Communications: A course that every engineering student needs before entering the professional world
By Jessie Ying




“It’s particularly important for a Communications course to have a high teacher-to-student ratio. This allows students to work very closely with our instructional team: lecturers, coaches, and GSIs,” Alex Beliaev, Director of Capstone Experience, said.After improving their individual skills in the interactive classrooms, students enroll in the second half of the course in the spring. This portion of the course focuses on team communication skills to assist students with their Capstone projects in which they work on real-world problems in teams. The course helps students to present their achievements in both written materials and verbal presentations.

“They provided me with another insight of professional study, which was different from my academic study experience before because it is not exam-orientated. What’s more, the staff from Fung Institute are extremely helpful. Julie and Jocelyn helped me to get prepared for behavioral questions, Alex spent hours working on improving my presentation performance before the on-site interview at Tesla,” Jingxian (Joanna) Zhao, MSE ’16 recalled.But communication isn’t just about relaying information. It also concerns with thinking from other people’s points of view and developing empathy. That’s why one of the past assignments for the course challenged students to think about the ethics of their projects — the unintended consequence that came with their engineering. Due to the importance of communications for engineers, the College of Engineering is working on developing a similar undergraduate course that would teach undergraduate engineers communication skills beyond writing technical reports and documents. In this course, students will learn how to produce stories for a broader audience and across different medias. Click here For more information about the E295 course.
Communications: A course that every engineering student needs before entering the professional… was originally published in Berkeley Master of Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.