Final Blog Post: Communication and Engineering

When I think about Mechanical Engineering, I think about car engines and rocket launches. Engineering is full of math and physics problems, fancy calculators, and nerds with pocket protectors (sometimes). We do a lot of complicated work that is important in this advancing technological society. We’re the fixer uppers of the future, and the problems that we solve will change the world.

Before this course, when I thought Mechanical Engineering, I did not think about writing papers and giving presentations… that’s for the English and business majors, right? I was so wrong though. Engineers need to be able to communicate with everyone, because we have to understand everybody’s problems and be able to fix them in a way that these people understand. An engineer not being able to communicate is a very scary thought! Engineers need to be able to effectively explain the problems that they are solving to each other, and they need to be able to effectively express their solutions to people who aren’t engineers. To be able to do this, engineers need to master two things: the art of the technical report (explaining in words what they are doing) and the wonderful task of presenting their work to others. Both of these tasks can be implemented using graphics, words, hand gestures, smoke signals… whatever it takes to get the point across. As long as they can get consensuses on what the problems and solutions are, then they have succeeded.

The best way to teach these skills is to put them into practice. Our education requires us to write papers, lab reports, and proposals to professors regarding real engineering principles. The art of presenting is another matter: engineers aren’t exactly the group you think of when you think “best public speaker!” Practicing in “safe” environments like sharing your results with a lab partner or explaining to a professor the solution to a group project are good methods to practice explaining just what you’re doing. A great way to learn how to explain what engineers do (to a person with a non-technical background) is what I like to call the “Grandma” approach. Imagine that you’ve got this really complicated problem and you have a solution all planned out, but the only person in the world that can actually implement the solution is your Grandma… you have to find a way that is clear and simple enough that she can fix it before the world blows up. This might be drastic, but it’s a good way to practice communicating what we do to non-engineers. These are just a handful of the many ways to practice communication in an engineering field.