Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Ravi Shankar; Don Ploger; Oren Masory; Francis X McAfee

power near-neighbor communication links, with optical/ sonar /IR/RFtransceivers. These will allow the robots to self-organize in response to a chess move conveyed from aphone. Simple cameras will be used for robotic localization and navigation on & off the board. The highschool students will be able to program the robots with different behaviors and plan/play different typesof games/activities. This will increase their interest in the STEM curriculum and enhance their soft skills(team building, project management, communication, systems thinking, abstract thinking, and problemsolving); this will also bring to the fore innovation and entrepreneurship, two hallmark qualities of theUS economy, since these applications can be marketed, with

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Barrie Jackson

ever work in isolation, they work in teams, which often includeCommunity College Graduates. CONCLUSIONS There appears to be an on-going conflict between Research and “Teaching” in CanadianUniversities. One’s career is predicated to a major extent on one’s research rather than their“teaching” performance. I am sure that this is generally the case in most Universities There is no question that grounding in fundamentals is essential for our graduates. Acomplete Capstone Design exercise should be essential as well. Employers currently place a lotof emphasis on “soft skills” which are basically teamwork, and communication skills.Professional Practice Skills should be a large part of an undergrad education, for that matter

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Keith M. Gardiner

in the throes of developing the 777. Today we have many new companies, new‘toys,’ high technology cellular telephones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) that arebecoming ‘smart’ enough to communicate emotions, marvelous digital cameras, ‘cloud’computing and politically significant social movements catalyzed by many of theseinnovations. As a nation we also possess many problems, not forgetting a frequent plea forgreater skills, and more especially ‘soft skills’ in the workforce.One of the first steps in assessing any problem is to discover analogs and establishbenchmarks.How are other nations performing and dealing with similar problems although possiblywith different cultural, economic and social constraints and customs? Following very

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

KENNETH WADE JACKSON

the prospect for exciting engineering work such as thespace program provided. The nation’s new problems will require undergraduateengineers to acquire complementary skills and perspectives of multiple disciplinesthat more explicitly recognize the practical importance of the human element andtechnical innovation. Engineers in the 21st century will face unprecedented globalchange and rate of change in technology, economics and social institutions. To meetthese challenges, recently referred to by the NAE as a gathering storm, engineeringeducation will need to embed more technology and soft skills into traditionalscience-based engineering courses without reducing practical STEM content andrigor. Engineering faculty will need also to create and

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

PATRICA A. S. RALSTON; JEFFREY L. HIEB

2011, the EiE website showed 26,744 teachers and 1,833,755 students using EiE. Thework of Speed’s outreach program was instrumental in spreading the use of EiE in Kentucky. The EiE curriculum introduces each unit with a story about a child with a problem to solve.Activities introduce the engineering foundation of design, using science concepts as the students help thechild solve the problem. Soft skills are learned as students learn to work in teams, deal with failure, andlearn to “try again”. The next unit lesson focuses on helping students develop a broader perspective onthe unit's engineering discipline involved. Through hands-on activities, students learn more about thetypes of work done by engineers in these fields, and the kinds of