Conference Session

Assessment & Quality; Accreditation in Engineering Education

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Youssef Shatilla; Adnan Zahed

staffmembers, and 155 faculty members. There are nine departments offering graduate- andpostgraduate-level education. Each department has well equipped laboratories, libraryfacilities and well developed computer laboratories and other necessary infrastructure. Someof the facilities at the university level and in the college of science are also utilized. Tomotivate and activate all the students and staff members and to prepare the necessarydocumentation according to ABET prescribed format was a challenge of mammothproportions.Financial and physical resources were of little importance compared to the intellectual inputsand other efforts rendered by staff members. These efforts and experiences are brieflyrecounted here under the following sub-sections

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Daniel Hart

Society For Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2005, American Society for Engineering Educationinspired, I proposed an optional laboratory project on class-D amplifiers, and fivestudents participated. The hardware that the students used to implement their class-Damplifier projects and student opinions about the experience are described below.The HardwareClass-D amplifiers contain a triangular-waveform generator for the high-frequencycarrier signal, a comparator to compare the carrier signal with the audio signal, and powertransistors arranged in an H-bridge to switch the output voltage to either a high or lowvoltage depending on the output of the comparator. A passive Butterworth filter on

Conference Session

Curriculum: Ideas/Concepts in Engineering Education

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Melany Ciampi; Claudio Brito

. The practicalclasses and the laboratories take half of the schedule and they approach techniques and locationtechnologies, creation and reproduction of aquatic species and of industrialization. It is aprogram that will fulfill the lack of this kind of engineer in the Atlantic Coast Region of SãoPaulo State, which has a natural vocation to fish. It is because of its large portion of seashore andlarge number of fishing communities besides the industries of fish caught. It is a project that alsohas the goal to change the old orthodox pedagogy for engineering education.1. IntroductionThe mission of Education is most of all, to promote the natural ability of the mind to set and tosolve problems and by inter-relation to stimulate the full usage of

Conference Session

K-12 Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

William Thomson; Donald Orlich; Richard Zollars

activity in the program is a one-day meeting that was held on May 21 involvingeleven of the twelve teacher participants and all of the faculty mentors. The purpose of thismeeting is to start forming relationships among all of the participants, firm up housingarrangements for the summer, distribute information on the research projects that would beavailable for the summer, and tour the campus and laboratories. All of the teachers, whether theywere able to visit the campus or not, then were asked to return a listing of the top three projects onwhich they would like to work. By the end of May all teachers had been assigned projects, with Page

Conference Session

Issues in Digital Signal Processing

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Thad Welch; Robert Kubichek

, “Communications Measurement Laboratory.” This new course was designed to reinforce student knowledge of their course work in signals and systems, digital and analog communication systems, and digital signal processing. The primary course objectives were to familiarize students with vector signal analysis and develop a thorough understanding of I and Q-based demodulation techniques. This paper provides an overview of this course and describes student projects that utilize a vector signal analyzer (VSA) to detect, localize, and record decimated I and Q data as would be available at the output of an intermediate frequency (IF) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) stage of a software defined radio (SDR).1 IntroductionThe

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

David Hata

designed to provide a basic understanding of theelectrical and optical properties of gas plasmas. They range from inexpensive Page 10.397.1demonstrations and experiments to more sophisticated studies using a Langmuir Probe. “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2005, American Society for Engineering Education”They have been tested in the laboratory at Portland Community College in PCC’s MT240 RF Plasma Systems course.DemonstrationsStructure of a DC Glow Discharge in a Long Tube The equipment for this demonstration can be purchased from scientific supply

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Tom Bazzoli; Blair Rowley

was a three hour per quarter, two quarter course. It had a fall-winter, winter-spring structure. Each first quarter had one 2-hour lecture and two, 1-hourlaboratories per week. The curriculum the first quarter had two teaming events, basics ofengineering drawing, an introduction to instrumentation, resistive circuits involving Ohms andKirchoff’s laws, and integrated circuits used for timers, flip-flops, counters, and an introductionto two of the college programs. In addition the students learned to use HTML to design their ownweb sites and MatLab and Excel to solve statistical problems involving normal distributions.The second quarter had one, 2-hour lecture and one, 1-hour laboratory, and one teaming event.The students were introduced to

