Conference Session

Mentoring Graduate Students

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Tershia Pinder-Grover, University of Michigan; Sarah Root, University of Arkansas; Emine Cagin, University of Michigan

Tagged Divisions

Graduate Studies

13.998.2Different approaches to mentoring GSIs currently exist in current literature and practice. Westudied examples of previously implemented faculty-student mentoring, peer mentoring in pairs,and centralized peer mentoring programs for comparison with the EGSM initiative.Faculty-graduate student teams can effectively give the GSI a teaching internship opportunitywhere the GSI shares the teaching responsibilities with a faculty mentor 3, 4, 5or even serves as theprimary instructor with the faculty member in a supervisory role.6 In some cases, faculty- andGSI-development professionals provide consulting and mentoring services.7 This technique hasproved effective for helping the graduate student grow as a teacher and prepare for an academiccareer. While

Conference Session

FPD2 - First-Year Advising and Transition

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jean Kampe, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Whitney Edmister, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Christi Boone, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Bevlee Watford, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

that native studentsalready know and that resident freshmen living together learn quickly, but they are new andunfamiliar to the more isolated transfer students until someone takes the time to explain. In thefall 2006 offering of EngE2984, we also recognized and seized the opportunity we had to buildcommunity among new transfer students, and that, in itself, made a considerable difference. Oneof the key things involved in community building was a peer mentoring program for transferstudents, the Network for Engineering Transfer Students (NETS), which was established in fall2005 through funding from an NSF STEP grant (STEP: STEM Talent Expansion Program,where STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).Peer-Mentoring (NETS) and EngE2984

Conference Session

Innovative Programs - Structure, Delivery, Evaluation

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dirk Schaefer, Georgia Institute of Technology; Tristan Utschig, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Continuing Professional Development

States. Page 13.96.13In Utschig and Schaefer29 opportunities and challenges relating to the concept of implementing aformal education-related faculty development program on a large scale are outlined through anexploration of the following questions: What would be the benefits of a formal educationalprofessional qualification to US higher education institutions, their faculty and students, industry,and society as a whole? How can resources be synergistically integrated to support such aneffort? What are the major challenges or barriers present that must be overcome in order tocreate such a system?In response to these questions, the authors are

Conference Session

Service - Learning Projects

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Paul Boyle, Rice University; Brent Houchens, Rice University

Tagged Divisions

Environmental Engineering

, and should result in a system for fabrication by an existing company’s not-for-profitbranch, or by a newly formed not-for-profit firm. This work is in conjunction with the RiceBeyond Traditional Borders program3.Through Beyond Traditional Borders, the second generation Lab will be donated to schools inSwaziland, Haiti and Lesotho. The group that will be traveling to Swaziland and Lesotho iscurrently working on implementing their large scale water purifier in these two nations, andwould take along the Adaptive WaTER Lab as a demonstration tool on these trips. Additionally,if the patent for the Lab is granted, then funds generated from its sales will be used to producemore Labs to donate to developing nations.ConclusionsCurrent experience with

Conference Session

Innovative K-12 Engineering Programs

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gisele Ragusa, University of Southern California; Michael Khoo, University of Southern California; Ellis Meng, University of Southern California; Joseph Cocozza, University of Southern California

Tagged Divisions

K-12 & Pre-College Engineering

expertise of an urban school of engineering, school ofmedicine and school of education. The BMERET program has provided middle schooland high school science teachers in urban settings with opportunities to engage withpremiere researchers in BME laboratory settings at a top tier research university. Withthe combined expertise of the BME scientists and education faculty, BMERET teacherparticipants are creating powerful curriculum to use in their middle school and highschool science classrooms. The teacher participants have experienced greater scienceteaching efficacy then their non-participant teacher peers, which may be as a result of thecollaborative RET experience. Sixth through twelve grade teachers have benefited greatlyfrom bringing the BME lab

Conference Session

Capstone Design III

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mark Chang, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering; Jessica Townsend, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

amount of pedagogical preparation that was done prior to startingthe program was not as much as any faculty would have preferred. The negative impact of this isperhaps minimized at our institution due to the fact that significant portions of the curriculumalready involved large-scale projects and student-directed learning. The students had experienceworking with the unknown, and faculty had experience leading and advising these efforts.However, it was still not decided when to treat the capstone as a single course taught by manyfaculty, and when to treat it as a collection of completely separate and autonomous projects.While there is no correct answer, the vagueness was felt not only by the faculty, but alsoexperienced by the students, as