The Tutorensystem Garching: Education on social Competencies for Engineering Students.

Many companies in industry face a challenging situation, which demands for a comprehensive profile of competencies an engineer has to possess. Besides a well-founded technical knowledge, methodical skills and social competencies are also required. Social competencies, also called soft skills, include the engineer’s ability to communicate and present his or her ideas to other people, to work in a team and show leadership qualities, to organise work and time efficiently, among other qualities. In this contribution, we present the “Tutorensystem Garching” (TUTOR), an education programme at the Technische Universität München (TUM), which is dedicated to equipping young engineering students with soft skills and therefore supplementing their technical education. A general overview over the programme’s concept and its development is given. Also, the authors’ personal experiences with the programme are described, and measures for a maintenance of the programme’s quality as well as the continual improvement are derived (http://www.tutor.mw.tu-muenchen.de).     «

Many companies in industry face a challenging situation, which demands for a comprehensive profile of competencies an engineer has to possess. Besides a well-founded technical knowledge, methodical skills and social competencies are also required. Social competencies, also called soft skills, include the engineer’s ability to communicate and present his or her ideas to other people, to work in a team and show leadership qualities, to organise work and time efficiently, among other qualities. In...     »