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This paper presents the important elements of compiling a student portfolio. In the field of engineering, there is often a wide gap between students’ technical knowledge and their ability to communicate concepts to a broad audience. As a result, many new engineers enter careers without the necessary skills to clearly discuss their work with colleagues from different departments, peers from different organizations, and the wider public. Some engineering education programs are attempting to incorporate more emphasis on writing and communication into their course curricula, but there are still few opportunities for building and testing students’ skills in this area. This paper presents the purpose of a powerful portfolio in terms of what it can offer students, their educators, and their future employers. It also makes an argument for strong communication as a necessary skill in the engineering classroom, in R&D settings within a company, and across different departments and industries. It also offers some suggested guidelines for the process of compiling a portfolio, based on data and documents compiled from both educational institutes and engineering organizations. The intent of this work is to offer students and educators a brief overview of the portfolio process, with emphasis on organizing the components of such a collection so that a potential employer or peer would find them intuitive and easy to understand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer Research Experience for Undergraduates offered by the NSF-sponsored VaNTH Engineering Research Center in Bioengineering, core competency instruction in ethics and communication was integrated into students' research experiences outside of formal courses. This paper describes our instructional approach and presents an initial evaluation of its effectiveness. A simple concept mapping assessment used at the beginning and end of the summer suggests that students made gains in both areas. In ethics, students developed greater awareness of key concepts, such as respect for persons (informed consent), beneficence, justice, and integrity. Gains in communication were more modest, but the maps revealed growth in understanding the importance of audience and the multifaceted nature of technical communication. Overall, the study suggests that students can make measurable strides in core competencies without taking formal courses. Future research should consider integrating components of our intervention into other non-credit experiences for engineering undergraduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]