Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Chun-Ling Huang

Self-efficacy in the Prediction of Academic Performance of Engineering Students Chun-Ling Huang Mechanical Engineering Department Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA 70813 AbstractAs a result of the eruption of technological advances, careers in the fields of engineeringhave become areas of high employment opportunities and this trend is expected to remainstrong in the future (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1996). Engineering skillsare now considered basic tools for acquiring knowledge, managing systems, and solvingcomplex problems in our society. The influence of

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Akanni Lawal; James M. Gregory; Lloyd Heinze

20 0 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 Year Figure 1. Growth in number of students and course offerings over time.Another development that has helped the course occurred in 2000. James Gregory, working withcomputer science students in a software engineering class, produced a website that allowedpeople to quickly analyze their career interests and learning styles (www.coe.ttu.edu). Thepurpose of the tool was to help students to assess their personal interest and associate it withmajors in college. The process developed by Gregory is closely related to the Myers BriggsType

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Jeanne M. Gerlach; Bill D. Carroll

science and engineering will bring a new population ofindividuals into the teaching profession. Further, colleges of engineering have the largestenrollment of students who have an interest and aptitude for mathematics and physical science.Therefore, creating this certification will advance the study of higher mathematics and science inpublic schools; teachers will be prepared in the content area in which they are teaching.The recruitment of students will occur through Colleges of Engineering in collaboration withColleges of Education. Engineering students who have completed at least one-half theirengineering training, but who do not wish to pursue a career in engineering will be potential Proceedings of the 2003 ASEE Gulf

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Ifte Choudhury; Ricardo E. Rocha; Richard Burt

College Station, Texas AbstractThe purpose of the study was to determine industry’s perception regarding the need fortechnical writing skills among Construction Science graduates. A standard Likert stylesurvey was used to gather the data related to the technical writing skill set of constructionscience graduates. This survey was sent to members of Texas A&M University’sDepartment of Construction Science Career Fair Database and faculty members of in theAssociated Schools of Construction. The results of the survey were used to analyzewhether industry and faculty perceive technical writing skills to be a necessity. The datawas analyzed by administering one-sample and two-sample t-tests to the responses

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Bonnie Boardman; Lynn Peterson

course to their own objectives. Proceedings of the 2003 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference The University of Texas at Arlington Copyright  2003, American Society for Engineering EducationAnother advantage of a departmental specific course approach is the ownership in thedepartment the course allows to students. Retention of students within the COE is always aconcern for faculty and staff. Engineering students must endure many credit hours in generalmath and science in their first two years on campus, before they are prepared to take manyengineering courses. Those students often become impatient or misinformed about engineeringas a degree and a career before their

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

James M. Gregory; Akanni Lawal; John Rivera; Lloyd Heinze; Gary Harris; Donald Bagert

now packaged at a website, E—COACH (College Optimal Advisor and Career Helper) that can be used to provide just-in-timeinformation and assessment to help students succeed in college.1 E—COACH can be accessedfrom the College of Engineering web page at www.coe.ttu.edu. Students can use this site forassessment and feedback of information in selecting a major, determining type of leadershipstrength, learning how to learn including study and time management, and sleep management.E—COACH also provides access to QUICK Advisor, which includes online scheduling andregistering for classes. While all students at Texas Tech University have access to these tools,we monitor the gpa of NSF scholars (our small test group to determine who the processes will

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

W. Conway Link; Carlos G. Spaht

Writing• ACT Preparation• Medical Career Preparation• Drug, Alcohol, and Gang Awareness and PreventionOther features include: field trips to local industries, visiting lecturers and minorityspeakers, college and career awareness, swimming, basketball, ping pong, pool and otherrecreation.Since a significant number of LaPREP students come from low-income families,LaPREP charges no tuition or fees. LaPREP provides free transportation to and from theprogram site via Sportran bus passes, free lunches in the University Center, books andother materials needed for classes, and cost-free field trips.LaPREP AccomplishmentsLaPREP will begin its twelfth annual summer session on the campus of LSUS in June of2003. Evaluations contributed by the

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Shantanu Bhattacharya; Jordan M. Berg; Darryl James

Engineering departments, must cover so manytopics that the student has almost no time to digest the material presented. Looking at two of themost popular texts in fluid mechanics [5, 7], topics presented begin with hydrostatics, followedby an introductory treatment of viscous flows. Internal and external flows are examined next,then potential (inviscid) flows and compressible flows. The books conclude with a chapter onturbomachinery. There is absolutely no way for an instructor to cover this much material withequal thoroughness. Thus choices must be made as to which topics to emphasize. These choicesare often made based on the background of the professor, or the perceived career needs of themajority of the students. Proceedings of

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

James M. Gregory; Xuepeng Xie; Susan Mengel

break. During the sametime frame, five other college students from Abilene Christian University died in asingle-car accident when the driver fell asleep and crashed into a bridge. It is commonknowledge that drowsy driving is a major cause of highway accidents—almost as seriousas drinking and driving.2 A need, thus, exists to help people understand the factors thataffect sleep management and to predict the consequences or risks associated with anindividual’s sleep management.The objective of this paper is to overview the development of a sleep simulation modelthat is currently available from a website known as E-COACH, Electronic CollegeOptimal Advisor and Career Helper. As an electronic coach, E-COACH providesseveral tools to help students

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Daniel Waters; Armando Mora; Lizette Zounon; J. Carter Matheney Tiernan

practice of software that they are beginning. Third, in our particular case, it is useful that thedevelopers of the Infinity Project are in Dallas, a scant 20-minute drive from our campus. This isa benefit that we will be taking greater advantage of during the upcoming semester.However, there is a distinct disadvantage in using the Infinity Project with students who aresoftware-focused in their academic career. This disadvantage is that the designers of Infinitywent to some pains to HIDE the software such that an Infinity user could manipulate thehardware in a large variety of ways without ever having to see any code. For the electricalengineers, this met their education goals for Infinity. For computer science majors, it leaves agap between the

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Geoffrey Orsak; Betsy Willis

engineering exploration in schools,exposure to careers in engineering, and ensuring adequate pre-college preparation. Recruitmentefforts show girls what SMU engineering has to offer in the branding “Engineering andBeyond.” Retention programs deliver on outreach and recruitment promises by opening upnumerous, varied opportunities in engineering to young women through service learning, studyabroad, leadership opportunities, and interaction with industry. KEY MESSAGE: An engineering degree opens doors – to the high-tech industry, medicine, law, and much more!The Strategic Plan for achieving Gender Parity involves growing the entire undergraduateengineering population with the female sector growing more rapidly than the male sector

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

William Jordan

prime mover behind getting the grant, and he had a greater apparent need for the money.People who believe in a utilitarian theory could argue for either decision. Smith should take themoney for he has a greater need for it and he is the main person on the project. Alternatively,Smith should not take the money for if he was exposed it would hurt his career. A potentiallyruined career is not worth a month of salary support.Duty theories could also argue the point either way. Some would say that Smith has a duty toprovide for his family. Others would argue that Smith has a greater duty to be honest withBrown and tell him about the salary support.People who believe in rights theories would probably criticize a choice by Smith to keep themoney

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Bill Elmore; Stan Napper

prime mover behind getting the grant, and he had a greater apparent need for the money.People who believe in a utilitarian theory could argue for either decision. Smith should take themoney for he has a greater need for it and he is the main person on the project. Alternatively,Smith should not take the money for if he was exposed it would hurt his career. A potentiallyruined career is not worth a month of salary support.Duty theories could also argue the point either way. Some would say that Smith has a duty toprovide for his family. Others would argue that Smith has a greater duty to be honest withBrown and tell him about the salary support.People who believe in rights theories would probably criticize a choice by Smith to keep themoney

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Richard Bannerot

chose a career path that emphasized quantitative processes (theengineer) over the qualitative processes (the artist) or vice versa (nurture vs. nature). Inany event, one characteristic of a good designer is the ability to generate manyalternatives (brainstorm) and then evaluate. (“One idea is a bad idea.”) Sometimes thegenerating and selecting process is interrupted by “fixation” as described next. Results for the Evaluation of Two Skills in Engineering StudentsFixationFixation or functional fixedness is associated with the premature commitment to thesolution to a problem. In the case of designers these early design decisions are usuallyrepresented by the adoption of an idea or form previously developed. This fixedness cantake two forms

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Terrence L. Chambers; William E. Simon

be the culminating event in the educational career of the students, providingan opportunity to put into practice many of their newly-acquired engineering skills in thecontext of a single major team design project. Various researchers have identifieddifferent factors that contribute to a project’s success1,2,3, but the factor we will deal withhere is the choice of project type. We will first discuss the pros and cons of designcompetition vs. industry-sponsored projects. Then we will relate our experiences as wehave transitioned our senior design course from a competition-oriented course to a courseoriented more toward solving industry-sponsored projects. Although many researchershave discussed the potential difficulties associated with

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Ali Abolmaali

entire test beam case and for preprocessorsof three steel connections: (1) double web angle connection; (2) top and seat angle connection;and (3) two-bolt flush end plate connection. IntroductionA research study titled “Women and Men of Engineering Path”, sponsored by an interagencyagreement (No. 9453866) between The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the UnitedStates Department of Education, and by a cooperative agreement between the NSF and theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison (No. RED-9452971), introduced a model for analyses ofundergraduate careers in engineering. This monograph was prepared based on 11-year collegetranscript history (1982-1993) of High School and Beyond/Sophomore Cohort

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Richard Bannerot; Ross Kastor

form since 1981. At that time it was taken by allmechanical engineering undergraduates and has served the Department well over theyears, as the culminating experience in a four-course design sequence in the BSMEdegree. In the mid-80’s the Department of Industrial Engineering (IE) joined the courseso that project teams were composed of both ME and IE students, but the relative sizes ofthe Departments (annual graduations rates of 80 to100 BSME and 10 to15 BSIE) and thenature of the projects (mostly ME in nature with only a few in IE) prevented aninterdisciplinary experience for all design teams. In 1991 after retiring from Shell Oil Co.(and a 40+ year career as a drilling engineer and with many years experience working inShell’s internal

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

Amir Karimi

engineering tools necessary for engineering practice (g) an ability to communicate effectivelyD “diverse career skills” (d) an ability to function on multi-prepare students with the diverse skills needed disciplinary teamsto be successful engineers (h) broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context (i) a recognition of the need for, and an ability to

Collection

2003 GSW

Authors

P. S. Shiakolas; R. VanSchneck; D. Piyabongkarn; I. Frangeskou

development and implementation of a classical lead-lag digital controllerand the available tools. Features and highlights of this rapid prototyping environment will bepresented through experimental results. Finally, educational aspects of the experiments to beperformed will be introduced. System tracking responses utilizing the developed classicalcontroller along with responses from neural network controllers identifying the inverse of theplant will be presented.Literature SurveyThe software suite by MathWorks Inc. is a well-established and proven platform formodeling and simulation. Engineering students usually get introduced to MATLAB at anearly stage of their college career, and MATLAB is becoming the ubiquitous analysis tool forengineers. Thus