Enabling Engineering Performance Skills: A Program to Teach Communication, Leadership, and Teamwork*

Freshman Engineering Program. This minor providesengineering undergraduate students with formal training and acredential in complementary performance skills necessary for suc-cess in today’s workplace. This interdisciplinary program is de-signed to improve the ability of engineering graduates to work onteams, to be effective communicators, to be socially adept, and tobe prepared for leadership roles.Five courses compose the minor. Three of these courses arenew and custom-prepared for engineering students, while theother two may be selected from a limited list of courses that providein-depth training on supervision, cultural diversity, and interper-sonal interaction. This multi-disciplinary program takes a novelapproach in the subject matter presentation and in the method ofcoaching students to use these skills. In the custom courses, stu-dents receive instruction and are placed in mini-practicums. Tocomplete the minor, students participate in a full practicum in asocial service setting.This paper discusses assessment; course development; programbasis and development; strategies for implementation of this newprogram; integration between engineering, counseling psycholo-gy, and human services; and student, faculty, and industry re-sponse to the program. The collaboration makes this programtransportable to other institutions as it is dependent on having in-stitution expertise in the disciplines of counseling and human ser-vices rather than having engineering educators with expertise inthese fields. Our experience with establishing this collaborationwill also be discussed.