Professional Development and Career Planning: Guidance for Stem Careers

Undergraduate students in almost all disciplines experience curricula dominated by technical foundations, but lacking many of the ＂soft＂ topics that the students will need in order to be fully prepared to practice professionally after graduation. Professional Development and Career Planning: Guidance for STEM Careers provides the information that will enable readers to develop a more complete education and ready them for the workplace. It helps readers recognize the importance of topics such as mentoring, developing professional attitudes, communication skills, codes of conduct, ethics, becoming knowledgeable about various aspects of professional life, and more. Each chapter of the book provides the necessary definitions, hypothetical but relevant case studies, methods and practices that can be used to identify relevant professional weaknesses, and ways to overcome each of them. This book serves as an ideal reference for any undergraduate student in the STEM field.

• Helps readers recognize the importance of topics such as mentoring, developing important professional attitudes, and becoming knowledgeable about aspects of professional life that are not an integral part of the technical component of any curriculum.
• Identifies the attitudes, abilities, and skills that will be needed to optimally meet professional responsibilities.
• Provides information about the use of alternative methods of thinking to achieve success in problem-solving, with special emphasis on imaginative-based methods of thinking for multi-dimensional problems.

Richard McCuen is an Emeritus Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland. He retired in 2020 as the Ben Dyer Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Dr. McCuen received a BSCE degree from Carnegie-Mellon University (1967) and the MSCE and Ph.D. (1971) degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was a faculty member at the University of Maryland for 49 years and served as Director of the Engineering Honors Program for more than 35 years. Each year, Dr. McCuen taught two honors courses that focused on leadership, professionalism, communication, the elements of undergraduate research, and creative thinking. He is the author or co-author of 29 textbooks, and approximately 275 journal publications, conference proceedings papers, and reports. He has served as editor or associate editor of leading journals including the J. American Water Resources Association, the ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, the Journal of Hydrology, and the AWRA Water Resources Impact. He received the 2015 Ven Te Chow Award for research, education, and service from ASCE, the 1991 James M. Robbins Award for Excellence in Teaching from Chi Epsilon, the 2017 President’s Outstanding Service Award from the AWRA, and the 1988 Icko Iben Award from the AWRA. Dr. McCuen has been involved in research related to hydrologic engineering, storm water management, urban hydrology, statistical analysis, flood frequency analysis, hydrologic modeling, and engineering ethics.