Mark Salmon Rebecca Agosta ENGL 1101-068 November 18, 2013 Engineering Students The first goal that

any engineering hopeful must have is to get accepted into an engineering school, which isnt entirely an easy feat. The final goal of engineering students is to learn everything they need to know to become a professional engineer upon graduation. As that being the final stage of completion, there are many steps between beginning and end that may be considered goals. As an insider I know that every class in the engineering department at UNCC is a struggle at times, so with every class you have a short term goal of just passing. To stay in the college of engineering one has to maintain at least a 2.5 GPA every year that they are here. Engineering students are students. That means that they strive to soak up all the knowledge that is available to them. This desire to truly learn separates engineers from most other college students in my opinion. They are a special breed that has the urge to figure out the world around them. As an engineering student we have to communicate with professors and other students. Professor use spoken language, written handouts, and emails to communicate with students. I analyzed a document that the instructor sent the students of my Intro to Engineering class as my artifact. The documents describes a group project designing a beam that had to be completed. It included requirements and list of topics to be included in the final report. Most of this communication is used for the purpose of passing along information about assignments to

students. Students communicate with professors for advice or to answer questions they may have. When a professor emails a student it is usually very formal and has some kind of important document attached. Students use texts, emails, and phone calls to communicate with each other. This is usually very informal unless student are working on a group project and sending pieces to each other. We have many team or group projects to complete each semester so we must coordinate meeting places, times, and who is responsible for which parts of the project. This is a norm for engineering students. Engineering has a lexis that is specific to math and science. Most of the work that we are required to do involves some kind of a calculation somewhere. We have to learn all kinds of equations to calculate things from material density, to load capacity, to resistors needed to change the voltage of an electrical circuit. In construction materials I was taught that learning the vernacular is very important to having a successful career. If you do not use the correct vocabulary at a job, you may come off as someone who has not taken their education seriously and is not ready to be able to effectively communicate with a team of professionals. In this discourse community the novices, in my opinion, would be anyone that is in their first year in the program. They are still learning what is required and expected of them. Experts for this community would be anyone who has been in the college of engineering for more than a year. Because I consider them an expert does not mean they know everything about engineering, but that that know what it means to be an engineering student. These students are still here to learn, but they know what to expect from classes and what is expected of them. Novices and experts in this discourse community do not interact a whole lot. While an engineering student you can expect to have projects and have to communicate with people relatively close to you with experience in this discourse community. So far I have had many group projects as a novice.

I believe these projects were to allow us to learn as a group what is expected of us. As a group you can share ideas and help each other to adjust in certain aspects. I interviewed an older engineering student, Austin, who is a junior, who I would consider an expert. He informed me that as you progress through the course that more projects would be individual with less group work or projects. Evidently group work is more common freshman year to give you an opportunity to learn together how to do some of the required task of an engineering student. Many of the courses in the college of engineering use some kind of hands on experience. This may be in the form of allowing you to build something using given materials such as the 1201 Innovation Project, or in a lab testing properties of concrete like construction materials lab. For the Innovation project we were required to design a vehicle that would carry a small amount of rock 20 feet on its own power using only the materials given to us in a small toolbox. In my construction materials class we have made asphalt and concrete mixtures to test. These activities require that you wear clothes that you wouldnt mind getting a little dirty. Most classes require you to write some kind of a technical paper, especially all the labs that are part of the required curriculum. I have already had to write many technical lab reports, lab summaries, and technical design summaries. All of these reports require some type of calculation. In my short time here I have figured out that most of engineering is doing calculations, and then writing something to explain them. Engineering students are also required to do activities in teams with their peers. Team projects are designed to build leadership and communication skills that will be necessary to acquire a job after graduation. After conducting a survey of peers I have concluded certain stereotypes are given to engineering students. The two most common perceptions of outsiders are that all students are male and smart. While the majority of engineering students are males here, there are still a few

women. In my Intro to Engineering class the ratio of males to females is 25:1. As an insider to the engineering discourse community, I have seen that there are also stereotypes of individual disciplines. Civil Engineering is dominated by white males while electrical engineering has a lot of foreign students in it. Some people kind of rank engineers according to their discipline with mechanical being the smartest, then electrical, then civil. This ranking system is somewhat supported by average starting salary but is not fair. Engineering Technology students are generally white males with few exceptions. To be in the engineering student discourse community, all you have to do is get accepted to the Lee College of Engineering at UNCC. The dues are the admission fees for the university and the requirements to stay in it are keep paying your admission fees each semester and keep above a 2.5 GPA. The work load is very heavy, so if you are in it or trying to get in it then dont expect to have too much of a social life. Austin also indicated that the credit hours for some classes in the engineering department are reduced to 2 credit hours instead of the normal 3. This cause engineering students to have to take more classes to meet the graduation credit hour requirements and quite often they stay in the program longer than 4 years. In the first year of being an engineering student here I had to take Engineering 1201. This class is the devil. During the interview with Austin, he informed me that that class is an elimination class. It is designed to make people either drop out of the class or fail. This serves to remove students from the engineering department that are not dedicated to becoming an engineer. To be an engineering student you must be able to pass at least Calculus 1 and maybe up to Calculus 3 depending on your desired discipline. You must also be able to read and write technical reports. Teamwork and communication are valuable and necessary skills that are not taught in a classroom. Since these things are so important but there is no class to teach them, the

1201 class makes a special attempt to give you the opportunity to develop these skills. During your time in the college of engineering you will learn multiple new computer design softwares that will aid in making plans or innovative products. In my first semester I have had to use software like AutoCad, Google Sketchup, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Visio, and Microsoft Project. The engineering student discourse community is definitely something that is earned. The process of getting in, to staying in, to finishing your degree is not easy. It takes a person with commitment, dedication, and a strong desire to learn to be a successful member. The skills that are learned by engineering students are not purely academic, but they are skills applicable to your future career. The discourse community may not always interact a lot but they are connected by a common goal. They all want to be engineers.

Works Cited Austin Riccio. Personal Interview. 13 October 2013.