Instructor: Tracy Volz
This course prepares engineering students to present complex concepts and data more clearly and confidently to various audiences. Through practice and feedback, students will become skilled at giving professional technical presentations that influence decisions and communicate value.
Instructors: Anne-Marie Womack and Amirpooya Dardashti
Develop written and oral communication skills for engineering careers through hands-on practice with resumes, presentations, interviews, reports, and AI prompts—engaging international and domestic students with interactive activities and real-time feedback.
Instructor: Kamisha Escoto
This 7-week course helps graduate students build a consistent and effective writing practice. Through structured writing time and guided activities (e.g., freewriting, analyzing model papers), students will learn strategies to generate ideas, work through early-stage writing, and communicate their research clearly. Students will apply these strategies to their own writing projects at any stage of development.
Instructor: Mary Glavan
This course prepares students in the Master of Computer Science program to communicate effectively and ethically in professional environments. Students will learn to navigate diverse communication situations by understanding various workplace contexts, audiences, and roles and adapting their written, oral, and visual communication to these situations. Students will apply communication principles and strategies to explain technical ideas clearly, manage intercultural team dynamics constructively, and communicate effectively across industry-standard formats, genres, and tools.
Instructor: Tracy Volz
Computer science graduate students present and discuss their research.
Instructors: Santiago Segarra and Kamisha Escoto
First-year graduate students in the Ph.D. program conduct independent research under a faculty member's supervision and present oral and written results to a faculty committee.
I’d like to work with a coach.
Work with a trained engineering coach to more effectively communicate your ideas and connect with your audience. Our team of coaches will work with you one-on-one to practice an upcoming presentation, prepare a poster, or improve a paper. Schedule a Coaching Session.
Have you ever attended a networking event or career fair and felt uneasy about approaching people or introducing yourself? If so, attend this interactive workshop and learn how to make connections and leverage your network to solve problems and achieve your goals.
Outcomes
Craft a clear, confident self-introduction
Navigate small talk with ease and purpose
Follow up to build lasting relationships
Facilitator: Tracy Volz
In today’s competitive job market, recruiters can instantly spot copy-paste AI, and those applications rarely lead to interviews. This workshop shows engineers how to use AI smarter—with prompts to analyze job ads, find keywords, polish resume bullets, and write cover letters that actually get noticed.
Outcomes:
Learn how to create smarter AI prompts that will help you:
Facilitator: Anne-Marie Womack
Tuesday, November 10
3:00 - 4:30 pm
Register to receive Zoom link: https://forms.gle/qU2gPdiJPQiUNZGdA
I want to become a coach.
Whether you're looking to polish a presentation or publish your research in a high-impact journal, Activate provides the engineering-specific communication support you need. By working with a trained engineering coach, you can vastly improve how you communicate all that you have learned and accomplished during your time at Rice. Activate’s coaching program is generously supported by the Linda P. Driskill endowed fund.
