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work together to continuously create and re-create a coherent curriculum experience that
incorporates hands-on experience every semester. This gives the opportunity for any
student less practiced in the lab to get ample experience in the early years so that the
more complicated laboratory sequences in the junior and senior years are less
intimidating.
Integration of Communication Skills
As mentioned above, the focus of the sophomore clinic is on technical
communications skills, which are taught by faculty from the Department of
Communications in collaboration with the engineering faculty. The writing and speaking
components of the general education requirements common to the rest of the University
are thus incorporated in a setting unique to engineering. Students are given presentation
tools (such as Power Point) as well as presentation opportunities before the general
engineering faculty as well as industry representatives. This set-up addresses any
disadvantage a student may have in terms of being unable to communicate in a
professional style acceptable in the wider world of engineering. It also forces the students
to communicate among themselves in order to get to an acceptable presentation of their
team product.
Partnerships with Industry
Rowan has a special “Clinic Affiliates Program” through which industrial partners
in the region provide technical issues for study and financial sponsorship for a team of
engineering students, together with a company liaison and college faculty, to work on the
issue and feed the results back to the industry. Students are thus exposed to “real-world”
problems to work on, as well as intermingling with the corporate liaisons.
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