Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Christi Patton Luks; Laura P. Ford

Process Control Laboratory Using Honeywell PlantScape Christi Patton Luks, Laura P. Ford University of TulsaAbstractThe University of Tulsa has recently revised its process controls class from one 3-hour course toone 2-hour course covering transient modeling and one 3-hour course in advanced controltechniques with laboratory experiments. These lab experiments use the equipment from our unitoperations laboratory which is controlled with Honeywell PlantScape software. This allows thestudents to gain experience with process control software used in industry.The first experiment is tuning a PID feedback controller for the flow manifold used with thedouble pipe

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Stephan A. Durham; W. Micah Hale; Seamus Freyne

Teaching Aids and Laboratory Experiments to Enhance Materials Learning Stephan A. Durham1, W. Micah Hale2, Seamus Freyne3 1 University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center / 2University of Arkansas / 3Manhattan CollegeAbstractMost civil engineering programs across the country require one course in materials and materialstesting. Many times these courses are structured to provide students the basic understanding ofthe production, properties, and behavior of common structural materials. Emphasis is oftenplaced on concrete, steel, and wood. This paper presents teaching aids and laboratoryexperiments that can be used

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Stephan A. Durham; W. Micah Hale; Seamus Freyne

Distributing Course Materials Through Online Assistance Stephan A. Durham1, W. Micah Hale2, Seamus Freyne3 1 University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center / 2University of Arkansas / 3Manhattan CollegeAbstractOften times a professor encourages students to review lecture topics, book chapters, and papersprior to class. This preparation allows students to become familiar with the lecture subject andprovides opportunity for in-class discussion. It is also ideal in a laboratory setting to distributeexperimental data to the entire class with minimal effort. The author currently utilizes a web-based educational tool called Blackboard ™. This online

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Kamesh Namuduri

Partnerships between Universities and Community Colleges Kamesh Namuduri, Assistant Professor, ECE Department, Wichita State University Abstract Wichita State University leads the Kansas Cybersecurity Consortium consisting of severalcommunity colleges within the state of Kansas, the Wichita Police Department (WPD), the RegionalComputer Forensics Laboratory (RCFL) in Kansas City, Missouri, and regional industry. The efforts ofthis consortium are geared towards promoting education and training opportunities for professionals andincreasing the number of trained professionals in this important field. At present, the consortium consistsof seven community colleges that

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Behnam Bahr; Kurt Soschinske; George Gray

first hand the issues involved in prototyping and product development.These laboratories are expensive to set up and even more expensive to maintain and staff withwell-qualified technicians. At Wichita State University (WSU) we have worked out a plan thatenables our students to use the laboratories at one of the local community colleges called theWichita Area Technical College (WATC). In this agreement the students are provided first handexposure to manufacturing techniques such as machining, welding, and composite blue printreading / fabrication, among other laboratory exercises. The laboratory sessions are taught byWATC instructors with extensive background and training dedicated to the variousmanufacturing areas. Students will be expected to

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ramazan Asmatulu; Mehmet B. Yildirim; Waseem Khan; Adebayo Adeniji; Humphrey Wamocha

nano-sized fibers thatconsist of higher physical properties (e.g., surface area, porosity and flexibility). In a typicalelectrospinning process, a jet is ejected from a charged polymer solution when the appliedelectric field strength overcomes the surface tension of the solution. The ejected jet then travelsrapidly to the collector target located at some distance from the charged polymer solution underthe influence of the electric field and becomes a solid polymer filament as the jet dries. Thiscommunication presents the fabrication and characterizations of nanofibers and devices forundergraduate and graduate students to enhance their hands-on laboratory experiences.KeyWords: Nanotechnology, fabrication and characterization of nanofibers

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Meader Woo; John M. Watkins

output signals at the different frequencies as they are beingmeasured. The input and output signals in the time domain and the magnitude and phase of thefrequency response are plotted in real time.To run the virtual DSA in simulation mode requires only SIMULINK. However, if combinedwith the Quanser WinCon software and hardware input/output board, it can be used formeasuring the frequency response of experimental apparatus in the laboratory. If the linearsystem is mechanical, the students can compare the system’s movement with the responses theyare seeing on the screen. 2Other authors have used SIMULINK to create a virtual DSA. Wang

