Reflective Essay
Catalyzing Success Through Technical Writing: Digital Portfolio for Writing For Engineering Class
My name is Rene Diaz-Rocha and I’m a second year chemical engineering student at The City College of New York (CCNY), part of The City University of New York (CUNY) educational system. I transferred from Hunter College, another CUNY senior college, where i was studying biochemistry. I applied to the chemical engineering program with hopes of earning a more profitable college degree, but I had no idea what being a chemical engineer would entail. I felt uneasy and wanted to know what i was getting myself into, and for this reason I decided to take Mr. Bubrow’s writing for engineers class (ENGL 21007 Section L) as one of my first semester classes at CCNY. I was very fortunate to complete many assignments for which i collected valuable information related to chemical engineering: current chemical engineering jobs listings, detailed anecdotes of an experienced chemical engineer, and chemical engineering scholarly research. Moreover, I learned about other engineering fields from my classmates through collaboration and class presentations. Mr. Bubrow’s class solidified my determination to become a chemical engineer and developed appreciation for technical writing in my professional and academic endeavors.I learned about the current job demands of the chemical engineering field as well as well as improving my communication skills through my resume and cover letter assignment which focused on a chemical engineering internship online posting. Mr Bubrow prepared me for this assignment in several ways. To beginti learned about the proper structure of a resume and cover letter. I also learned about the relevance of hard skills, soft skills, and key classes pertaining to the job posting. I learned to focus my cover letter with the recruiting employer as the audience and the purpose of obtaining a job. I wrote a ten minute rough draft of a resume to practice writing and telling my story. I shared my story with several of my classmates during a class exercise and obtained important feed back. I also reviewed positive and negative behavior during a job interview. I used technology searching for a job posting online on job search engines like indeed, glassdoor, and linked in. I learned to edit my resume and cover-letter and followed a specific structure which included key words that effectively answered the job postings. I also used chapter 15 of Technical Communication by Mike Markel, 11th edition, for its useful examples and guidelines for writing a resume and cover-letter.
Writing an interview report showed me the importance of technical writing and the versatility a chemical engineer enjoys across several industries.Interviewing a chemical engineer for this assignment was perhaps the most difficult assignment, because i did not know where i could find a chemical engineer. Iused technology to search for a chemical engineer online, which led me to join the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) to get acess to a chemical engineer to interview. I wrote to several chemical engineers to no avail for the first week, but two weeks after the assignment was given Mary K. Lynch, a chemical engineer who works at Con Edison and who is committee chair at the New York local chapter of AIChE, answered my email request for an informational interview. Interviewing her was one of the most revelatory experiences of my life, as she talked about all the places she worked after earning a chemical engineering degree from Cooper Union, many of which I found to be unexpected places for a chemical engineer to work in. She worked for the U.S. Army as a Value Engineer for munition production projects across the country, as well as Con Edison of New York in the main central energy laboratory. She also worked for an instructional video production company that prepared educational materials for the repair and maintenance of General Electric Locomotive Engines. She gave me professional and life lessons to put to use in everyday life, like learning new skills and taking on more responsibilities in fields I am passionate about to make my current job a more exiting and enjoyable environment. Editing this assignment was very difficult because i wanted to include the entire hour and a half interview in my report, as I was fascinated with Miss Lynch’s story. I focused on the development of Miss’ Lynch career through technical writing, and I had to choose the most relevant information that served my purpose of communicating this central theme to present to my audience, which in this instance was Mr. Bubrow and my class mates. In addition to the written interview report, we presented our interview experience in front of our classmates. I loved presenting about Miss Lynch because her narrative and advice truly inspired me. I also enjoyed all of my classmates presentations about their interview experience. I learned about many ways to find engineers through various networking methods which involved, family and friends, engineering organizations, and even knocking on doors of operational businesses. The entire assignment turned out to be much more rewarding than I ever expected.
As a chemistry student at Hunter college i wrote dozens of lab reports for my physics, biology, and chemistry classes, however, in none of them i used outside sources, other than the given data provided by the lab instructor, to compare my experimental results to. For the lab report class assignment Mr. Bubrow taught me information literacy, using CCNY’s online library to access databases such as Academic Search Complete, a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary scholarly database with full-text periodicals and journals, as well as JSTOR and ScienceDirect, two other databases containing journals and book titles with a focus on science, engineering, social sciences, and humanities titles. Not only did I perform an experiment involving the outcome probability of rolling a pair of dice 100 times and reported its results, I also used several external, scholarly, and peer reviewed articles and synthesized or combined information from various sources for a thorough experimental analysis. Another important skill I practiced writing the lab report was using the proper APA citation format. Evaluating, citing, and organizing references not only preserves academic integrity but gives validity and strength to the argument presented to my audience in the lab report, which in this case was Mr. Bubrow, but can potentially be anyone wanting to learn about the outcome probability of two dice and its applications in education. Editing this assignment was straight forward, because i was able to choose the specific information relevant to the purpose of communicating my research conclusions effectively. I used chapter 19 of Technical Communication by Mike Markel, 11th edition, as a guide line to write the lab report.
