Social Skills for Engineering Students Added to University Curriculum

HOUSTON, Texas – Texas Agricultural & Mechanical University (A&M) today announced that all male engineering students will have to take a course in social skills prior to graduation. Women engineering students are exempt from the course because they tend to naturally have better social skills than men.

In a press release, University President Hugh Jardon made a short speech about the new curriculum and why it is so important to the school and the future of engineering in North America.

Thanks to the comic strip Dilbert people assume that all engineers and engineering students are nerdy and socially inept. That’s actually true at A&M and most other universities but we want to try to alter that perception, and the best way to accomplish that is for our new graduates to have a modicum of social skills.  To make it palatable to the students, the course will be labeled ENG 666 and credit towards graduation will be granted.

Dr. Jardon named a fellow associate Professor of Reservoir Engineering, and 2014 Geekology Award winner Howard Wolowitz, as the course instructor. It is reported that Dr. Wolowitz is actually married to a human female, a fact considered by his colleagues to be the defining credentials for this position.

His syllabus for the course covers a variety of topics, including:

• Discreet belching and zipper checking, a lost art.
• Wine and beer selection based on chicness rather than cheapness.
• Regular laundering of clothing.  Hint:  add detergent.
• Proper use of deodorants and colognes.
• Pick up lines that actually make sense.
• Rohypnol and gamma-hydroxybutyrate will get you thrown in jail.
• Is she a she?  How to tell.

Professor Wolowitz sat down with 2P News reporter Yu Mii to say,

If I can teach the guys to aim low enough, they will never be completely disappointed with their social status in life. Let’s face it. You’re not going to get Scarlett Johansson.

For most engineers the only attractive thing about them is that they make a fair amount of money. Of course there are some engineers out there that struck the gold mine, but those women have a genetic tolerance to them, probably a trait passed down through the generations.  That being said women that have a genetic disposition to tolerating male engineers are rare.  The trick is to use that fact to their advantage without inadvertently hiring a lady of the hour.  And yes, I’m talking about actual women, not blow-up dolls. – Prof. Wolowitz speaking to 2P News

Not all of the students are in agreement about the new course however, and some have begun to protest the added workload.  Others have made the first steps in legal action on human rights grounds.

Petroleum Engineering senior Zipet T. Doodah plans to protest the requirement for religious reasons.

I am from Rumwhiskeystan and such things are not discussed in public. These so-called social skills will be totally useless back there. My family will arrange my marriage to a close relative. Besides, all the women in my country are… how do I say… not very pretty to look at.  Our culture is based on pure numbers, physics, and mathematics.  There is no place in my world for this etiquette you speak of. – Mr. Doodah, engineering student

Local LGBT activist Gaye Abandon (who is studying chemical engineering) announced that her organization would also protest the course requirement, saying, “Women are just as capable of being social misfits as men. Why isn’t this course open to engineering females, transsexual math majors, cross-dressering chemistry grad students or geological masters students? We are equally useless in most social and community environments.  We should all be allowed to enroll in this course equally.”