Conference Session

Energy Program and Software Tools

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Keshav Varde

limited researchopportunities in combustion engines and fuel systems to its undergraduates. The program waslimited to a select few who had keen interest in the subject matter. The laboratory researchfacilities were recently expanded to cater to increased funding in the subject area and the awardof the National Science Foundation REU site has allowed expansion of undergraduate researchopportunities to students from academic institutions across the country. Up to eightundergraduate students have been involved in the project each year, receiving financial supportduring summer to conduct research in combustion engines, exhaust emissions, fuel systems andrelated areas. Undergraduate research programs provide a range of opportunities to students

Conference Session

Astronautics and Space Technology

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert Melton; Michael Micci; Deborah Levin; Charles Croskey; David Spencer; Sven Bilen

development. LionSat is a multi-disciplinary space systems project involving several departments ofThe Pennsylvania State University, including the electrical, aerospace, and mechanicalengineering departments. The project also includes students from the College of Science and the Page 10.1166.1College of Education. The Communications and Space Sciences Laboratory (CSSL), located oncampus, is serving as the coordination center for the project. The research conducted by the Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society from

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Stephanie Farrell

students to multidisciplinaryengineering principles through application to drug delivery systems. This project modifiesmeasurement techniques and laboratory experiments widely used in the pharmaceutical sciences,to teach engineering principles. Material from the seven modules is being integrated verticallyinto the curriculum beginning with the Freshman Clinic, then fundamental Engineering courses,followed by Junior-Senior Clinic research projects, and finally advanced level electives onpharmaceutical topics. At the freshman level, students are engaged in the scientific discoveryprocess with exciting hands-on analysis of commercial drug delivery systems. In more advancedcourses, students design and formulate drug delivery systems and investigate

Conference Session

Innovation in ChE Teaching

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Bruce Finlayson

course their freshman year, so the new course concentrated onchemical engineering applications. This paper describes the course and gives a quantitativeassessment of its impact in the Chemical Reactor Design class.Course Description The Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington uses Excel,Matlab, Simulink, AspenPlus, and FEMLAB. This paper describes a course introducing studentsto these programs, except for Simulink that is introduced in Process Control. For each topic (seeTable I), a lecture hour outlined the method used to solve a class of problems and demonstratedspecific techniques to do so. A handout gave the details each week. Then in the laboratory hourfollowing, students worked in pairs to solve problems

Conference Session

Design of Lab Experiments

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Timothy Schurmann; C. Stewart Slater

torr (mmHg) vacuum gauge. Downstream or V-9 FT-1 permeate-side pressure is maintained with a V-12 V-10 V-4 vacuum source. A laboratory vacuum pump VT-1 VC-1 VC-2 (~0.1 torr capability) is connected to the Zenon

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Alley; Jenny Lo; Bevlee Watford

experimental, computational, or theoretical research inactual laboratories. The benefits would not only be that the students would gain a valuableresearch experience, but that the students’ appreciation for the communication would deepen,because the students would be more likely to assume ownership of the content. This document presents the initial phase of a proof-of-concept test [10] for whether anundergraduate technical communication course could effectively be linked to larger researchexperiences, such as those offered by Summer Undergraduate Laboratory Initiative (SULI), LosAlamos, Virginia Tech, or other universities. Presented in this paper is a description of thetechnical course to be tested. Following that are the two tasks that

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Steven Reyer; Stephen Williams; Glenn Wrate; Joerg Mossbrucker; Owe Petersen

increased emphasis on developing the professional skills of ourgraduates.Curriculum modifications include a greater focus on microprocessor based systems, interfacing,signal processing, and material science. Core electrical engineering topics are introduced duringthe freshman year and include both lecture and laboratory experiences. The curriculum hasretained its broad range of content topics and its traditional strong design and laboratory focus.The curriculum changes are intended to provide the breadth and depth of technical knowledgeand the professional skills that will enable our graduates to: enter industry with immediateproductivity, pursue changing career opportunities, adjust to life-long technological changes, andpursue graduate school

Conference Session

Electrical & Computer Engineering Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Morrow

teams arerequired to prepare a written contract detailing the members’ responsibilities (rotation of respon-sibilities is required), weekly meeting arrangements, and how disputes will be resolved. The teammaintains a lab notebook throughout the course, and meets weekly with the course instructorand/or teaching assistant.The course is structured to contain both a lecture component ( three 50 minute periods per week)and an intense laboratory/project component (one 3 hour period per week). The lecture compo-nent initially focuses on giving the students the required background to successfully implementa design using the course’s hardware and software platforms. The focus then shifts to a sam-pling of more pragmatic design issues that most students

