Use Of Classical Rhetorical Framework For Critical Analysis Of Science And Engineering Issues

A unique program at Rowan University has joined a sophomore engineering design lab (Sophomore Clinic I) with the second-semester composition and rhetoric course, for a team-taught class in design and writing. The goals of this collaboration include teaching technical writing formats specific to engineering, strengthening general writing skills, and also making students aware of the epistemological background of thinking like an engineer. In this paper, we will begin with a description of the sophomore engineering clinic, then focus on a particular activity designed to bring a rhetorical awareness to issues that arise in engineering and science. In order to motivate student interest and participation, we decided to work with an issue that has received a significant amount of recent press, the use of genetically modified organisms in products for human consumption. We found that students have strong opinions on this topic, but are often unacquainted with the science behind genetically modified organisms. The pairing of a faculty member trained in classical rhetoric and analysis of persuasive writing and a faculty member well-versed in the science behind the discussion topic provides complementary perspectives. Through this activity, we show that the effective use of rhetoric can shape public and company policies towards new technologies. We also underline the fact that science and engineering operate within a social context. In this paper, we detail how we prepared students for class discussion, how the stasis questions of classical rhetoric shaped that discussion, and how we feel this technique can be expanded on. History and Background In 1992, Henry M. Rowan donated $100,000,000 to the then Glassboro State College to establish a unique engineering program in southern New Jersey. What is now Rowan University boasts an innovative College of Engineering comprised of four programs: Chemical, Civil and Environmental, Electrical and Computer, P ge 6.091.1 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Education and Mechanical. The College graduated its first class in May 2000 and serves 15 to 35 students per year in each of its four programs for a total of 60 to 125 students per year. The hallmark of the Rowan engineering program is an emphasis on technical communication and integrated, hands-on design and experimentation, which is realized in the multidisciplinary, project-oriented Engineering Clinic sequence. Beginning in the freshman year, all students enroll in Clinics and work with students and faculty from all engineering disciplines on laboratory experiments, real-world design projects, and research projects of increasing complexity. The importance of effective written and oral communication skills, teamwork skills, and technical proficiency is reinforced in the Clinic sequence. In the sophomore year, students from all engineering disciplines work together on semester-long design projects and present results through either written reports (Sophomore Clinic I) or oral presentations (Sophomore Clinic II). Students learn not only the fundamentals of the design process, but also hone their technical communication skills. This paper focuses on Sophomore Clinic I, which is a combined composition and design course team-taught by faculty from the College of Engineering and College of Communication. The course is structured so that students meet twice a week in small (~20 students) 75 minute writing sections, and once a week in a 165 minute engineering design lab. For some classes the engineering faculty attend sessions of the writing section, and occasionally the writing faculty attend the engineering section. The challenge in developing and delivering the course has been in integrating the various educational objectives of both the Engineering and Communications Colleges while maintaining a focus on meeting the students’ needs. The goals of Sophomore Clinic I include combining argumentative discourse, rhetorical awareness, technical communication, and engineering design principles. This challenge also presents an opportunity to introduce analysis tools that are complementary to the engineering design process. One of the advantages we felt this team-taught course provided was to allow an interaction of the different points of view that an engineer and a writing teacher might have, as well as provide an opportunity to draw on different pedagogical approaches. We did not know ahead of time just how such interaction might work, whether there might be a perfunctory cooperation with separate approaches at separate times, or whether this opportunity would allow us to approach the class in ways that would not happen with each instructor independently. Given the critical importance in engineering education of developing the logical thinking of the students, we hoped that an interaction between engineering and writing would do much more than simply improve our ability to teach the forms of engineering writing. We also hoped our team teaching would allow a productive synthesis for the difficult task of moving sophomores toward the type of sharper thinking that we hope to see in practicing engineers (or in the educated citizens of a democracy). At times as we taught this course, we naturally relied on our separate approaches, but we also found at times a satisfying conjunction of P ge 6.091.2 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Education effort. What follows is a description of one occasion when the joined engineering/writing instruction provided what we felt was a unique approach in engineering instruction. Moreover, this is a methodology that can be adapted to other engineering classrooms. The lesson we are describing here (which was used in a single period lasting one hour and 15 minutes) originated when the engineering professor, during regular attendance in the writing section of the course, observed a presentation and class exercise in which the students were asked to use a set of questions to examine a number of technical issues. Those questions were adapted from an ancient rhetorical technique, called “stasis”. Stasis consists of a small set of questions, which are intended, when answered thoroughly, to clarify the status of an issue. The technique was first developed in the second century BCE by Hermagoras of Temnos, and was adopted as a common technique by Roman professors of rhetoric. The original use of stasis questions (of which there were four) was to provide the speaker or writer with an invention technique for elaborating an issue and helping to generate a fuller discussion of a topic. In its original form, the stasis technique was focused on legal questions: (Fact) What are the signs that X committed an act? (Definition) If X committed an act, was it criminal? (Cause) If X committed a crime, were there extenuating circumstances? (Jurisdiction) If X deserves to be tried for committing a crime, is the trial being held in the right place? Over the centuries, this basic technique of sequential questions has been adapted to other uses. The way we applied the technique in our classroom will be described below. After observing the original class that used stasis for a discussion, the engineering professor suggested that this method would be interesting to apply to a topical issue currently under hot debate, the subject of genetically modified organisms. With a little more discussion between the two instructors, the basis of a future lesson was laid. Preparation for discussion In preparation for a lesson on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), a webpage was prepared to present students with information on the topic. Both professors chose web sites to use as background, with a basic goal of choosing sites that both supported and opposed this new technology. Although some students later pointed out that genetic modification can be applied to animals and even humans, the websites we chose limited our discussion to genetic modification of plants and the subsequent benefit to and safety of our food supply. The webpage used for this lesson (at URL [http://users/rowan/edu/~hutto/CE_GMO.html]) served both to reiterate instructions to students on how to prepare for the class, as well as to provide easy access to the chosen websites, with links provided. We did not distribute any paper materials for this assignment. Ultimately, our webpage contained two links for each of four categories, pro-GMO, anti-GMO, more neutral discussion, and American legal attitudes. In addition, there was a link to a separate webpage with a list of the stasis questions being used. The questions were presented in categories as five rhetorical claims: P ge 6.091.3 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Education 1) Claim of fact: Did it happen? Does it exist? 2) Claim of definition: What is it? How should we define it? 3) Claim of cause: What caused it? [and/or] What are its effects? 4) Claim of value: Is it good or bad? What criteria do we use to decide? 5) Claim of policy: What should we do? In order to prepare for class, students were asked to look at the linked websites, exploring them enough to be able to answer the questions on the claims page. Answers to the questions on that page were to be written out and brought to class on the day the discussion was scheduled. Our use of stasis in this lesson was unlike the classical approach, since our focus was not on using stasis for invention (that is to say, having the students generate their own text). Instead, we applied this technique in a very different way.