Professional Competence Development at the Cooper Union School of Engineering. Project Highlights.

A 3-year project was designed to increase students' abilities to perform competently as professional engineers. The project sought to infuse into existing courses concern for, practice with, and development of three competencies critical to professional success: problem-solving, communication, and value clarification. Eight elementary and advanced courses, representing about a sixth of a student's total courses were modified over the 3-year period and were taught to one or more of three successive classes of students recruited for the project. This booklet reports highlights of the experiences in modifying and teaching the competence-oriented courses. Included are discussions of project goals, course modifications, and evaluation of results and impacts. Course modifications are discussed under the following heading: focus on professional practices; study guides and assessment manuals; students working as teams; presentations by students to students; videotaping; variety of assignments and use of simulated real-life situations; and assignment periods. Among the evaluation results/impacts reported are those indicating that: (1) the communication competency was the most successful of the three competencies introduced, (2) the teaching of competence did not decrease subject matter emphasis in course work, and (3) the modification of only a small portion of courses can have a major impact on student competence development. (JN)