The Activate Engineering Communication Program at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing is inviting faculty across all departments to partner with it to incorporate effective communication skills in their curricula to convey complex technical concepts to diverse audiences in an engaging manner.
Established in 2019, Activate helps undergraduate and graduate students develop communication skills they need for academic and professional settings, ranging from research papers and presentations and technical design reviews to resumes and interviews. Led by Tracy Volz, Activate’s specialized faculty team includes Anne-Marie Womack, Mary Glavan, Amirpooya Dardashti, and Kamisha Escoto.
Together, the team currently supports roughly 25 faculty members each year and is available to collaborate with other engineering and computing faculty who are interested in adding more communication instruction.
Deeply Integrated Collaborations
The program’s impact across the school is evident in its many long-standing collaborations with engineering and computing faculty. Through these collaborations, the Activate team co-designs communication instruction with faculty, tailoring it to each course's learning outcomes, assignments, and forms of assessment.
“Over the past several years, six different faculty members have taught the same first-year engineering design course, and I’ve worked closely with each of them to adapt the communication assignments and instruction to reflect their priorities for the course,” said Volz.
In addition, the Activate team conducts workshops on design documentation, oral proposal presentations, and poster design, and provides regular coaching and performance assessments on students’ presentations, including senior capstone courses as well as design reviews and presentations to industry sponsors.
“As engineers, we often struggle with how to communicate technically complex concepts without jargon and in an engaging manner to diverse audiences," said Chad Shaw, director of Rice’s Data to Knowledge (D2K) lab. "Tracy and her team at Activate are exceptional at that. The communications-related lectures and workshops they present to our students each semester are so informative that I also learn something new each time. We recently restructured our courses with increased emphasis on oral and visual presentations, and Tracy guided us in developing appropriate rubrics for those."
In addition to helping students communicate their technical work, Activate prepares students for professional communication situations they will encounter in the workplace. For example, as part of a medical innovation industry seminar, Activate faculty member Amirpooya Dardashti facilitates an interviewing workshop that combines practice and feedback, as well as a workshop on writing professional emails.
Services Offered to Faculty
Activate offers flexible, customized support to help faculty integrate communication instruction into engineering and computing courses:
- Customized Course Support: Collaborating with faculty to develop communication instruction, assignments, and activities aligned with course goals and disciplinary contexts.
- Instructional Materials: Providing evidence-based resources on topics such as analyzing audiences, designing posters, explaining figures, and handling questions.
- Assessment and Feedback: Providing feedback on students’ written, oral, and visual communication and helping faculty develop effective rubrics and assessment criteria.
- Teaching Assistant Training: Preparing teaching assistants to evaluate student communication and provide feedback.
Rice engineering and computing faculty interested in integrating communication skills into their courses are encouraged to contact the Activate team (activate@rice.edu) for more information or submit a request using the course support request form.