GIFTS: Getting Aloft in Engineering

Mary L Bowden

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Conference: 15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE)
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Publication Date: July 28, 2024
Start Date: July 28, 2024
End Date: July 30, 2024
Page Count: 2
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--48620
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48620
Download Count: 45

Paper Authors

biography

Mary L Bowden University of Maryland, College Park

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Director - Maryland Space Grant Balloon Payload Program
Senior Lecturer and Keystone Instructor
A. James Clark School of Engineering
University of Maryland College Park

Dr. Mary Bowden is a Senior Lecturer and Keystone Instructor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD) where she specializes in teaching undergraduate Structures and Space Systems Design courses. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1978, and a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1988. After graduation, Dr. Bowden spent 10 years working in the aerospace industry for a number of different companies, most notably AEC–Able Engineering, an aerospace structures and mechanisms company that built the solar array deployment masts for the International Space Station.

Currently, in addition to teaching, Dr. Bowden is the Director of the Balloon Payload Program at UMD, sponsored by the Maryland Space Grant Consortium, with the goal of giving aerospace students access to near-space. Undergraduates have the opportunity to build small engineering and scientific payloads that are lifted by weather balloon to altitudes over 100,000 feet. The Balloon Payload Program just accomplished its 125th tracked flight. In addition, Dr. Bowden is the regional director for the Southeast Pod of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, training seven other teams to launch balloons and gather scientific data during the total solar eclipse of 2024.

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Abstract

Every first-year student needs a support group to learn the ropes and be successful as they enter engineering. While this function could be provided by the squad at the dorm, by fraternity brothers or sorority sisters, or maybe members of the marching band, it is proposed that an engineering design and test team, structured properly, may be the most effective support group. The example used to illustrate this concept is a Ballooning Team, hosted as an undergraduate arm of the Space Systems Lab in the Aerospace Engineering Department and funded by the NASA Space Grant Consortium. The nominal research goal of the team is to design, build, test, and fly small engineering payloads on helium-filled weather balloons up to the edge of the atmosphere, and recover them when they return to earth by parachute. But the real purpose of this team is to provide a supportive environment for all students who join, and especially for first- and second-year engineering students who develop problem-solving, teamwork, and social skills, in addition to confidence, resiliency, and basic hands-on engineering abilities.

Some of the key characteristics of the Ballooning Team are as follows: 1) everyone is welcome, no matter how much or how little experience they bring, no matter what their personal, ethnic, or cultural background is, and no matter how much time they can devote to the team; 2) the work is technically challenging, and requires many different skills and many different people working together to accomplish not just building experiments, but also actually launching them, tracking successfully, and recovering them; and 3) every experiment or event that is not immediately successful is an educational experience which is recognized as at least as valuable (ie, “failure IS an option”)!

These characteristics could easily be duplicated in many other undergraduate engineering groups, for example a rocket club, a race-car crew, or a robotics team – but there are two additional essential elements: the students and the leadership. All the students, upperclassmen as well as first and second-years, must embrace and implement the concept that everyone is welcome and worthy, and that they need to work together and teach each other skills. And the leadership has to set the tone, be engaged, recognize the value of each individual, allow failures to happen with good humor, and always appreciate the educational benefit of every experience.

Citation
Format

Bowden, M. L. (2024, July), GIFTS: Getting Aloft in Engineering Paper presented at 15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE), Boston, Massachusetts. 10.18260/1-2--48620

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Every first-year student needs a support group to learn the ropes and be successful as they enter engineering. While this function could be provided by the squad at the dorm, by fraternity brothers or sorority sisters, or maybe members of the marching band, it is proposed that an engineering design and test team, structured properly, may be the most effective support group. The example used to illustrate this concept is a Ballooning Team, hosted as an undergraduate arm of the Space Systems Lab in the Aerospace Engineering Department and funded by the NASA Space Grant Consortium. The nominal research goal of the team is to design, build, test, and fly small engineering payloads on helium-filled weather balloons up to the edge of the atmosphere, and recover them when they return to earth by parachute.  But the real purpose of this team is to provide a supportive environment for all students who join, and especially for first- and second-year engineering students who develop problem-solving, teamwork, and social skills, in addition to confidence, resiliency, and basic hands-on engineering abilities.

Some of the key characteristics of the Ballooning Team are as follows: 1) everyone is welcome, no matter how much or how little experience they bring, no matter what their personal, ethnic, or cultural background is, and no matter how much time they can devote to the team; 2) the work is technically challenging, and requires many different skills and many different people working together to accomplish not just building experiments, but also actually launching them, tracking successfully, and recovering them; and 3) every experiment or event that is not immediately successful is an educational experience which is recognized as at least as valuable (ie, “failure IS an option”)! 

These characteristics could easily be duplicated in many other undergraduate engineering groups, for example a rocket club, a race-car crew, or a robotics team – but there are two additional essential elements: the students and the leadership.  All the students, upperclassmen as well as first and second-years, must embrace and implement the concept that everyone is welcome and worthy, and that they need to work together and teach each other skills. And the leadership has to set the tone, be engaged, recognize the value of each individual, allow failures to happen with good humor, and always appreciate the educational benefit of every experience.
AU  - Mary L Bowden
CY  - Boston, Massachusetts
DA  - 2024/07/28
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - GIFTS: Getting Aloft in Engineering
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/48620
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--48620
ER  -