Conference Session

ECE Lab Development and Innovations

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter Idowu

electronics course at Penn State Harrisburg.Although the course is a 3.0-credit technical elective some students opt to enroll in anadditional 1.0-credit independent study course. The independent study course formatpresents both students and instructors the opportunity to explore a wide variety of options forenhancing students’ understanding of the subject. While the course could be structured as aseries of laboratory experiments in power electronic circuits and components, the preferenceover the last two years has been towards research and modeling studies. This option givesthe student far more control of the learning process than occurs in typical laboratory courses. A meaningful learning experience in power converter analysis, simulation

Conference Session

Curriculum Development in Electrical ET

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Jay Porter; Benjamin Brannaka

Session 3247 Using Signal Express to Automate Analog Electronics Experiments B.D. Brannaka, J. R. Porter Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843Introduction It is well known that many undergraduate students, especially in engineering technologyprograms, learn best through hands-on experience. Thus, when teaching analog electronics, it iscritical to provide the students with a meaningful laboratory experience. While this soundsstraightforward, it is often difficult to

Conference Session

Curriculum Development in Electrical ET

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Walter Banzhaf

Session 3247 Electrical Fundamentals - Make Them Come Alive for Students Walter Banzhaf, P.E. College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT 06117IntroductionMany laboratory experiments we ask students to perform in electrical fundamentals laboratoryclasses are unnecessarily unexciting. Such tasks as determining the current through R7 of aladder network with eight resistors (does a first-semester student really care about R7, or itscurrent?), or verifying Kirchhoff's Voltage Law in a circuit with only resistors

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Timothy Cooley; Terrence O'Connor

the authors designed lecture-style laboratory exercisesfor a range of high school and college student classes in order to assess its ability to improvelearning of fundamental thermodynamics over current approaches to which the students hadpreviously been exposed.This paper discusses the most important design modifications required for proper functionality ofthis slow-speed engine system, the data it generated during testing, laboratory exercises that weredeveloped to test its impact on student learning, and the results obtained from these assessments.DesignThe system began as a commercially available 5 horsepower Kohler engine with a horizontalcrankshaft and overhead valves. From this starting point the final design would have; a self

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Bradley Burchett

damper. The actuator is a direct current servo-motor which is rigidly attached tothe first mass through a rack and pinion. The position of each mass is detected by a high-resolution optical encoder with a precision of 2196 counts per centimeter of travel. Open loopand closed loop control of the plant is facilitated by A/D and D/A interface with a desktoppersonal computer. ECP supplies a Windows based software interface with a wide assortment ofcontrol architectures, including implementation of continuous time transfer function controllers,direct digital designs, and state feedback.This laboratory upgrade provided the author with an opportunity to rethink the introductorycontrol theory course taught to mechanical engineering seniors. The course

Conference Session

Computers in Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

John Turner; Joseph Hoffbeck

thencompile it and run the program on an actual hardware platform without any low levelprogramming. This process converts the model into an actual system that runs in real-time. Forsubjects such as DSP, where the system can be constructed in a laboratory setting, the studentcan then use real inputs to the system and observe the results of the actual system running in real-time, which is more engaging and realistic than working with a simulation. This process alsogives the students immediate feedback and tests their understanding of the theory behind thesystem. The experience with the real system should help them understand the context of thetheory and further motivate them to learn the material. Most of the topics in DSP can be supported using

Conference Session

Lab Experiments & Other Initiatives

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Guoping Wang

to use these tools in their future work. 2) Xilinx has an excellent university program supporting web site. This site includes lots of laboratory exercises, student projects collections and links as teaching resources. 3) An excellent step-by-step tutorial plus FAQs are available as Xilinx on-line documents8. Extensive collections of FPGA/CPLD application notes are also available on the Xilinx web site. 4) In the CPLD library of Xilinx ISE 5.2, there are lots of 74xx symbols 9. The library includes the popular logic blocks such as 74x138, 74x139, 74x151, 74x163, etc. In the lab

Conference Session

Controls, Mechatronics

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Stephen Pennell; Peter Avitabile; John White

andMathematics) material fits into all of their engineering courses. Because they have no clear-cutreason to embrace these concepts, the students hit the “reset button” after each and every course.This often comes back to haunt the students in subsequent upper level classes which require afirm understanding of this material.A new multisemester interwoven dynamic systems project has been initiated to better integratethe material from differential equations, mathematical methods, laboratory measurements anddynamic systems across several semesters/courses so that the students can better understand therelationship of basic STEM material to an ongoing problem. This paper highlights the overallconcept underlying the new approach. A description of the project

