All a Chemical Engineer Does is Write

7/30/2019 All a Chemical Engineer Does is Write

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All A CHEMICAL ENG INEER DOES ISWRITEM. E . LEESLEY and M. L. WILLIAMS, JR.University of Texas at AustinAustin, Texas 78712

WE HAVE JUST STARTED teaching a coursecalled "ChE 302: Introduction to Engineering" in which we teach freshman ChE's somethingof what engineering is and tr y to instill in themthe pride that engineers feel in carrying out theirprofession. In addit ion, we teach them to writeFORTRAN and to appreciate the use of the computer as yet one more useful engineering tool. Wealso teach them to communicate, the subject of thisarticle, by setting homework assignments on engineeri ng topics discussed in class. For essay titleswe choose such subjects as "The Role of Engineersin Society" and "The Scope of Chemical Engineer-ing." We also discuss their curriculum and thenassign essays on each futu re class we discuss, suchas "Unit Operations" or "Thermodynamics."Eight essays and three computer programs are theonly se t work; there are no tests and no final examination. Thus, their final grades depend solelyon their developing skills in written communication and their acquired computer skills.

The essays are graded by experts in composition and technical writing from the English Depar tmen t . Because of the guidance they receivefrom the engineering faculty in class, the feedbackin their homework from the English Departmentgraders, and the threat of reduction of their finalgrades, the students take more time with theirwritten work and, hopefully, learn that it is ju st aseasy to write well as it is to write poorly after afew fu ndamentals and a respect for the languagehave been learned. They leave the class able toproduce work they are proud of and, ideally, withthe ambit ion to continue to practise what theyhave learned. This is the story of how it cameabout.THE NEED TO WRITE WELL

THE ChE FACULTY HAD NOTICED a general worsening of thei r students' written workand a lowering of standards. About two years ago,the point was reached when some corrective action188

was necessary to improve performance and standards. It was decided to modify the freshman engineering class (ChE 302) to improve communication as an engineering skill. This should not havebeen necessary, and the faculty knew it. The stu-dents had already ta ken English in high school andhad had some composition training at the University, bu t they were not writing good English intechnical reports in upper-division classes. Grammar, spelling, and style varied from mediocre toabysmal with few exceptions. Sentences were constructed weakly and mechanically, without force,clarity, or variety, and in many cases, paragraphswere composed almost entirely of buzz words,jargon, and cliches. There was no individualismand li tt le evidence of sincere interest in the language.And yet, any of the students, when asked,would reply th at they were aware of the pr ide thatexists among engineers. We would then point outthe contradiction: "How can you speak of pride inengineering and yet put your names on such poorwritten work ?" "That's different," they wouldanswer, "writing is not engineering."We remind them of the old joke about how Godwas designing Man and the professions. Awa rethat future squabbles would exist between chemist s and ChE 's, He said t o His typist, "All a chemical engineer does is right ." Unfortunately, thetypist mis-spelled the last word. I t certainly is liketha t in ChE. In fact , we get quite good at wri t ing.And when we do, we find that we enjoy it.In class, we tell the freshman that in their firstfew months of work they will spend about 30% oftheir time doing their engineering and 70% oftheir t ime writing about it. Soon the ratio will be20% to 80% and, thereafter , will slowly dwindleto 0% to 100%, except in exceptional circum-

We discovered that around halfthe class resisted the idea that clarity ofcommunication was any more than a minor talentcompared to the skills of engineering.

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Dr. Leesley gradua ted from the Departm ent of Fuel Technology andChemical Engineer ing in Sheffield , England w ith B.Sc.Tech. and ph.D.He has worked in the steel and mining industr ies. He headed the ChEGroup at the Computer-Aided Design Centre, Cambridge, England,where he developed a number of sof tware syst ems including CONCEPTand PDMS. In 1974 he immigrated to U.S.A. and joined the faculty atthe University of Texas at Aust in. He is a member of the AIChE, theInst itution of Chemical Engineers (UK) and the Institu te of Fuel (UK).He holds a Royal Charter to practice eng ineering in Great Britain.(C.Eng.). (L

