All A CHEMICAL ENGINEER DOES IS WRITE

M. E. LEESLEY and M. L. WILLIAMS, JR.

University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712
W
E HAVE JUST STARTED teaching a cour se
called "ChE 302: Introduction to Engineer-
ing" in which we teach freshman ChE's something
of what engineering is and try to instill in them
t he pride that engineers feel in carrying out their
profession. In addition, we teach them to write
FORTRAN and to appreciate the use of the com-
puter as yet one more useful engineering tool. We
also teach them to communicate, the subj ect of this
article, by setting homework assignments on engi-
neeri ng topics discussed in class. For essay titles
we choose such subjects as "The Role of Engineers
in Society" and "The Scope of Chemical Engineer-
ing." We also discuss their curriculum and then
assign essays on each future class we discuss, such
as "Unit Operations" or "Thermodynamics."
Eight essays and three computer programs are the
only set work; t her e are no tests and no final ex-
amination. Thus, their final grades depend solely
on their developing skills in written communica-
tion and thei r acquired computer skills.
The essays are graded by experts in composi-
tion and technical writing from the English De-
par tment . Because of the guidance they receive
from the engineering faculty in class, the feedback
in their homework from the English Depar tment
graders, and the threat of reduction of t heir final
grades, the students take more time with t heir
written work and, hopefully, learn that it is just as
easy to write well as it is to write poorly after a
few fu ndamentals and a respect f or the language
have been learned. They leave t he class able to
pr oduce work they are proud of and, ideally, with
the ambit ion to continue to practise what they
have learned. This is the story of how it came
about.
THE NEED TO WRITE WELL
T
HE ChE FACULTY HAD NOTI CED a gen-
eral worsening of their students' written work
and a lowering of standards. About two years ago,
the point was reached when some corrective action
188
was necessary to improve performance and st and-
ards. It was decided to modify the freshman engi-
neering class (ChE 302) to improve commu nica-
tion as an engineering skill. This should not have
been necessary, and t he f aculty knew it. The stu-
dents had already taken English in high school and
had had some composit ion t raining at the Univer-
sity, but they were not writing good English in
technical reports in upper-division classes. Gr am-
mar, spelling, and st yle varied from mediocre t o
abysmal with few exceptions. Sentences were con-
st r uct ed weakly and mechanicall y, without f orce,
clarity, or var iety, and in many cases, paragr aphs
were composed almost entirely of buzz wor ds,
jargon, and cliches . There was no individualism
and little evidence of sincer e interest in the lan-
guage.
And yet, any of the students, when asked,
would reply that they were aware of the pr ide t hat
exists among engineers. We would then point out
the contradiction: "How can you speak of pride in
engineeri ng and yet put your names on such poor
wr itten work ?" "That's different," they would
answer, "wr it ing is not engineering."
We remind them of the old joke about how God
was desi gning Man and the professions. Aware
that future squabbles would exist between chem-
ists and ChE's, He said t o His typist , "All a chem-
ical engineer does is right ." Unfortunately, the
t ypi st mi s-spelled the last wor d. It certainly is like
that in ChE. In fact , we get quit e good at writ ing.
And when we do, we find that we enjoy it.
In class, we tell the freshman that in their first
few months of work they will spend about 30% of
their time doing their engi neering and 70% of
t heir time writing about it. Soon the ratio wi ll be
20% to 80% and, thereafter, will slowly dwi ndle
t o 0% to 100 %, except in exceptional circum-
We discovered that around half
the class resisted the idea that clarity of
communication was any more than a minor talent
compared to the skills of engineering.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Dr. Leesley graduated f rom the Dep artm ent of Fuel Technology and
Chemical Engineer ing in Sheffield , England with B.Sc.Tech. and ph.D.
He has worked in the steel and mining industries. He headed the ChE
Group at the Computer-Aided Design Centre, Cambridge, England,
where he developed a number of sof tware syst ems includi ng CONCEPT
and PDMS. In 1974 he immigr ated to U.S.A. and joi ned the faculty at
t he University of Texas at Aust in. He is a member of the AIChE, the
Inst ituti on of Chemical Engineers (UK) and the Institu te of Fuel (UK).
He holds a Royal Charter to practice engineering in Gre at Britain.
(C.Eng.). (L)
Marv in L. Williams, Jr ., a res ident of Texas for over 25 years, re-
ceived his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in Eng lish f rom the University of
Texas at Aust in. Besides technical and literary editorial work, Dr.
Williams has published articles in both literary and bibli ographical
journals. He is a member of the Bibliographical Society and the
Modern l anguage Association. (R)
stances. They don't believe us of course; not at
first anyway.
One of them told of how he went home and,
incredulously, repeated this story to his father.
