oa Developing a professional skills matrix for engineering students

Graduates of engineering programs in today's globalized economy must be able to apply their technical knowledge in team-based environments where flexibility, communication, and cooperation are needed to solve problems that do not necessarily have well-defined technical boundaries. Despite the importance of soft skills, research indicates that students in engineering programs are not satisfied with the soft skills training they receive at the university level. In order to better integrate soft skills and technical knowledge in the university curriculum, the mode of instruction must veer away from traditional lecture-based models to more student-centered and project-based approaches.

At the Petroleum Institute (PI), an engineering university in Abu Dhabi, the identification of core professional skills is an ongoing process that involves the integration of technical knowledge with soft skills training to prepare graduates for work in the oil and gas industry. These skills include communication (oral, written, and graphical), teamwork, project management, critical thinking, and lifelong learning. Given the interdisciplinary and global nature of the industry, these skills are essential for engineers to be successful in the field.

This paper discusses the process of mapping the engineering professional skills across three curriculum levels in the Arts and Sciences Program at the PI. It also includes feedback from students who completed the target courses to show how they perceive the growth of their own professional skills as engineering students and their level of preparedness for work in the oil and gas industry.