"Good communication skills are super, super important": Developing students' professional communication skills for career-ready engineers.

With a national shortage of skilled technicians and engineers in the microelectronics industry, developing talent to fill roles in the workforce is critical for the U.S. national security and economy. Given this, a public-private-academic ecosystem was formed with the goal of further developing the U.S. microelectronics workforce. This Work in Progress Paper describes one of seven findings of a workforce needs assessment study completed by this group. Communication was a key finding of this assessment and was a link between the technical and professional skills identified. This finding guided the research questions for this paper: (1) What value do hiring professionals and supervisors in microelectronics engineering place on communication when hiring entry-level microelectronics technicians and engineers? (2) How do microelectronics industry professionals describe desired communication skills? Looking specifically at communication, the following sub theme was identified. Within microelectronics, effective communication among individuals and within interdisciplinary teams is necessary as it allows technical information to be quickly "distilled" and understood by management and other nontechnical stakeholders. However, participants shared that individuals often lack sufficient oral and written communication skills that allow them to quickly and succinctly articulate the "so what" to non-technical stakeholders. This paper includes detailed examples of how microelectronics professionals describe and value communication skills and identifies ways that focusing on communication as a professional skill improves student development, the associated student outcomes, and career readiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]