The group proposal project tough me the importance of group work dynamics, editing, and professional consulting outreach. Collaborating with my classmates was a very rewarding experience, beginning with choosing the right team. I listened to my classmates to build a team i would be happy collaborating with. For example, when Calissa Lawrence mentioned that she hated that there are water leaks throughout the roofs of the North Academic Center (NAC) and the Marshak science building, i thought her complaint could be addressed by a proposal project we both could work on, since i have some experience with commercial roof waterproofing projects. I made sure to approach Calisa to recruit her to my team. She contributed a lot of creative input: she came up with the tittle of the paper “Operation Waterproof” and the team name “Leak Patrol”. Rene Cuadrado and Kenny Rodriguez contributed information regarding mold build up and lawsuit related to water leaking though the roofs. I contacted the office of campus planning and the roofing contractor I used to work for. All of my team members each brought important information to the project, which we synthesized or combined independently using technology like a Google Docs and Google Slides we all shared. Calisa and I did the editing, because it is less time consuming to unify the writing style with less people involved. Calisa is extremely talented when it comes to editing; a very efficient person to work with. Calisa and I took substantial amount of information out of the paper, which we both agreed did not have direct relevancy to our primary argument and purpose of getting our proposal project, to fix the roofs at the NAC and Marshak buildings, approved by the school. We cross checked our classmates references to make sure they were properly sited in APA style and not simply copied and pasted. We unified the style and changed about 80 percent of the sentence structure and writing style in the process. Editing the paper with Calisa was a very revelatory experience for me, because I leaned I frequently go off topic when writing an argument. I referenced chapter 16 of Technical Communication by Mike Markel, 11th edition, which provided useful supplementary information to write an effective proposal. In addition to the proposal report my team and I put together a PowerPoint presentation using Google Slides, we all presented on the parts of the report we wrote. It was a wonderful experience to share input constantly and to reach a higher quality of writing and presentation style through collaboration.
Technical description was one of the assignments I was planning since the beginning of the semester. I was initially interested on presenting on the production of hydrogen through a catalytic titanium dioxide complex with platinum stabilizing network that uses quantum mechanics electron UV radiation excitation phenomenons to create radical hydrogen species from ethanol that can spontaneously dimerize to form hydrogen gas for fuel. After careful consideration of my audience, however, I realized I don’t know the subject well enough to explain it simply and effectively, which is the main purpose of a technical presentation. Instead I chose to describe the mechanism of hydrogen fuel cells; how they work to produce electricity and their potential applications. Information literacy, information synthesis, and APA citation were very important in this assignment. I used several journals that I found in the CCNY library databases to find scholarly articles pertaining to hydrogen fuel cells. I combined all the information collected and tried to describe it using common and clear language all of my classmates could understand. APA style citation was used for every image and information I presented, this allows my classmates to learn more about the subject if they desire. I looked at helpful examples from chapter 20 of Technical Communication by Mike Markel, 11th edition to write my technical description. I was very exited to present my topic, so I volunteered to be first to present. This was very useful because I had the chance to come in early to class, set up my presentation on the chalk board, and gather my thoughts to execute every talking point in my technical description.
Aside from the five graded assignments Mr. Bubrow also covered important fundamentals of grammar and style. We spent about two full lectures talking about formal letter etiquette, email structure, and concise sentence structure. One full class dealt with effective word choice, all students participated by writing down three words or phrases, absolutely disliked by each student, and explained the reasons those elements should not be used in any of our professional or academic communications. Other lectures were dedicated to the correct use of commas, semicolons, colons, and quotations; supplemented with additional readings from chapter ten and the appendix of Technical Communicationby Mike Markel, 11th edition, which covered additional sentence punctuation and style tools. We also learned about request for proposals (RFP) which companies use to obtain a formal proposals from outside sources. More importantly, Mr. Bubrow taught us about effective arguments stemming from emotional, logical, and ethical groundings. He showed us how arguments can be strengthened when they appeal to the audiences rationale, empathy, and morality; always communicating our purpose clearly and persuasively. Right before thanksgiving we took a quest (quiz/test hybrid) which tested all of these important lessons.
I can say with joy and pride that i didn’t miss a single english for engineering class, because Mr. Bubrow always kept things interesting; keeping us awake and engaged in every class. He is one of the best professors at CUNY, who always came to class with lots of energy and a positive attitude. I commute from Staten Island everyday, and I must wake up at 530 am to get to his class on time, yet I never felt sleepy during his class. I felt very fortunate to have him as a professor, because i know there are professors who can make even the most interesting subject boring and tedious as they lecture directly into a whiteboard or chalkboard, or read off power point slides in a monotone and lulling tone. I learned more than i ever expected in any English class. My class mates taught me about computer science languages, civil engineering programs and methods, and biomedical technological advances to name a few. I learned keep my writing concise and simple, yet at the same time optimizing my arguments by centering them around an audience and purpose. In this final assignment i want to thank Mr. Bubrow for his time and dedication.
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