Teaching Engineering Students to be Consulting Engineers: Transdisciplinary Skills Workshops in Project-Based Learning

A simulated engineering consulting project at University of Toronto focuses on the ABET and CEAB graduate attributes that are often challenging to incorporate within the technical curriculum-transdisciplinary skills including communication, professionalism, engineering and society, ethics and equity, project management and lifelong learning. In the project, student teams respond to a request for proposal for an environmental site assessment by producing a letter of intent, an interim and final proposal, and presenting their proposal during a formal client meeting; targeted workshops support student success in the project, while providing a space to formally instruct the transdisciplinary competencies.