His father, a nationally-known ChE, said, reflec-
ti vely, that it was true; furthermore, he said that
the engineering content of what he wrote had also
dwindled. It was perhaps when t he class was
startled into knowing that they are going to have
to write often and well and that they might as well
get used to it and make the best of it, that they
settled down and began to take pride in their writ-
ing.
We tell them that the people who read their
written work in the future will either want to or
have to. In the first case, it is as well to keep the
reader interested. In the second case, an interest-
ing ' message will be brought home far more
strongly to those who are forced by whatever cir-
cumstances to read the letter, report, or article.
We tell them that they have to give their reader
staying power. They must quickly establish a cer-
tain ethical appeal that causes the reader to take
both the author and his message seriously. They
will accomplish this by logical thinking, careful
FALL 1978
planning, and the avoidance, by proofreading and
revision, of careless errors in punctuation, gram-
mar, and spelling whi ch, if left in, may irritate the
reader and take his attent ion away from the
message.
The students often ask for suggestions on how
to capture and sustain the interest of the r eader.
We suggest that they read as much material as
they possibly can and criticize as they read. It is
unlikely that graceful and effective style will be
recognized, if it has never been noticed or even
read.
We discovered that around half the class re-
sisted the idea that clarity of communication was
any more than a minor talent compared to the
skills of engineering. They preferred to believe
that the engineering aspects of a project far out-
weighed its comprehensive documentation. Their
stubbornness, at least in part, is because of their
non-engineering viewpoint of what engineering is .
Perhaps they imagine that engineering is making
money out of applying to community problems the
laws of nature and the laws of man, i.e. , the codes
of practice. Although this is not a complete defini-
tion of engineering, let us look at it for a st ar t .
We remind them of the old joke about how God
was designing Man and the professions. Aware that
future squabbles would exist between ChE's, He said
to His typist, "AII a chemical engineer doe s is right."
Unfortunately the typist mispelled the last word.
In order for them to know all of these laws,
they have to read about them, which means that
someone has had to write them down with suf-
ficient clarity and accuracy that they can be under-
stood by others. Some of these laws are quit e dif-
ficult to understand. In ChE, there are concepts of
incredible complexity. Therefore, the engineers
that prepare our reference books and texts have t o
bestow upon their readers ample staying power or
the desire and the ability to follow and to under-
stand what is written.
We suggest to the students, as another learning
device, that every ti me they encounter a difficult
concept, 'it would improve their own writing and
communication if they, after having finally
grasped the concept, go back to the difficult pas-
sage and decide how they would have writ t en it in
order to lead the reader more quickl y to compre-
hension.
Of course, the application of laws is not the
189
We began to ask teachers at all levels what they felt about
this problem. Every group of teachers wanted to blame the group of teachers
immediately before them in the student's academic careers. The few kindergarten teachers with whom
we spoke were convinced that television was the major problem.
whole of an engineer's job. Also, of great im-
portance are self-satisfaction, creativity and the
ability to interact with others of varied talents
and backgrounds. For every engineering problem
there are an infinite number of situations. Hope-
fully, the engineer's training and experience will
lead him by instinct to pick out the best few for
examination by himself and the other members of
his team. Some of his ideas will be simple, some
complex. In any event, he has to transplant these
ideas into the heads of his colleagues using, to a
lar ge degree, reports and drawings. There is
hardly an engineer alive who doesn't succumb at
least occasionally to the spell of the drawing board.
The fact that most engineers are fair draftsmen
ensures their enjoyment and satisfaction when
drawing and gives them pride in t he finished
drawing.
On the other hand, most engineers are, at best,
average writers. Perhaps this is why, often, the
engineer feels little enjoyment, satisfaction, or
pride in the finished pages. We wondered why this
seemed, in the experience of one of the authors, to
be worse in America than in Br it ain. We began to
ask teachers at all levels what they felt about t his
problem. It was odd. Every group of teachers
wanted to blame the group of teachers immedi-
ately before them in the students' academic
careers. It seemed that upstream teachers do not
do their jobs properly. The few kindergarten
teachers with whom we spoke were convinced that
television was the maj or problem.
A colleague on a year's sabbatical leave from
Scotland, horrified at the low intellectual level of
most American television, spent his visit without
television. When he was about to go back to Scot-
land, he remarked that he had decided not to buy
one upon their return. Both his children had be-
come avid readers and, consequently, their spell-
ing, grammar, and general writing ability had
improved immeasurably. The significance of tele-
vision on educational development can be debated
elsewhere, but what needs to be noted here is that
everyone agreed that a problem exists.
Most professors have their own horror story.
Mine concerns a student who, having struggled
190
from spelling mistake, to misplaced comma, t o
verbless sentence for over four pages, managed,
on the last page, to make a spelling mistake in
every single line and in some more than one. I am
certain that most students do not read their essays
through after writing them. I deduced this once
when a student laboriously printed out, capital
letter after capital letter, a story in which he t old
me t hat "a professional engineer is one whose
work comes under the pubic (sic) eye."
