Written Communication
As the first form of communication to outlive its author, written communication is the backbone of society and the purveyance of knowledge to future generations. It is the most common form of communication in academia and is valued for its universality and for its ability to be consumed at the audience’s leisure. As an engineer I often utilize written communication in the form of technical reports, but its usefulness extends far beyond this scope. A poem is just as worthy a communication as a textbook, if not more. See below for some curated examples of my work in the written medium.
ME 3603 Formal Lab Report
Click below to download/view a selected formal lab report from ME 3603 Fundamentals of Instrumentation. This one is on the subject of strain gauges and cantilever beam deflection. While meant to be a group effort, scheduling issues the week of this report resulted in all work you see being my own (with exceptions regarding work done during data collection). This report includes visuals, explanations of equations, and justification of the results determined. The most valuable lesson learned over the course of this course’s lab reports was the formulation of a suitable one-paragraph abstract. Distilling 40 pages of effort into a concise and succinct, yet adequate, abstract was more of an art than a science and the practice gained over the semester in the class was invaluable. I used this skill when writing engineering memos during my internship at ExxonMobil, which are sadly still Exxon property and cannot be displayed here.
ME 4621 Formal Lab Report
Click below to download/view a selected formal lab report from ME 4621 Thermal Science Laboratory. The selected report was an individual report based on an experiment that was conducted on a heat exchanger test bed. This report serves as a continued example of the typical written communication required of a mechanical engineer, with special emphasis on adequately explaining the subject manner in a digestible way and avoiding getting “lost in the weeds” so-to-speak.
LSU OTES Student Worker Handbook
As part of my job as Head Student Worker at the LSU Office of Testing and Evaluation Services, I (with help from Clay Knight and Sandra Guillot) wrote a handbook for incoming student workers to use as a quick-reference for nearly any scenario they might encounter. It is extensive and a living, breathing document. As such, it is a perpetual work in progress and may contain errors or incomplete sections. It continues to be updated and is sent to every new student worker as part of their onboarding. Click below to see/download a PDF of Draft 1.5 of the handbook.
Maker Club Constitution and Fundraising Doc
My founding and leadership of Maker Club necessitated creating a constitution for Campus Life that outlined the clubs goals, mission, and framework. It also led me to create a funding request document that convincingly conveys these same concepts to a broader audience for the purpose of gaining additional club funding. Both of these documents can be seen below.