Application of a Senior Student's Rhetorical Skillset in a Novel Situation to Assess Learning Transfer

Previous research suggests that our communication program has had success in developing students’ rhetorical judgment, allowing them to successfully navigate the transition to professional engineering environments. However, we are situated in the College of Engineering; it is possible that the weight of the environment is having an unrecognized positive influence on students’ ability to adapt to the context of professional engineering. This paper seeks to understand whether the identity of rhetorician, embraced by a graduate of our program, extends beyond the particular professional context of engineering. Calling upon Dillon’s discussion of the dimensions of footing from Rhetoric as Social Imagination: Explorations in the Interpersonal Functions of Language (2008), a student’s success in adapting to a novel communication environment is assessed to reflect on whether her communication judgment transfers to an environment other than professional engineering.