Marvin L Williams, Jr., a residen t of Texas for over 25 years, received his B.A., M.A. and Ph .D. in Eng lish f rom the University ofTexas at Austin. Besides technical and literary editor ial work, Dr.Williams has published articles in both literary and bibli ographicaljournals . He is a member of the Bibliographical Society and theModern l anguage Association. (R)

stances. They don't believe us of course ; not atfirst anyway.One of them told of how he went home and,incredulously, repeated th is s to ry to his father .His father , a nationally-known ChE, said, reflecti vely, tha t i t was true; furthermore, he said thatthe engineering content of what he wrote had alsodwindled. I t was perhaps when the class wasstartled into knowing that they are going to haveto write often and well and that they might as wellget used to it and make the best of it, that theysettled down and began to take pride in their writ-ing.We tell them that the people who read theirwritten work in the future will either want to orhave to . In the first case, it is as well to keep thereader interested. In the second case, an interest-ing ' message will be brought home fa r morestrongly to those who are forced by whatever circumstances to read the letter, report, or article.We tell them that they have to give their readerstaying power. They must quickly establish a certain ethical appeal that causes the reader to takeboth the au tho r and his message seriously. Theywill accomplish th is by logical thinking, carefulFALL 1978

planning, and the avoidance, by proofreading andrevision, of careless errors in punctuation, gram-mar, and spelling which, if left in , may irritate thereader and take his attent ion away from themessage.The students often ask for suggestions on howto capture and sustain the interest of the r eader.We suggest that they read as much material asthey possibly can and criticize as they read. I t isunlikely that graceful and effective style will berecognized, if it has never been noticed or evenread.We discovered that around half the class resisted the idea that clarity of communication wasany more than a minor talent compared to theskills of engineering. They preferred to believethat the engineering aspects of a project far outweighed its comprehensive documentation. Theirstubbornness, at least in part, is because of theirnon-engineering viewpoint of what engineering is.Perhaps they imagine that engineering is makingmoney out of applying to community problems thelaws of nature and the laws of man, i.e., the codesof practice. Although this is not a complete definition of engineering, let us look at it fo r a star t .

We remind them of the old joke about how Godwas designing Man and the professions. Aware thatfuture squabbles would exist between ChE's, He saidto His typist, "AII a chemical engineer doe s is right."Unfortunately the typist mispelled the lastword.

In order for them to know all of these laws,they have to read about them, which means thatsomeone has had to write them down with su fficient clarity and accuracy that they can be understood by others. Some of these laws are quite difficult to understand. In ChE, there are concepts ofincredible complexity. Therefore, the engineersthat prepare our reference books and texts have tobestow upon their readers ample staying power orthe desire and the ability to follow and to under-stand what is written.We suggest to the students, as another learningdevice, that every time they encounter a difficultconcept, 'it would improve their own writ ing andcommunication if they, after having finallygrasped the concept, go back to the difficult passage and decide how they would have written it inorder to lead the reader more quickly to comprehension.Of course, the application of laws is not the

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We began to ask teachers at all levels what they felt aboutthis problem. Every group of teachers wanted to blame the group of teachersimmediately before them in the student's academic careers. The few kindergarten teachers with whomwe spoke were convinced that television was the major problem.

whole of an engineer's job. Also, of great importance are self-satisfaction, creativity and theabili ty to interact with others of varied talentsand backgrounds. For every engineering problemthere are an infinite number of situations. Hopefully, the engineer's training and experience willlead him by instinct to pick out the best few fo rexamination by himself and the o ther members ofhis team. Some of his ideas will be simple, somecomplex. In any event, he has to transplant theseideas into the heads of his colleagues using, to ala rge degree, reports and drawings. There ishardly an engineer alive who doesn't succumb atleast occasionally to the spell of the drawing board.The fact that most engineers are fair draftsmenensures their enjoyment and satisfaction whendrawing and gives them pride in the finisheddrawing.On the other hand, most engineers are, at best,average writers. Perhaps this is why, often, theengineer feels l it tle enjoyment, sat isfaction, orpride in the finished pages. We wondered why thisseemed, in the experience of one of the authors, tobe worse in America than in Br ita in . We began toask teachers at all levels what they fel t about thisproblem. I t was odd. Every group of teacherswanted to blame the group of teachers immediately before them in the students' academiccareers. I t seemed that upstream teachers do notdo their jobs properly. The few kindergartenteachers with whom we spoke were convinced thatte levision was the major problem.A colleague on a year's sabbatical leave fromScotland, horrified at the low intellectual level ofmost American television, spent his visit withouttelevision. When he was about to go back to Scotland, he remarked that he had decided not to buyone upon their return. Both his children had become avid readers and, consequently, their spelling, grammar, and general writing ability hadimproved immeasurably. The significance of television on educational development can be debatedelsewhere, but what needs to be noted here is thateveryone agreed that a problem exists.Most professors have their own horror story.Mine concerns a student who, having struggled190