Such writing just won't do. We have a need to
express our ideas to each other as engineers and
the better we can make our message understood,
the quicker we can interact, cooperate, and finish
the job. Bad grammar leads to incomprehensible
sentences, misleading statements and, finally, to a
reader sufficiently confused and irritated t o lose
the flow of the argument. Thus, no communication
takes place . We must learn to improve our writing
in order to, first, give our readers the staying
power that is necessary if communication is t o be
possible. Second, we must adhere to principles of
brevity and economy, that is, get our message
down into as few words as possible without sacri-
fice of meaning. Hopefully, a t hird benefit will be
that we become good at doing this and, then, we
will enjoy writing, be satisfied by it, and take pride
in it, as we do our other engineering ski lls. Our
initial task with ChE 302 was to determi ne how
we could transfer this philosophy to the students
and yet still meet the conventional objectives of
the course.
THE NEW COURSE FORMAT
T RADITI ONALLY, ENGINEERING depart-
ments at this University have a course call ed
"Introduction to Engineering" which is used to
teach freshmen the nature of their academic
career in their chosen engineering discipline and,
in some cases, to teach FORTRAN and familiarity
with the university computer system. In ChE, it
was decided to upgrade the course and, keeping the
same general objectives, to include an emphasis on
good written communication also. The course was
first taught in this revised form in Fall 1976.
The objectives of the expanded course are: to
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION
introduce freshmen t o the idea that ChE is a pro-
fes sion and to explai n t o t hem exactl y what the
profession involves ; t o give a brief description of
the mainst r eam courses between ChE 302 and
graduation in order that freshmen will have a
basis upon which to affirm or reject ChE as their
major at an early stage; to encourage the fresh-
men to t ake an early pride in their wr itten work;
and to teach FORTRAN as a programming lan-
guage and give them famili arity wit h the com-
puter by setting meaningful FORTRAN program-
ming exercises.
There is insufficient time to meet all of the
above objectives singly, and in the level of detail
required, unless some considerable overlap pro-
cedure is employed. This was in fact t he case,
and students were asked to carry out written work
assignments on subjects r elat ed to ChE which
were discussed in class. Each topic to be discussed
was considered to be a distinct help to their aca-
demi c career. Essay titles wer e chosen to enable
the professor to discuss ChE as a profession and
follow wit h non-technical lectures on various in-
dustries and the main-stream topics the students
need in t his major.
The class dis cussions which preceded each
essay wer e j ust as important as t he essays them-
selves. The class was encour aged t o discuss the
problem and make suggestions which could be in-
corporated into their essays. In some cases, for
example during discussion of the heat exchanger,
we started off with a basi c problem definition. The
students were asked to consider the problem of re-
covering heat from the output st ream of a r eactor
and transferring it to the input st ream. By in-
volving all the class, it was possible to let the
principle of a heat exchanger evolve in the class
period. It was astonishing that the students
evolved the heat exchanger principle to an in-
credibly hi gh degree. It was they who decided that
a multi-tubular device would be needed, that multi-
pass heat exchangers would be preferable, that
baffling would be required, that a floating head
was desirable, and that horizontal heat exchangers
wer e preferable to ver tical ones. They decided that
straight tubes were better t han t or t uous-pat h
tubes because of cleaning and that space must be
I deduced this once when a
student printed out .... a story
in which he told me that a " professional engineer is one
whose work comes under the pubic (sic) eye."
FALL 1978
allowed beside the heat exchanger for tube-bundle
r emoval. In fact, t he class conceived the principle
of t he heat exchanger when most of t hem had
never seen or heard of a heat exchanger before;
They then wrote an essay on the subject. During
the semest er , they wrote eight essays on engineer-
ing topics, each essay car rying a maximum of ten
points.
Thus, the essays served three purposes. First,
they wer e a means of introducing a discussion in
class about the scope of ChE and its implications
as a profession. Second, and also in class, topics
re lated to their academic future were discussed.
Finally, there was feedback on writ ing strengths
and weaknesses from the English department
grader.
The students were given specific instructions
about their audience for these writing assign-
Perhaps they imagine that engineering is making
money out of applying to community problems the laws
of nature and the laws of man, i.e., the codes of practice.
ments. They were told t o wri t e t o a generally edu-
cated audience wit h no knowledge of the heat ex-
changer or whatever else the specific topic hap-
pened to be. The instruction t o t he grader was "if
you fail to understand the topic by the end of an
individual's essay, then the individual has failed
to communicate." Of cour se, spelling, grammar,
sentence construction and style wer e also evalu-
ated.
