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This course is taken by mechanical engineering majors during their senior year to prepare a detailed thesis proposal under the guidance of staff from the Writing Program. The thesis proposal must bear the endorsement of the thesis supervisor and indicate the number of units planned. This course is offered during the Independent Activities P

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SP.255 is a lecture, discussion, and project based seminar about the physics of rock climbing. Participants are first exposed to the unsolved problems in the climbing community that could be answered by research and then asked to solve a small part of one of these problems. The seminar provides an introduction to engineering problems, an opportunity to practice communication skills, and a brief stab at doing some research. This seminar explicitly does not include climbing instruction nor is climbing/mountaineering experience a prerequisite.

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This seminar addresses the inherent challenges of translating poetry from different languages, cultures, and eras. Students do some translation of their own, though accommodations are made if a student lacks even a basic knowledge of any foreign language.

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This course introduces writing, graphics, meetings, oral presentation, collaboration, and design as tools for product development. The communication instruction is embedded in design projects that require students to work in teams to conceive, design, prototype and evaluate energy related products. The communication instruction focuses on the communication tasks that are integral to this design process, ranging, across design notebooks, email communications, informal oral presentations, meeting etiquette, literature searches, white papers reports, and formal presentations. In addition to the assignments specific to product development, a few assignments, especially reading and reflection, will address the cultural situation of engineers and engineering in the world at large.

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21W.783 is a series of seminars focusing on common writing problems faced by professional engineers and scientists. Participants will tune up their writing skills and prepare a pair of technical documents under the guidance of the instructor. The writing assignments focus on a single topic of the student's choosing, preferably one for which the necessary research has been done, or is in the process of being done. In addition to the writing component, students will deliver an oral presentation based on the written work.