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Walter O. Craig

advisory board can serve as a powerful tool to help the school or department in theaccreditation process. The board can also serve as a fund raising mechanism by having itsindustrial partner give grants for scholarships for incoming freshman, or monies to help purchaseequipment and supplies to maintain a laboratory of the department. The industry advisory boardmembers can also serve as mentors on an industry sponsored project. Another important purposeis to advise the department in the area of curriculum development. Industry participation incurriculum development will ensure that ET students are taking the necessary classes to givethem the industry skills to compete globally with other engineering technology graduates.The Industry advisory board

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ramesh V. Narang

technology education which helps to impart the hands-on aspect of thesubject area. To achieve this objective of providing practical knowledge skills, precisioninstrumentation with controlled environment is needed which may not be easily available inuniversity laboratories.This paper describes an innovative approach of team-teaching this new course in metrology. Aworking relationship has been established with a local A2LA-certified (American Associationfor Laboratory Accreditation) calibration laboratory where students get to learn the practicalaspects of precision measurements. The paper describes the course structure and gives somesample theory and experiments that students learn. The paper also discusses the lessons learnedfrom the students

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Kimberly H. Henthorn

knowledge, the ability towork in teams is one of the most important attributes engineering graduates can possess.Course HistoryIn the semesters leading up to Fall 2005, the UMR Material and Energy Balances course wastaught twice per year, with the majority of students enrolling in the fall. The spring semester wastypically much smaller, with repeat and transfer students comprising most of the enrollment.The course was structured with two standard 50-minute lecture periods and one three-hourlaboratory period per week. The laboratory period was reserved for students to work onhomework, learn computer programming skills, and complete additional practice problems.Personal Response DevicesBeginning in Fall 2005, personal response devices (“clickers

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

W. Roy Penney; Rachel M. Lee; Meagan E. Magie; Edgar C. Clausen

methods for improving or supplementing the teaching of heat transferincluding the use of spreadsheets to solve two-dimensional heat transfer problems7, the use of atransport approach in teaching turbulent thermal convection8, the use of computers to evaluateview factors in thermal radiation9, implementation of a computational method for teaching freeconvection10, and the use of an integrated experimental/analytical/numerical approach that bringsthe excitement of discovery to the classroom11. Supplemental heat transfer experiments for usein the laboratory or classroom have also been presented, including rather novel experiments suchas the drying of a towel12 and the cooking of French fry-shaped potatoes13. Suggestions for theintegration of heat

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Leroy R. Cox; Katie Grantham Lough

difficult problems in terms ofequations and applicable mathematical principles and operations, with answers expressednumerically. Students participate in laboratory courses, with the requisite at the completion of anexperiment that they write a report, but these reports are rarely assessed for the level of writingskill displayed. Most often these reports are graded by laboratory assistants who are non-nativespeakers of English.2 For many of these talented individuals, mastery of proper Englishgrammar and construction is a secondary or tertiary consideration in light of their achieving thegrades necessary to travel abroad in completion of their education. Therefore, because theirunderstanding of English composition is rudimentary, they instead focus

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Shannon G. Davis; Carol S. Gattis; Edgar C. Clausen

laboratory exercises. ThePartnership Program consists of three parts: 1) instruction at the institutes using a number ofhands-on activities that will be used in the classroom; 2) follow-up activities at the middle andjunior high schools and; 3) evaluation, both during and after the summer institutes.In evaluating Year 1 of the program, several important lessons were learned:• Arkansas Science Curriculum Frameworks are structured with minimal overlap from grade to grade, making it difficult to structure activities that fit equally well in each middle school grade levels.• Despite the imperative to directly align experiments with the Curriculum Frameworks, teachers and students thoroughly enjoyed experiments with an engineering theme.• None

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Waleed K. Al-Assadi; Mandar V. Joshi; Sagar R. Gosavi; Daryl Beetner

