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Mohammad Albusairi Rebecca Agosta ENGL 1101-068 Date: 24 Nov.

2013

Engineering School

The school of engineering in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte is a discourse community (According to Swales, P466-478). It is considered a discourse community because they share goals and they use a specific lexis. All students in the school of engineering are there basically for the same goal, which is to earn their degree and to learn the skills needed for their future career. When I first came to the United States, I had to choose which school I was going to attend. I had a long list of schools to choose from, but I ended up choosing the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I had heard good rumors about the school of engineering here and it grabbed my attention because it has the motorsport department, which works with NASCAR. University of North Carolina at Charlotte has a really good and modern engineering school that is equipped with the latest equipment that is used in the engineering field of study. They have built over three new buildings for the engineering school on campus; it shows that the school is serious about their engineering program. They also have two buildings in the middle of campus, Smith and Cameron, but these are the old engineering buildings. They have just

finished the new engineering buildings that are known as Epic, Duke and Bioinformatics. The first engineering class that engineering majors must start before starting any other engineering classes are usually held in Smith. The more advance classes, or upper level courses, are held in the newer buildings. All engineering major students are in this discourse community. They do have some opportunities that other majors might not have. For example, every engineer student is allowed to print 250 pages every semester, for free. The students also have access to the engineering labs and they have their own software that is called MOSIAC. All freshmen engineers have to start by taking a class called Introduction to engineering; it does not matter what major in engineering are you planning to major in (Mechanical engineering, civil engineering, etc.). The class has a variety of projects to choose from. They start out by working on the innovation project, which is for mechanical engineers, then they have the beam project, for civil engineers, and the last project is the electrical circuit, for electrical engineers. This class helps freshmen engineering students determine what engineering major best suits them; some even choose to leave the program after the class. There are many stereotypes that I have heard of before getting in the school of engineering; some were right and some were wrong. I have heard that most students in the school of engineering are males, which is true. In my engineering class alone, there are two girls in a 25-student class. It is not only my class that is like this, there have been several instances where I have seen some classes that have had an unbalanced man to woman ratio, as well. I have heard

that engineering students are awkward and that most of them are nerds, but that was not true. It might be true for computer engineers because they are on the computers all the time and they barely have friends, but most of the other engineering students that I meet are normal, just like what other students look and act like. There are specific requirements to get into the engineering school at first and other requirements to stay in the major. The requirements for getting in the school of engineering are different between international students and domestic students. They require the same math and physics grades in high school, the only difference is that they require a specific SAT/ACT scores for domestic students; they dont require any of these tests for international students , but they do require specific grades in any of these two tests TOEFL/IELTS, which are English based tests. After getting accepted in the engineering school, you must maintain a GPA of 2.5 or above; otherwise you will be kicked out of the school. Also, if a freshmen student has a GPA of 1.75 or less, he/she is getting kicked out of the engineering school automatically with no chance of getting in the school of engineering ever again. All engineering students share the same major goal even though they might have different minor goals. All engineering students share the goal of wanting to graduate with a good GPA and to learn how to be a good engineer. I have seen that many of them have different minor goals; just like some people, I want to graduate as engineering because they get paid well, others just want to make their parents proud and so on.

They do use a language that other people might not understand or they might understand the work but without understanding what they mean by saying that. For example, this short conversation might not make sense to a lot of people event though it does for freshmen engineering students:

Student 1: Hey, how many feet have you managed to get your innovation project go? Student 2: Not much, the rattrap ruined my bored so I will try to fix things up and use the electric motor? Student 1: Did you use the CDs in your project? Student 2: No I used the plastic wheels and I used balloons for better traction.

Or for our last project you would be hearing the words deflection, flanges, web, efficiency ratio and modulus of elasticity. People might understand the works or understand a part of it, but understanding the whole thing that they are talking about might be hard sometimes. I believe that communication in this discourse community has not that much of a different between communication in all different majors in University of North Carolina at Charlotte. We communicate with the instructor and TA through emails only and it must be the UNCC email account. We do communicate a lot with our TA more that the instructor, But there is a big difference between the way that students communicate with each others. At the first of the semester, they divide the class into teams of four students each, they work together in the

projects through the semester. We have group meeting and work together, we meet in the library, divide the work between us and help each other. We communicate with each other will all kind of different ways, texting, phone calls and emails depending on the situation. I have Interview Martin Isoler, he is a freshmen in the school of engineering, he is also attending the introduction to engineering class. Engineering is a hard and tuff major Martin said. The freshmen year is not as hard as the rest but it is a big jump between high school and college especially to the school of engineering. A lot of freshmen students expect college to be similar to high school or a bit harder, but it apparently a lot different. It college you would have to get your own help and you have to do everything by your self. I was thinking of changing my major to get out of the engineering school he said. It was terrifying how the first couple of weeks started, I had a lot of assignments due without knowing what am I supposed to do. I had to go to my instructors in their office hours and talk to them and ask the to explain the assignments. The online homework was really confusing, almost every class had online homework and I could not keep it with them at first, I missed a lot of them because I didnt know when they were due and I could not do some of them because I really had no idea what to do. Martin said I believe that no one have ever graduated from an engineering school with a good GPA without being good at Math and calculations. The school of engineering is really hard but it depends from a student to another. Some students really enjoy solving problems and fixing

objects. It might be hard for them too but they will challenge them selves and enjoy it at the same time so they would performer way better that others.

References (Swales, P 466-478) (Isoler, Martin. Personal interview. 8 Nov. 2013)

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