Utree mentors Kate Ferster and Ryan Dill teach presentations to 45 graduate students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University

​From June 13-17, 2016, mechanical engineering juniors Kate Ferster and Ryan Dill taught the assertion-evidence approach to presentations to a select group of 45 graduate students from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in China. Almost 200 graduate students at SJTU had applied to take the workshop. Leading the instruction was Michael Alley. Helping teach the course were two graduate students from SJTU: Mengyi Zhang and Tianjiao Shi. This course is the third time that Utree engineering students have visited SJTU to teach a course on communicating research. Previous Penn State students were Michael Houser (now with Boeing), Ashlea Krupa ( (Shell), Johanna Hatzell, Katie Kirsch (PhD student at Penn State), Mimi Overbaugh (Bechtal Plant Machinery), and Katie Ciccaglione (Shell). ​Plans are to take even more Utree students to SJTU next year.

During this week-long workshop, the grad students at SJTU learned the assertion-evidence approach to research presentations. Before the course began, these students used one of the assertion-evidence templates to prepare a 10-12 minute talk about their research. Then, at the beginning of the week, the students participated in a formal class on the approach. Later in the week, the students delivered their presentations in a critique session. From the forty-five presentations that were critiqued, the teaching team honored three students with best presentation award: Echo Wang, Ling Liu, and Fred Huang. Also receiving presentation awards were Tian Zhang, Yue Zhao, Peng Zhou, Fato Hou, and Chuan Luo. Receiving special citations for their slides or delivery were John Han, Hongfan Jiang, Danny Zou, and June Guan.