Asee peer logo

Getting Started Teaching an Undergraduate Engineering Laboratory

Download Paper |

Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

NEE Technical Session 2 - Educator's experience and perspective

Tagged Division

New Engineering Educators Division (NEE)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/47496

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Rebecca Marie Reck University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-5894-4130

visit author page

Rebecca M. Reck is a Teaching Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research includes alternative grading, entrepreneurial mindset, instructional laboratories, and equity-focused teaching. She teaches biomedical instrumentation, signal processing, and control systems. She earned a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

visit author page

biography

Jessica R TerBush University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-8438-7411

visit author page

Jessica received her B.S.E, M.S.E., and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After graduation, she worked as a post-doc for approximately three years at Monash University in Clayton, Victoria, Australia. She then spent three years working as a Senior Research Specialist at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Missouri, where she trained users on the focused ion beam (FIB), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and transmission electron microscope (TEM). In 2016, she moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to serve as a lecturer in the department of Materials Science and Engineering. Here, she is responsible for teaching the junior labs as well as providing instruction on writing in engineering.

visit author page

biography

Caroline Cvetkovic University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-3035-7313

visit author page

Caroline Cvetkovic is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she instructs courses in quantitative physiology, biofabrication, and transport. She earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Center for Neuroregeneration and Department of Neurosurgery at the Houston Methodist Research Institute.

visit author page

biography

Holly M Golecki University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3691-0420

visit author page

Dr. Holly Golecki (she/her) is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Bioengineering at the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an Associate in the John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. She holds an appointment at the Carle-Illinois College of Medicine in the Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences. She is also a core faculty member at the Institute for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in the College of Engineering. Holly studies biomaterials and soft robotics and their applications in the university classroom, in undergraduate research and in engaging K12 students in STEM. Holly received her BS/MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Drexel University and her PhD in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University.

visit author page

biography

Christopher D. Schmitz University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-9673-9832

visit author page

Christopher D. Schmitz received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois in 2002.

visit author page

biography

Katie Ansell University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

visit author page

Katie Ansell is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her teaching and research activities focus on the practical and social aspects of the classroom that contribute to the development of student expertise in Introductory Physics Laboratories.

visit author page

biography

David Mussulman University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

visit author page

IT professional newly transitioned to teaching faculty. Engineering and Information Sciences.

visit author page

author page

Chandrasekhar Radhakrishnan

author page

Ilalee Harrison James University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Download Paper |

Abstract

A group of six faculty from laboratory and design courses at a large public university in the Midwest United States recently started a community of practice (CoP) for laboratory and design instructors. The goal of the CoP was to share resources and generate ideas for improving laboratory and design courses after the pandemic. We realized that many of us faced similar challenges during that time as we moved our courses to alternate formats and that we would have benefited from being able to share ideas and collectively brainstorm solutions. Since then, the CoP has grown to almost 40 members representing most of the departments in the college. We have hosted workshops, coffee chats, and other events to facilitate the exchange of ideas between members. Some of the popular topics have been facilitating teamwork; improving inclusivity and belonging; and training laboratory staff. These events have led to us curating resources in these areas. The purpose of this tips and tricks paper is to share these resources about teaching laboratory and design courses that we have collected within the CoP with the broader engineering education community, especially for instructors who have recently started teaching a course with a laboratory or large design project.

Reck, R. M., & TerBush, J. R., & Cvetkovic, C., & Golecki, H. M., & Schmitz, C. D., & Ansell, K., & Mussulman, D., & Radhakrishnan, C., & James, I. H. (2024, June), Getting Started Teaching an Undergraduate Engineering Laboratory Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47496

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2024 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015