Engineering for the Disabled: Using RFPs and Producing Design Proposals for the Needs of the Physically Challenged  

By engaging the rhetorical and technical challenges of formal requests for proposals (RFPs), observation reports, and group work plans, first-year engineering students at UC Santa Barbara demonstrate that they are able to emulate the design strategies employed by professional engineers in the production of design proposals. Because the RFPs called for products that aided the disabled, the students also became practiced in the research and questioning skills that engineers need to employ when they are designing products for a population of consumers with special needs

Applen, J.D. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Grants>Proposals>Engineering