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Preparing high school students for college while training engineering students in “soft skills”

Introductory computer programming courses can be dry, with bored students often working on short, straightforward examples designed as programming drills, the results of which only their professors will ever see and which the students might not appreciate in a broader context. In college engineering programs, students spend much of their time developing their Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics skills, but when they graduate and start their work in the engineering industry they can be ill-equipped to communicate their ideas with other engineers, managers, and clients. The need to develop engineering students' communication skills has come up many times in discussion with industry representatives and at engineering education conferences. High school students, meanwhile, are usually focused on getting through high school and may have no idea what is expected of them when they enter college, which is a problem that the professors at Queensborough Community College have to face with each new group of students. In this work-in-progress paper I will describe why and how I have used the high-impact practice of service learning to help students reduce these deficits. I will describe the strategy I use of having the students in my introductory programming course solve word problems that require more thought in order to be solved. My students then present them as group projects to high school students in the final class session of the semester. The two groups of students then discuss the presentations and the college experience in general. This provides an engaging and memorable experience for all. This paper will describe successes and issues I have had since I started to use this method in the course.