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Because many engineering programs use capstone design courses and value strong communication abilities, authors sought to identify how student written communication skills changed because of industry-sponsored capstone design projects. A student exit survey was collected at the end of the capstone design course during faculty-led projects and projects led by practicing engineers in industry. These results led the researchers to subsequently evaluate two semesters of before-and-after writing samples using a rubric. Student surveys suggested a statistically significant increase in learning about professional issues, problem solving, and written/oral communication. Evaluation of student writing samples suggests that the students significantly improved their grammar/spelling and their organization of content during the course. These findings suggest that industry-sponsored projects help students recognize the relation between professionalism and correspondence that is organized and void of grammar and spelling errors.

The decision of higher education institutions to grade student performance with whole letters or with pluses and minuses has many factors. In particular, student and faculty opinions on this choice require further study. Faculty at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) recently investigated recent opinions by reviewing literature and the grading practices of peer institutions, and by surveying both students and faculty at SIUE. The primary findings of the study indicated that 1) an overwhelming majority of students (83%) are satisfied with SIUE's current whole letter grading scale, 2) most faculty (59%) favored a change to plus-minus grades, and 3) students and faculty alike noted that accurate reflection of performance was the most important issue to consider when choosing a grading system. Based on the evidence collected, SIUE chose to retain the whole letter grading system for the time being.

The article stresses the importance of traffic incident management training. It notes that this training will improve responder safety, decrease incident clearance time and reduce secondary crashes. Information on the results of a survey of 1,300 incident responders is also discussed. This survey was used to develop a 1-day multiagency training program for all the respondents based in Illinois.