from spelling mistake, to misplaced comma, toverbless sentence for over four pages, managed,on the la st page, to make a spelling mistake inevery single line and in some more than one. I amcertain that most students do not read their essaysthrough after writing them. I deduced this oncewhen a student laboriously printed out, capitalletter after capital letter, a story in which he toldme that "a professional engineer is one whosework comes under the pubic (sic) eye."Such writing just won't do. We have a need toexpress our ideas to each other as engineers andthe better we can make our message understood,the quicker we can interact, cooperate, and finishthe job. Bad grammar leads to incomprehensiblesentences, misleading statements and, finally , to areader sufficiently confused and irritated t o losethe flow of the argument. Thus, no communicationtakes place . We must learn to improve our writingin order to, first, give our readers the s tayingpower that is necessary if communication is to bepossible. Second, we must adhere to principles ofbrevi ty and economy, that is, get our messagedown into as few words as possible without sacrifice of meaning. Hopefu lly, a third benefit will bethat we become good at doing this and, then, wewill enjoywriting, be satisfied by i t, and take pridein it , as we do our other engineering ski lls . Ourinitial t ask with ChE 302 was to determine howwe could transfer this philosophy to the s tudentsand yet sti ll meet the conventional objectives ofthe course.THE NEW COURSE FORMATT RADITIONALLY, ENGINEERING depart-ments at this University have a course called"Introduction to Engineering" which is used toteach freshmen the nature of their academiccareer in their chosen engineering discipline and,in some cases, to teach FORTRAN and familiaritywith the university computer system. In ChE, itwas decided to upgrade the course and, keeping thesame general objectives, to include an emphasis ongood written communication also. The course wasfirst taught in this revised form in Fall 1976.

The objectives of the expanded course are: toCHEMICAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION


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introduce fr eshmen to the idea that ChE is a profes sion and to explain to them exactl y what theprofession involves ; to give a brief description ofthe mainstream cours es between ChE 302 andgraduation in order that fr eshmen will have abasis upon which to affirm or reject ChE as theirmajor at an early stage; to encourage the freshmen to take an early pride in their written work;and to teach FORTRAN as a programming language and give them fam iliarity wit h the computer by setting meaningful FORTRAN programming exercises.There is insufficient time to meet all of theabove objectives singly, and in the level of detai lrequired, unless some considerable overlap procedure is employed. This was in fact the case,

and students were asked to carry out written workassignments on subjects r ela ted to ChE whichwere discussed in class. Each topic to be discussedwas considered to be a distinct help to their academic career. Essay titles wer e chosen to enablethe professor to discuss ChE as a profession andfollow with non-technical lectures on various industries and the main-stream topics the studentsneed in this major.The class discussions which preceded eachessa y wer e j ust as importan t as the essays themselves. The class was encouraged to discuss theproblem and make suggestions which could be in

corporated into their essays. In some cases, forexample during discussion of the heat exchanger,we started off with a basic problem definition. Thestudents were asked to consider the problem of recovering heat from the output st ream of a reactorand transferring it to the input stream. By involving all the class, it was possible to let thepr inc iple of a heat exchanger evolve in the classperiod. I t was astonishing that the studentsevolved the heat exchanger principle to an incredibly high degree. I t was they who decided thata multi-tubular device would be needed, that multipass heat exchangers would be preferable, thatbaffling would be required, that a floating headwas desirable, and th at horizontal heat exchangerswer e preferable to vertical ones. They decided thatstraight tubes were better than tortuous-pathtubes because of cleaning and that space must be

I deduced th is once when astudent ~ printed out .... a storyin which he to ld me tha t a "professional engineer is onewhose work comes under the pubic (sic) eye."FALL 1978

allowed beside the hea t exchanger for tube-bundler emoval. In fact, the class conceived the principleof the heat exchanger when most of them hadnever seen or heard of a heat exchanger before;They then wrote an essay on the subject. Duringthe semester, they wrote eight essays on engineering topics, each essay car rying a maximum of tenpoints.Thus, the essays served three purposes. First,they wer e a means of introducing a discussion inclass about the scope of ChE and its implicationsas a profession. Second, and also in class, topicsre lated to their academic future were discussed.Finally, there was feedback on writing strengthsand weaknesses from the English departmentgrader.

