Mentors, models and clients: using the professional engineering community to identify and teach engineering genres

The Writing Program faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), developed a unique three-quarter writing sequence for College of Engineering freshmen. These students write a variety of engineering documents: design proposals, project management plans, status reports, instructions, poster papers, etc. The genres in the sequence, their identification, and their teaching result from outreach to the engineering community. Although this curriculum benefits from a three-quarter sequence, the methods used are applicable to shorter courses in academic and industry settings. This curriculum may be of interest to industry professionals who recruit or who wish to contribute to undergraduate engineering curriculum innovations.