Incorporating Altera FPGA Demo boards in Computer Engineering Labs Waleed K. Al-Assadi, Mandar V. Joshi, Sagar R. Gosavi, and Daryl Beetner Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Missouri-Rolla Rolla, MO 65401 {waleed, mvjvx8, srggz3, daryl} @ umr.edu Abstract Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are widely used as teaching tools in universitycomputer engineering laboratories. Numerous computationally intensive applications such as IPcores, ASICs and microcontrollers are prototyped on FPGAs to reduce the number of cycles andthe time to market. This paper

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Abu S.M. Masud; Don E. Malzahn

other issues, program objectives (evaluation/ review), curriculum/laboratory update, and any program-related issue that may arise. • Odd Years, College of Engineering administers the Alumni Survey, the results of which are distributed to departments. PROGRAM EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES AND ASSESSMENTBased on ABET statement [1], our working definition of the program educationalobjectives (PEOs) is that these are statements that describe the expected accomplishmentsof graduates in the first few years after graduation. Program objectives can be of twotypes: (a) what all graduates will do, and (b) what some graduates will do. Programobjectives are written to be used as descriptors of the program and are such

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

R.L.A. Jordan

technician’s education involve the following: • Development of problem solving skills • Understanding of the theory of physical science. • Application of physical science theory through the solution of homework problems. • Application of physical science theory through laboratory experiments. • Application of physical science theory through the design of devices, processes, and systems. • Communication of the results of the above through sketches, equations, numerical solutions, drawings, written reports, and oral reports. • Solution of problems through teamwork. • Management of time and other resources The pedagogy of

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ramazan Asmatulu; Waseem Khan; Humphrey Wamocha; Adebayo Adeniji

careers innanoscale science and engineering [6-10]. Our team in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Wichita State Universityalready started developing a nanotechnology laboratory. The objective of this laboratory is todesign, fabricate, analyze, and test structures and systems at nanoscales. In this laboratory, ourstudents will learn nanotechnology to improve their skills, which will also improve their job 2finding opportunities and leadership in the near future. We strongly believe that laboratoryexperiments in nanoscale research and development are essential for engineering students toenhance their practical knowledge after fundamental concepts. For this reason, following testsare

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Larry A. Glasgow

horsepowerrequirement), and 3) allowed to drain from the tank through a valve and a short length of 2-inchdiameter hose (evaluation of Torricelli’s theorem). The intent of this exercise was to providestudents with the opportunity to experience fluid forces, velocities, and frictional losses in aphysically meaningful context. Experience has shown conclusively that these objectives are notbeing met by the small-scale activities carried out with our present laboratory experiments. Results from the activities described above have been evaluated through quizzes,examinations, and direct student responses (questionnaires completed by the participants). Thephysically-relevant field experiences appear to have had a positive impact upon test subjects andthe

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Yahong Rosa Zheng; Sarat K. Chitneni; Daryl G. Beetner

DSP Curriculum Development for Computer Engineering using Altera’s DE2 FPGA Kits Yahong Rosa Zheng, Sarat K. Chitneni, Daryl G. Beetner Electrical and computer engineering University of Missouri-Rolla Email: {zhengyr, scmt9, daryl}@umr.eduAbstractThis paper presents laboratory materials on Digital Signal Processing (DSP) for ComputerEngineering (CmpE) curriculum using Altera’s DE2 FPGA (Field Programmable Array)university kits. The Altera’s DE2 kit has been adopted by many universities for courses ondigital logic, embedded systems, and computer architecture. However, it has not been fullyexploited

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Christi Patton Luks; Laura P. Ford

7 Department of Chemical Engineering Survey Fall 2006 Advisory Board/Student Luncheon Our educational objectives are to prepare our students, through a high-quality course of instruction involving classroom, laboratory, and professional activities, for successful employment in the chemical process industries, including energy-related industries, environmental, materials, or biotechnology, for graduate studies in chemical engineering; or for graduate studies in other fields such as medicine, law and business administration. For the purposes of ABET accreditation, and to help keep our program current by responding to changes in the global economy