The students were given specific instructionsabout their audience for these writing assign-

Perhaps they imagine that engineering is makingmoney out of applying to community problems the lawsof nature and the laws of man, i.e., the codes of practice.

ments. They were to ld to write to a generally educated audience wit h no knowledge of t he hea t exchanger or whatever else the specific topic happened to be. The instruction to the grader was "ifyou fail to understand the topic by the end of anindividual's essay, then the individual has failedto communicate." Of course, spelling, grammar,sentence construction and sty le were also evaluated .The teaching of FORTRAN in ChE 302 can be

approached in two ways. Either the self-paced appr oa ch could be used or the students could bet aught the syntax of FORTRAN formally and beleft to learn the "tricks of usage" by practice.Having had to learn many different computer languages in his career, the first author chose thelatter method since he knew that , like tennis, therules are easy to learn, but it is the actual use thatmakes the learner proficient. FORTRAN sectionswere given in six one-hour lectures and two problems wer e set .The first problem was a solution of 'n ' simul

taneous equations with test data for four unknowns, and the second was a curve-fitting program in which they were encouraged to try ahyperbolic, a logarithmic, and an exponentialcurve, to a se t of 36 da ta points (which, in fact,were the burning away data fo r carbon in aflame). Both problems were difficult, and gave

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some students trouble at first. But wit h an occasional FORTRAN clin ic in class and a FORTRAN grader available five hours a week, all students reached the point where they were proficientin FORTRAN. There were no exceptions to this;all students finished the course with th ei r pro-grams written.

The final essay the students wrote was entitled"How to Approach the Teaching of ChE 302."This was set (a t some considerable ri sk !) in orderto obtain far more feedback than the usual teacherevaluation system would provide. In the discussionperiod which preceded th is assignment, the students were advised that they should take whateverview they fel t appropriate , whether it be highlyconstructive, highly destructive or somewhere inbetween. They were assured of a fair grade aslong as they were able to defend their views. As itturned out, all of the students had to say that eventhough the work had been hard, they were deeplyaware that the ir wri ting had improved. Theycould hardly say, in a well-wri tten essay, that ithadn't ! However, there were one or two minorcriticisms, such as that the work load was high,bu t most of the s tudents recognized that goodwriting and a cri sp individual style will only comewith practice and, reluctantly, they admitted th atthis was the best course. On the subject of teaching FORTRAN, however, their atti tude was different. They reported that the class sessions werequite sufficient for the fo rmal syntax of FORTRAN, bu t they fe lt that the two set problemswere difficult and about 90% of the students sa idthat they wished a simple program had been setfirst in order that they could learn the protocol ofusing the university computer system and "gettheir feet wet" more gradually. We agreed withthis criticism and adjus ted the schedule for t hefollowing semester's class accordingly.The experience gained in the initial class experiment has been invaluable in redesigning theclass. The number of essays has been reduced toeight:

The Scope of Chemica l Engineer ing Transport P henomena Thermodynamics Unit Ope rations Reactor Design Process Plant Design Project Development and Economic Evaluation Computer-Aided Design in Chemical Eng ineering

The FORTRAN classes are now given early inthe semester in order to maximize the t ime allowed192

for t he students to write the programs . Three computer problems are now set. The first is a simpleexercise in reading a list of numbers, summingthem and their squares, roots and squared deviations, and printing out the answers. The secondand third programs will be more difficult andchosen so tha t they will be usef ul to them in theirChE careers. Ther e will also be exercises in compute r output manipulation and effective use of thefu ll capabilities of FORTRAN. However, they willbe no more difficult than those set in the firstsemester.The key to our success was the strong supportf rom the English department grader. During discussions between the ChE and English departments, a way was found to utilize Teaching Assistants with extensive experience in grading alltypes of essays in English composition courses,and, as a result, two English graders, both finalyear PhD candidates, have been retained fo r ChE302, and two upper division courses. Also, theHarbrace College Handbook has been chosen asan additional text for the course in order to introduce the abbreviated Harbrace grading system asa method of increasing communica tion betweengrader and student.THE BENEFITSWE HOPE THAT OUR graduating engineerswill be better than engineers from other universities where this training has not yet been incorporated into the curriculum. We hope that theword will get around and that more companieswill seek and employ University of Texas ChE'sbecause, among other t hings, they communicatemore easily and more carefully. We have this hopefor many reasons. .

Fi rst, other universities may copy us whenthey see our success. Th is will benefit all of us because th e standards in written English in the engineering fields will gradually rise and, therefore,text books, scientific papers, reports, codes ofpractices, scientific journals, policy statements,and construction details will all be easie r to readand understand. Second, we will begin to see there-appearance of writing that gives its readerst he stay ing power to read and re-read, not onlyto gain an increased understanding of the topic,bu t for sheer pleasure. Th ird, we will show thatacademic engineers are entitled to as much pridein their fin ished products, even th ough they arefrom the classroom rather than the factory orplant. 0

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