Engineering News Winter 2017

Two engineering students walk into a … no, no, not a bar … they walk into a writing center, and—wait for it—they’re the tutors! Hang on! Is this a joke?!

“The stereotype that engineers are not good communicators is patently false,” claims Wil Morrison ’17, the bioengineering student in the scenario above. “In the engineering work environment, you are only as smart and as helpful as your ability to communicate your ideas. Engineers have a fundamental need to communicate effectively, both to engineering peers and with other collaborators.”

So Morrison and computer engineering senior Bobby Bayer tutor fellow Broncos in The HUB, Santa Clara’s writing center, modeling and teaching better communication. “We work with drop-in students on all sorts of assignments, not just technical writing and not just review or proofreading. We’re really interested in the whole writing process, even brainstorming how to approach an assignment,” said Bayer.

Honing these skills has proven helpful as they tackle their own senior design projects. Advised by industry mentors and bioengineering assistant professor Prashanth Asuri and biology associate professor James Grainger, Morrison has teamed up with two other bioengineers and one biology student to improve the strength of artificial corneas, work he started as an intern at Eyegenix in Hawaii last summer. “There is lots of communication going on—lots of back and forth between us here in Santa Clara and the team in Hawaii and lots of coordinating. Technical communication is important as we develop manufacturing techniques and conduct cellular-based studies on how to characterize biocompatibility to determine if the body will accept the transplant,” he said.

For Bayer, communication lies at the heart of his capstone project. He and a teammate are creating a communication app with the goal of introducing it to nonverbal students at Hope Technology School in Palo Alto, a school that uses technology to bridge gaps between typically-learning and special needs children to provide an inclusive environment for all their students. “Right now, there are two options for nonverbal users: You can use an app or machine to type out words that the machine then speaks—it’s flexible but takes a long time and is strenuous to hold a conversation this way. Or, you can use a device with preprogrammed buttons, which is quicker, but limits the user’s voice. We’re looking to combine these two current solutions by having both the keyboard and preset buttons. Our app learns how the user speaks. The app listens to conversations and learns the user’s speech usage and patterns, so it can give personalized suggestions in the form of the preset buttons based on the user’s unique style,” he said. His team is advised by Yi Fang, assistant professor of computer engineering, who specializes in big data and machine learning.

“I didn’t see myself as a tutor when I first came to SCU,” said Bayer. “You have to weigh your priorities, but it’s totally doable and it encourages me to allocate more time to literary things, like reading a book just for fun. Anything you read gives you more experience and makes you better at your job.” Morrison agrees that reading is important. “It helps you develop tone and an ear, and good rhetorical skills. Working at The HUB has pushed us to become more concrete in our own writing skills so we can give advice that is helpful and meaningful.”