Conference Session

Pay It Forward: Critical Thinking, Reflection and Faculty Engagement Promote Success in Engineering

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Caroline R. Noyes, Georgia Institute of Technology; Jonathan Gordon, Georgia Institute of Technology; Joe Ludlum, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

White/ Asian 89.3 83.8 84.3 82.3 84.8 88.0Co-op Participation % Participating 23.8 17.3 26.6 27.5 23.9 29.9 in Co-opThe analysis involved comparing the academic performance, as measured by final course grades,of co-op and non-co-op students in required core engineering courses at the institution. In orderto capture the largest possible samples of students for comparison, the analysis focused onrequired (rather than elective) engineering courses in each major. Additionally, each course wascategorized as “hard skill” or “soft skill” based on the ABET program outcomes the courseaddressed (see Table 2). This classification is

Conference Session

Assessing, Developing, and Enhancing the Engineering Experiential Education Experience

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dean C. Millar, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

the value theirorganization places on preparation in that area. Figure 1 shows the results for each area.” “With the exception of ‘Math and Science’ there appears to be a wide discrepancybetween the value expectations of the employer and the extent to which their employees are seento be well prepared. This would further appear to reflect on the mismatch between curricularemphasis and employer expectation. It must be recognized, of course, that math and science arewithout argument the key ingredients—at least in the lower division—of an undergraduateengineering education.” These research findings are, more than ever, valid today. For proof of this one canGoogle search “engineering soft skills” and find hundreds of articles

Conference Session

Expanding the Borders of Engineering Education

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sandra Ingram, University of Manitoba; Anita H. Ens, University of Manitoba; Marcia R. Friesen, University of Manitoba

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

education on the integration of IEGs into theCanadian engineering profession, more specifically regarding how such programs can facilitatesoft skill competencies deemed so critical to engineering success. Soft skills encompass non-technical professional skills used in everyday engineering practice and are critical to careerdevelopment. These competencies include not only the skill itself, but also the norms and valuesinherent in the North American manifestations of concepts of, for example, teamwork orcommunication skills. As such, a conjecture is that soft skills may include a distinctly culturalcomponent in which immigrant professionals need to develop competency, for career success.This paper presents data from a larger study investigating the

Conference Session

Educating Students for the 21st Century: History, Reflection, and Outcomes

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Swaminathan Balachandran, University of Wisconsin, Platteville

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

control, layouts, and spareparts rooms in general.” – Joe Lange“ It showed me that I need to be ready for unexpected events. I had no knowledge of powerplant operations coming into this project, so that is something that I needed to research at thebeginning of the project. The defection of group members was also something to learn from.That was something that was unexpected, but I couldn’t let the group be affected too much byit.” – Ryan Dow“We did a good job acquiring the information that we needed to, even though it was difficult toobtain it from the clients. Communication between the group and clients could have beenbetter.” - Ran Dow and Travis Glaser“ The majority of skills that I improved throughout the project were soft skills such

Conference Session

Assessing, Developing, and Enhancing the Engineering Experiential Education Experience

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Emilia Andreeva-Moschen, FH Joanneum University of Applied Science, Graz; Adrian J. Millward-Sadler, FH Joanneum University of Applied Science, Graz

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

institutions. For this purpose, we surveyed the extended departmentalacademic council (33 responses from 24 engineers as external lecturers, 9 universitylecturers) and our alumni (41 responses). The survey included 10 questionsregarding a graduate automotive engineer’s most important characteristics, the mostessential components for the curriculum, the minimum duration for Bachelor’s andMaster’s degrees, etc. We collected and evaluated the data 4 and reflected the resultsin our Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs design.The salient points were that we needed an undergraduate curriculum which focusedon technical and technological basics (mechanics and electronics), automotiveengineering disciplines, soft skills, including at least one foreign