Conference Session

Design of Lab Experiments

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Yasuhisa Komura; Tien-I Liu; Stefan Setiadharma; Akihiko Kumagai

thestudents with an excellent opportunity for exposure to mechatronics technologies as well as theexperience of being a part of a real-world engineering product development.IntroductionIn engineering education, it is essential for both students and faculty members to experiencesolving real world technical problems through industry sponsored projects. The key fordeveloping successful industry-sponsored projects is to identify clear mutual benefits for both theeducational institution and sponsoring companies1,9,11. This paper describes the activities at theComputer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) Laboratory at California State University,Sacramento for generating industry-sponsored student projects especially for master’s degreestudents. The most of

Conference Session

Undergraduate Research & New Directions

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Ciletti; Gregory Plett

discrete-time systems(e.g., z-transforms), and branch into treatment of electromagnetics, solid-state device theory,electronics, and probability/statistics. The balance of courses required to complete the degreeconsists of laboratories, electives (technical and socio-humanistic), and a capstone senior designproject.Much of this legacy curriculum was designed before the literature documented a proper under-standing of learning theory, so our present structure and delivery comprise, to a large degree, tra-ditional lectures and homework assignments. As will be discussed, this is not a balanced ap-proach.An additional concern about our curriculum was a particular freshman-level course, Introductionto Engineering Problem Solving, which was developed

Conference Session

ABET Issues and Capstone Design

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

John Lamancusa; Laura L. Pauley; Thomas Litzinger

analysis from different courseswithin one application. Course enhancement efforts have been developed by many facultymembers in the department. These activities include a computer simulations component in thefluid mechanics lab with an online tutorial, interactive computer analysis during class in thevibrations course, integrated lectures and laboratories in control systems, and an added CADcomponent to the components design course. Through these initiatives, cost-effective ways toincorporate active learning into MNE courses have been developed, with demonstratedimprovements in student learning. The faculty has observed benefits from active learningcomponents in the knowledge and interest that students display in their courses and inengineering in

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Tia Sharpe; Robert Maher; James Peterson; James Becker; Bradford Towle

otherwise become discouraged while taking the traditional physics,calculus, and chemistry prerequisites.1,2,3The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Montana State University(MSU) has developed and implemented a new laboratory experience in EE 101, our requiredfreshman-level introductory course, as part of an ongoing course and curriculum evaluationprocess. Students in EE 101 now work on a custom autonomous robot kit, assembling theelectronics and chassis components step-by-step with soldering irons and hand tools, whilegaining an understanding of basic laboratory instruments, measurement procedures, and circuitconcepts. The students learn to work both independently and with a partner to complete theassembly, measurement, and

Conference Session

Materials and Manufacturing Processes

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Mark Palmer

notes and exercises, laboratory experiences (joining, physical testing, and metalography),and assignments.This progress report will focus on all aspects of this newly developed course including pedagogy,course content, and course structure. Results of course assessments and continuous improvementwill also be presented.Motivation and Need for CourseBefore introducing the details of the course, it is felt that one needs to better understand themotivation for creating a new upper level course. In this section of the paper the motivation forchanging undergraduate engineering will be reviewed. This section concludes by demonstratingthat there is currently a need to change the upper level courses. “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Ilan Grave

10.776.132 for the core. Similar loads are required in the other engineering majors offered. “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright @ 2005, American Society for Engineering Education”All students in Physics and Engineering at Elizabethtown College undertake in their freshmanand/or sophomore years three semesters in calculus-based physics. “College Physics II” (fourcredits) is dedicated mostly to electromagnetism. It includes a laboratory where students tackleexperiments in electrostatics and magnetostatics, and build some devices; in these lab studentsalso get an introduction to the oscilloscope and other basic lab measurement equipment, and acouple of

Conference Session

Interdisciplinary Education

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Seth Bates; Patricia Backer

minicurriculumwas organized to be taught as problem-based group work that allows the students to developtheir analytical skills and work cooperatively as multidisciplinary teams to solve increasinglycomplex problems. The three courses are sequenced to provide the students with more complexprojects as they proceed through the three courses. This model for project-based, problem-basedlearning stems from seminal work done at Aalborg University in Denmark (Fink19). Figure 1shows the main principles in project-based learning as proposed by Fink. There are three steps tothis team-approach model: problem analysis, problem solving, and report/documentation. Thelectures and laboratory activities designed by professors in all three disciplines are integrated