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Day W. Radebaugh

and ReliabilityTesting and reliability present some unusual uncertainties in the product life cycle. In thefirst case, one must decide how to test a design: in software, at small scale, or full-scalelive testing. The problems of software modeling and differences of scale have beendiscussed above. If we test in the lab, we must realize that laboratory testing is an idealcondition. In testing for failure, the engineer is entitled to regard the failure of acomponent as, in some sense, a success; at least he has determined the failure point of thecomponent. The more interesting question is when to stop testing if failure does notoccur. Can we accurately estimate the duty cycle of a product? Quite often the decisionsabout how much to test, and

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Surendra Singh

to a B.S. degree, students have to takealmost two years of math, physics, humanities and other required courses, thereby, leaving thejunior and senior years for courses in their major. Some programs include a two-semestersequence of senior design course [1], which allows the students to design and build circuits orsystems. There is hardly a component in the education process where the students are able to getpractical work experience. Of course, some students find summer employment in theirhometown or get an internship in one of the national laboratories. But for the most part, there isno formal work experience built in the educational process. To quote Zdunek [2], “Formalcourse work is only part of an engineer’s education; training for

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Wei Zhang

the learning outcome ofthe introductory computer architecture course.References[1] David A. Patterson, John L. Hennessy. Computer organization and design, thehardware/software interface. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2005.[2] Homepage of SPIM simulator. http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html[3] Sally L. Wood, Chris Dick. Concepts of parallelism in an introductory computerarchitecture course with FPGA laboratories. In Proc. of the ASEE/IEEE Frontiers inEducation Conference, 2004.Proceedings of the 2007 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education 10[4] N. Calazans, F. G. Moraes and C. Marcon. Teaching computer

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ana Goulart; Charles Watkins; Robert Hegedus

network architectures and protocolsthat have not been used together very often. New and usually expensive equipment may not beavailable in our laboratories to test these new technologies. Thus, we are taking advantage of ourcommunication networks modeling and simulation course to teach new technologies andprotocols and test their integration.As an example of this approach, this paper presents a course project that our junior studentsperformed. The goal of this project was to evaluate voice over IP (VoIP) over 802.11 wirelesslocal area network (WLANs). As discussed in [1], “both IP voice and 802.11 WLANs are newtechnologies, and so the base of practical experience in merging the two is small.” Voice over IPapplications are real-time applications

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Christopher C. Ibeh; Monika Bubacz; Andrey Beyle; Stefano Bietto; Stan Scoville; Dilip Paul; Charles Blatchley

nanotechnology and nanocomposites in industry and society, developmentof simple, cost-effective laboratory experiments (teachers), enhancement of research anddevelopment skills, and development of entrepreneurial skills.Several undergraduate and graduate students are sponsored year-long by CNCMM, andare required to participate in CNCMM’s research, education, ethics, entrepreneurship,assessment and dissemination (RE3AD) program[26]. ConclusionsCNCMM is a viable research and education unit at Pittsburg State University that ispositioned to enhance Kansas’ relatively new nanocomposites industry by establishing anexcellent research and education center for nanocomposites and multifunctional materialswith focus on naval

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

William A. Kline; Thomas Mason

Institute campus.The building was formerly a commercial office building and is divided into approximately 15flexible/modular work rooms with one or multiple teams assigned to the work rooms. Eachroom includes defined team areas, modular furniture with a workspace for each student, aprinter, a small meeting area with conference table, and usually space for the project manager.Dedicated laboratories have been setup for an electronics shop, machine shop, wet lab, and rapidprototyping equipment. Each student is assigned a desktop computer with necessary software tosupport their work. Work spaces are ‘open’ which facilitates communication among the team.Co-locating the project manager with the student team facilitates both formal and

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Johannes Strobel

forEngineering Education 11[5] LaPlaca, M. C., W. C. Newstetter, and A. P. Yoganathan, “Problem-Based Learning in Biomedical Engineering Curricula,” Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, 2, F3E/16-F3E/21 (IEEE cat n 01CH37193), 2001.[6] Cline, M. J. and G. J. Powers, “Problem Based Learning in a Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Laboratory,” IEEE Frontiers in Education, 1997, pp. 350-354.[7] Armarego, J., “Advanced Software Design: A Case in Problem-Based Learning,” IEEE Computer Society: Proceedings of the 15th Annual Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training, 2002, pp. 44-54.[8