The teaching of FORTRAN in ChE 302 can be
approached in two ways. Either the self-paced ap-
pr oach could be used or the students could be
taught the syntax of FORTRAN formally and be
left to learn the "tricks of usage" by practice.
Having had to learn many different computer lan-
guages in his career, the first author chose t he
latter method since he knew that, like tennis, the
rules are easy to learn, but it is the actual use that
makes the learner proficient. FORTRAN sections
were gi ven in si x one-hour lectures and t wo prob-
lems wer e set .
The first problem was a solution of 'n' simul-
taneous equations wi t h test data f or four un-
knowns, and the second wa s a cur ve-fitting pro-
gram in which they were encouraged to try a
hyperbolic, a logarithmic, and an exponential
cur ve, to a set of 36 data point s (which, in fact,
were the burning away data for carbon in a
flame). Both problems wer e difficult,and gave
191
some students trouble at first. But wit h an oc-
casional FORTRAN clinic in class and a FOR-
TRAN grader available five hours a week, all stu-
dents reached the point where they were proficient
in FORTRAN. There were no exceptions t o t his;
all students finished the cours e with their pro-
grams written.
The final essay the students wrote was entitled
"How to Approach the Teaching of ChE 302."
This was set (at some considerable risk !) in order
to obtain far more feedback than the usual teacher
evaluation system would provide. In the discussion
period which preceded this assignment, t he stu-
dents were advised that they should take what ever
view they felt appropriate, whether it be highly
constructive, highly destructive or somewhere in
between. They were assured of a fai r grade as
long as they were able to defend their views. As it
turned out, all of the students had to say that even
t hough the work had been hard, they were deepl y
aware that their writing had improved. They
could hardly say, in a well-wri tten essay, that it
hadn't! However, there were one or two minor
criticisms, such as that the work load wa s hi gh,
but most of the students recognized that good
writing and a cri sp individual style will only come
with practice and, reluctantly, they admitted that
t his was the best course. On the subject of teach-
ing FORTRAN, however, their attitude was dif-
ferent. They reported that the class sessions wer e
quite suffi cient for the formal syntax of FOR-
TRAN, but they felt that the two set problems
were difficult and about 90% of the st udents said
that they wished a simple program had been set
first in order that they could learn the protocol of
using the university computer system and "get
their feet wet" more gradually. We agreed with
this criticism and adjusted the schedule for t he
following semester's class accordingl y.
The experience gained in the initial class ex-
periment has been invaluable in r edesigning t he
class. The number of essays has been r educed to
eight:
The Scope of Chemical Engineering
Transport Phenomena
Thermodynamics
Unit Ope rations
Reactor Design
Process Plant Design
Project Development and Economic Evaluati on
Comput er -Aided Design in Chemical Enginee r ing
The FORTRAN classes are now given early in
the semester in order to maximize the t ime allowed
192
for t he students to write the programs. Three com-
puter problems are now set. The first is a simple
exercise in reading a list of numbers, summing
them and t heir squares, roots and squared devia-
tions, and printing out the answers. The second
and t hird programs will be more difficult and
chosen so t hat they will be usef ul to t hem in their
ChE careers. Ther e will also be exercises in com-
puter output manipul ation and effective use of the
fu ll capabilities of FORTRAN. However , they will
be no mor e difficult t han t hose set in the first
semest er.
The key to our success was the st r ong suppor t
f rom the English department grader. During dis-
cussions between the ChE and Engl ish depart-
ments, a way was found to utilize Teaching As-
sistants wit h extensive experience in grading all
types of essays in English composition cour ses,
and, as a r esult, two English graders , both final
year PhD candidates, have been r et ained for ChE
302, and two upper division courses. Also, the
Harbrace College Handbook has been chosen as
an addit ional text for the course in order to int r o-
duce the abbreviated Harbrace grading syst em as
a method of increasing communication between
grader and student.
THE BENEFITS
WE HOPE THAT OUR graduat ing engineers
will be better t han engineers from other uni-
vers it ies where t his training has not yet been in-
corporated into the cur ri culum. We hope that the
wor d will get around and that more companies
will seek and employ University of Texas ChE's
because, among other t hings, t hey communicat e
more easil y and more caref ully. We have this hope
for many r easons . .
Fir st , other universities may copy us when
they see our success. This will benefit all of us be-
cause the standards in written English in the en-
gineer ing fields will gradually rise and, ther efor e,
t ext books, scientific papers, reports, codes of
practices, scientific journals, policy stat ement s,
and construction details will all be easier to read
and understand. Second, we will begin to see the
re-appearance of writing t hat gives its readers
t he st aying power t o read and re-read, not only
to gain an increased under standing of t he topic,
but f or sheer pleasure. Third, we will show that
academic engineers are entitled to as much pride
in t heir finished product s, even though they are
f r om the classr oom rather than the fact or y or
plant. 0
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION