AC 2007-504: NASA OPPORTUNITIES FOR FACULTY AT MINORITYINSTITUTIONS: REFLECTIONS OF NASA ADMINISTRATOR FELLOWSLouis Everett, University of Texas-El Paso Louis J. Everett is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas El Paso. Dr. Everett is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Texas and has research interests in the use of technology in the classroom. His technical research interests include robotics, machine design, dynamics and control systems. He began his NAFP tenure in 2006 and is presently with the Mobility and Manipulation group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California. leverett@utep.edu http://research.utep.edu/pacelabPaul Racette, NASA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department. Her research explores computational tools and practices for promoting critical reflection within design-based learning activities. Her theoretical framework, Cooperative Constructionism, establishes a design-based approach to critical reflection with applicable computational tools and teaching pedagogy. Her publications include chapters in Social Capital and Information Technology and the forthcoming book, Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators. Dr. Chapman has served as Assistant Program Director for NASA’s Space Life Sciences Training Program at Kennedy Space Center and was a
studentreflection in regard to themselves, group members, and their work. Students kepta journal, and writing assignments were given throughout the seminar course.Students were initially asked to reflect on their personal style with regard to futurework within their group. Throughout the development of activities, students keptnotes on brainstorming and draft activities. Midway through the projects,students reflected on what attracted them to engineering as well as anyone thatwas influential in their math and science courses. Students incorporated thisinformation into their activity as a way to introduce and tie their activity toengineering. As students presented their activities, they evaluated each otherusing a rubric that scored each activity based on
in Table 1.The adopted DCDS model blends the three elements of the Triangulated Learning Model; (1)simulation, (2) construction, (3) connection, the four elements of the Kolb Learning Cycle; (1) Page 12.1193.7concrete experience, (2) reflective observation, (3) abstract conceptualization, and (4) activeexperimentation often used in engineering, with the 5E Learning Cycle; (1) engagement, (2)exploration, (3)explanation, (4) extension, and (5) evaluation, which are often used in scienceeducation. Table 2 shows the alignment of the DCDS rapid-prototyping model with TLM, Kolb,5E Learning cycles with Science as Inquiry from the National Science
Session for: Calculus I, Chemistry, or Freshman Engineering Course 5 Personal Safety On & Off Campus 6 Strategies for Interacting with Faculty & Academic Success 7 Mid-Semester Reflection on Personal Academic Plan & Behavior Modification 8 Peer Advising for Spring Courses & Online Tools for Academic Planning 9 Building Community: Pumpkin Carving 10 Study Session for: Calculus I, Chemistry, or Freshman Engineering Course 11 Building Community: Study Break 12 Study Session for: Calculus I, Chemistry, or Freshman Engineering Course 13 Engineering Scholarships, Financial Aid, Jobs On-Campus 14 End of Semester CelebrationTable 8. EOE First Year Interests Groups (FIGs) – Weekly Seminar Topics
apply for scholarships. The high school resume is often two pages andpredominately a list of activities in which the student participated and honors that the student hasreceived in high school. Now the resume must reflect the skills and knowledge of a promisingengineer. Since the lower division students do not have many college-level activities, honors ortechnical experience, they are often at a loss on how to translate what they do have into acompetitive college-level, pre-professional resume. Page 12.801.2Minority students as a group do not usually have any distinct needs when it comes to puttingtogether a resume. Minority students may be
is developed following basic photogrammetry principles[19] and fine-tuned using simulation software. Since each image as shown in Figure: 7acovers only a small portion of the 50 acre field (Bozman) several images have to bemosaicked and georeferenced to develop a full field view. Since the first band which isreserved for red in an RGB image, is infrared in this hyperspectral camera, followed by ared, and user selectable blue or green as the 3rd band, the images acquired look differentfrom a regular RGB image. Infrared frequencies of the solar radiation get reflected byhealthy vegetation giving rise to the red color in the image corresponding to regions ofhealthy vegetation. Stressed vegetation although it may look green to the naked eye
• Reflections of the • Walking Tour of Interns Campus • Cluster interaction • Organize clusters 11 12 13 14 16MS: MS: MS: MS: MS:• Distribution and • Rehearsal for Poster • TRAC PAC 2 • Toll Plaza Field Trip • Field Trip – Indian overview of weekly #1 Competition • Computer Lab • Computer Lab Museum assignments
school as their male counterparts, females do not chooseengineering in the same proportions.14 Julie Chen, a female faculty member in MechanicalEngineering, reflected on her observation that her women students tended to be A and Bstudents, while her male students covered the full range of grades. From talking to students sheobserved that if girls were very smart in HS science and math, they were encouraged to considerengineering. But male students of any achievement level were not discouraged from pursuing aninterest in engineering.15 The recent in-depth EWEP study interviewing girls ages 14 – 17provides insight into why. Relevance emerged as the key career motivator for girls. They needto be able to picture themselves doing that job, and to
self-confidence development, desire to study technical education, etc are required. Thispaper shows that by implementing certain pre-conditions, the enrollment of minority AfricanAmerican Women Engineers can be significantly increased which will lead to a balancedworkforce and improve the national economy. Page 12.877.21. BackgroundAlabama Agricultural and Mechanical University (AAMU), a historically black university, wasfounded in 1875. Alabama A&M University reflects the uniqueness of the traditional land-grant institution combining teaching, research, service, liberal arts, and vocational fields. Theuniversity offers baccalaureate, masters
success of the LSAMP Program, in 1998 NSFawarded the first eight Minority Graduate Education (MGE) awards (Howard, Georgia Instituteof Technology, The University of Michigan, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, TheUniversity of Missouri-Columbia, The University of Puerto Rico, Rice University, and theUniversity of Florida. The goal of the five year MGE grants was to increase the diversity ofstudents pursuing STEM PhDs and to prepare them with the skills necessary to enter anacademic career. In 1999, the MGE Program was renamed the Alliance for Graduate Educationand the Professoriate (AGEP) program. This reflected a shift from single institution efforts to abroader alliance approach. BEST (Building Engineering & Science Talent), an
. Several students mentioned learning styles and that a professor must have the ability toteach to students with different learning styles and levels of ability. They felt that the instructorshould make a conscious effort to reach all students and gauge their understanding. With respectto the teams, some students were concerned that it was difficult to join established teams. Therewas also a comment about being an independent learner and it being hard to work in teamswithout having individual understanding. There were also comments about giving students timein class to reflect on the course content. Typically referred to as active learning activities wherethe students work for 5 minutes and then the instructor provides guidance and support
different, they share acommon protocol for communication, allowing them to mesh neatly. This protocol takesthe form of two character strings, the “command sentence” and the “status sentence”.Both are ASCII based and begin with a ‘$’ character and end with an ‘&’ character. Thestatus sentence contains a series of variables reflecting the state of the ROV. It is createdby the controller aboard the vessel and transmitted every 100 ms.Graphical user interface (GUI)The GUI was developed in labView with the front panel as shown in Fig. 3. The vessel’spitch, roll, and rudder position are displayed in real-time. In the upper left hand corner, agrouping of fields displays the GPS position of the ROV, its current true course, and itsspeed as determined
. Page 12.190.7a Data reflects the 79 mentors who allowed their information to be released to their alma mater by MentorNet. Mentor Enrollment by Field 14 12 10 Number Enrolled 8 6 4 2 0
Exploration and Professional Development – The success and impact of the ST@R Project was not only reflected in its intent to retain 1st ands 2nd year students in the electrical engineering program, but ultimately in its ability to assist students in obtaining co-ops and permanent positions within their electrical engineering major. Thus, the ST@R Project benefited greatly from partnerships with SIA affiliated corporations such as IBM, Intel and other similar companies and institutions in helping students identify possible career choices in engineering. The ST@R Project also arranged professional development seminars and talks to prepare students for future careers in engineering. The goal was to keep students
gaining experiences at NASA Wallops Flight Facility over a wide range ofprojects. Eleven of these students were electrical engineering and the electricalengineering technology programs at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Thestudents participated in several activities, held bi-weekly meeting to report on theiractivities, wrote a final report and made a final presentation to NASA staff. There was anexit meeting to access and reflect on the program. One important thing that emerged wasthe possibility of students, individually and in group working on students’ final yearprojects on on-going projects at the Facility with the help of NASA mentors. It isexpected that this approach will make the students’ experiences more industry orientedand
