To bridge a gap we perceive to exist between the traditionally educated engineer, who is skilled primarily in high tech, and the broader trained engineer being called for by industry, we have developed a senior level course entitled Professional Preparation. This course is built around a group design project, but also includes exposure to a wide variety of needed skills such as problem solving, creative thinking, ethics, writing to learn, producing documentation and making oral and written reports. Student and employer reaction to the course is uniformly enthusiastic. Data collected from a survey of over 400 of our graduates shows a marked difference in their perception of the importance of and their educational preparation in specific skills with additional differences between those who took this course and those who did not.

No abstract