ENGR-111 Introduction to Engineering

Final Paper: Design Your Process for Becoming a World-Class Engineering Student

This paper is your plan for how you will work as an engineering student.

For each item on the list below, tell me three things:

The third is the main part.

This draws on your earlier homework and on your adviser meeting. Much of the material is already in those.

Minimum five full pages, 1.5 spacing, 12 point, 1 inch margins. Submit one PDF. Two sample papers from previous students: sample 1 and sample 2. The original version of this assignment is Appendix A of your textbook if you want to see where it comes from.

The items

Goal setting

  1. Setting your goals: major, time to graduation, GPA
  2. Strengthening and clarifying your commitment to your goals
  3. Setting up a road map: a plan to guide you over the next years to graduation. This is the plan from your adviser meeting
  4. Understanding what the field of engineering looks like and how you might fit in it, based on your interests

Community

  1. Building relationships, and making effective use of your peers
  2. Participating in co-curricular activities

Academic development

  1. Navigating the community college and university system, resources, and academic advising
  2. Understanding teaching styles and modes of learning, and making the teaching and learning process work for you

Personal development

  1. Enhancing your self-awareness and improving your skills at practicing academic success strategies
  2. Outlining what attitudes and behaviors you need to change or add to be successful
  3. Managing time and tasks
  4. Engaging in good health and wellness practices, including managing stress
  5. Developing a high sense of personal and professional integrity and ethical behavior

Then, if there is something not on this list that matters for your success, add it as item 14.

How it’s graded

Criterion Full Most Some Little
Every item, all three parts (50) All 13 items, each with all three parts One or two items thin or missing a part Several items skipped or reduced to a sentence Most items missing
Plan quality (25) Each “what you’ll do” is specific: an action and when Specific in most places General intentions No plan
About you (15) Draws on your homework, your adviser meeting, your real classes and habits Partly generic Could have been written by anyone Not about you
Length, format, readability (10) Meets the length and format, reads clearly Slightly short or unclear in places Well short, or hard to follow Both

Grading and the AI policy are in the syllabus.