and technology. Connection of culture and science. Native Hawaiian girls are exposed to math and science applications in their community illustrating relational examples from their native culture and history.Program development for Excite Camp 2006 reflected the incorporation of program modelelements based on the research, evaluation and success from the past five camps, 2001 through2005. A Native Hawaiian consultant was retained to infuse Hawaiian history and culture into theactivities. The anticipated outcome was to align science, host culture and community.In addition to, a review of other model programs was conducted and implemented as newactivities, which included: Experiments from past WIT
student population diversity that reflects both in-state and out-of- state student ratios; and • Double the enrollment and graduation rate of Native American engineering students.The purpose of our National Minority Engineering Programs Advisory Board is to: • Be a support body that provides advice on engineering and corporate programs, employment needs & trends; • Participate as is reasonable in MEP programs and activities,; • Support program needs related to minority engineering student success; and • Help facilitate professional development and hiring of a diverse pool of our engineering students.Industry Interaction with our MEP office and students include: • Hosting student orientation visits; • Giving
possible high school GPA to matching bridgestudents. Additionally, students for the control cohort are matched to reflect the relativedistribution of College of Engineering and University Studies students: a more accuraterepresentation of the overall group. It should be pointed out that University Studies students forthe control cohort were those that indicated engineering as their first choice of major but weredeferred to US.A pre- and post-program survey was administered online at the start of the program and sixweeks into the fall semester to gauge student feedback. Students are asked to evaluate theirbridge experience in relation with their current semester.Results and discussionA demographic summary of STEP Bridge participants for the first
engineering curriculum haspositively impacted our program as is evidenced by increased matriculation rate. The result ofthe outreach activity in the form of Bridge Building Competition and Engineering Workshopsalso has created a greater awareness among the high school seniors which is reflected in verysignificant improvement in enrollment numbers.However, retention continues to be a serious issue that is being addressed at all levels. It hasbeen seen at ASU as in other institutions that early intervention and remediation at the freshmanand sophomore levels do make a difference in students understanding the concepts better as wellas provide confidence to face the challenging tasks ahead in their course work. As such, apartfrom continuation of academic
percentages reflect that engineering majors often take more than four years toearn the bachelor degree. Table 4 shows these comparisons in table form, with counts andpercentages. Table 3 --- Demographics of LSAMP REU Participants for Summer 2005 and Summer 2006, Plus WIMS REU Summary for Summers 2002 to 2004 --- Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Academic Level, and Academic MajorCategory Summer Summer Summers 2005 2006 2002 to 2004 REU Programs (LSAMP REU) (LSAMP REU)Totals 7 6
biomolecular tools for engineering applications.The initial cohort will consist of 10 students divided into groups of two students each. With theassistance of the instructor, each student group will select and present one article to the class.Presentation of the article will be followed by group discussion. Also students will be requiredto keep a journal of their thoughts and reflections on the reading and lecture material. Supportmaterial from initial teaching of this course is posted on the course homepage:www.engr.colstate.edu/ce/homepages/pruden/classes/ce58/ce581/index.shtml. This course wasoriginal developed at the University of Cincinnati and has been taught in schools withengineering programs 1. The model for ASU is new since this is the first
increase students’ self-confidence and interest in science and mathematics, whichwould be reflected in increased enrollment in higher-level science courses at the secondary level,such as Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry, AP Biology, and AP Physics. These coursesprovide a stronger intellectual background for students choosing undergraduate science,mathematics or computer science majors at the college level.84In this program the School Board of Broward County has partnered with Broward CommunityCollege to provide underrepresented students with targeted educational opportunities tosupplement the traditional secondary experience by offering ‘Saturday Science’. Two Saturdays