and written communication in the senior project and lab courses. The technical communication faculty became an embedded, integral instructor of the MSE faculty’s junior laboratory and senior capstone courses, spanning two consecutive years of MSE students’ education. Each of these courses is project-based with assignments modeled after an assortment of genres common to industrial workplaces, as drawn from the MSE faculty’s experience working in multiple companies.

This project seeks to assess the impact of that investment on the career development of alumni who experienced these interventions as they are 2-5 years out from graduation. At this stage, we are reviewing existing alumni data, with the goal of conducting a preliminary assessment and creating a more in-depth study. In addition to program-collected alumni survey data, we will review qualitative interview data from two studies collected by the technical communication faculty member. In one study, five novice professionals (all of whom were alumni of the materials science program), shared their experiences around transitioning from academia to the workplace; in the second study, participants shared experiences with teamwork. While small, these studies provide insight into alumni experience, when paired with the survey data, and provide directions for designing a more robust assessment of professional skills development.