On Monday, June 27, a team of CLE faculty were awarded the Multidisciplinary Division’s Best Paper at the 2022 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference. Trevor Mackesey, one of the paper’s authors, was present to receive the certificate at the Multi-Division Business Meeting in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
In addition to Mackesey, authors Illysa Izenberg, Leslie Kendrick, Jenny Bernstein, and Steven Marra (Mechanical Engineering) collaborated on the paper, titled “Industry Assessment of Multidisciplinary Teamwork Skills,” in order to identify skills specific to working effectively on multidisciplinary engineering teams. In doing so, they hope “to better prepare students to enter the modern workforce and accelerate their ability to deliver meaningful impacts.”
Through interviews with industry professionals, the team found seven key skills specific to working on effective multidisciplinary engineering teams, and further that entry-level engineers generally were not proficient in many or all of those key skills.
After concluding this study, the team plans “to uncover and design approaches that will better prepare our students to enter the modern workforce and develop meaningful solutions through multidisciplinary collaboration.”