Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/06/23

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Subject: [Leica] Writing (was: writing going downhill etc)
From: reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)
Date: Wed Jun 23 19:04:54 2004
References: <13043767.1088030182921.JavaMail.root@ernie.psp.pas.earthlink.net>

>> we engineers are notorious for bad writing skills.
>
> One of the appealing features of the engineering curriculum at my school 
> was a notable lack of coursework that required writing papers.

In the 1980s I was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford.
One time I assigned a term paper in an upper-level undergraduate class. I 
take writing seriously; I believe that the ability to communicate a design 
is as important as the ability to create it in the first place.

The students were, in general, outraged. One student filed a formal 
grievance with the university's ombudsman, claiming that it was unfair to 
require an engineering student to write a term paper. Although I won the 
case, I did have to spend a non-zero amount of time defending myself. It 
didn't hurt that the ombudsman's own field was cultural anthropology.


Replies: Reply from ljkapner at cox.net (Leonard J Kapner) ([Leica] Writing (was: writing going downhill etc))
In reply to: Message from telyt at earthlink.net (Douglas Herr) ([Leica] RE: While it is happening (B. D. Colen)writing goingdwnhll)