Conference Session

Myths About Gender and Race

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Peggy Layne, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Minorities in Engineering, Women in Engineering

Committee. Page 22.1456.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2011 Myths of Race and Gender: The Engineering “Pipeline” Metaphor and the Careers of Female Deans of EngineeringIntroductionWho does engineering is important, since engineers are key contributors to the design oftechnologies that shape our world.1 While women have made significant gains in their proportionof degrees earned and their representation in the professoriate in the past 30 years, they remainsignificantly underrepresented in engineering.2 In 2009, women earned just 17.8% of the 74,387bachelor’s degrees awarded in

Conference Session

Myths About Gender and Race

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alice L. Pawley, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Jordana Hoegh, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Minorities in Engineering, Women in Engineering

Engineering (RIFE) group, whose projects are described at the group’s website, http://feministengineering.org/. She is interested in creating new models for thinking about gender and race in the context of engineering education. She was recently awarded a CAREER grant for the project, ”Learning from Small Numbers: Using personal narratives by underrepresented undergraduate students to promote institutional change in engineering education.”Jordana Hoegh, Purdue University Jordana Hoegh, M.S., is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University. Her research interests include early adult life course and transitions, self and identity, sociology of the family, work and organizations, and social networks

Conference Session

Myths About Gender and Race

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Carroll Suzanne Seron, University of California, Irvine; Erin A. Cech, University of California, San Diego; Susan S. Silbey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Brian Rubineau, Cornell University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Minorities in Engineering, Women in Engineering

in sociology at UC San Diego. Her research examines individual-level, cultural mechanisms that reproduce inequality, especially those pertaining to sex segregation in science and engineering fields. Her dissertation investigates the self-expressive edge of inequality, analyzing how gender schemas and self-conceptions influence career decisions of college students over time. She also studies the role of professional culture in wage inequality, cross-national beliefs about work time for mothers (with Maria Charles), and, in a Social Problems article, perceptions of inequality among high-level professional women (with Mary Blair-Loy). She earned Electrical Engineering and Sociology degrees from Montana State

Conference Session

Special Session: Moving Towards the Intended, Explicit, and Authentic: Addressing Critical Misalignments in Engineering Learning within Secondary and University Education

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kevin Anderson, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Sandra Shaw Courter, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Mitchell J. Nathan, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Amy C. Prevost, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Christine G. Nicometo, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Traci M. Nathans-Kelly, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Thomas Dean McGlamery, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Amy K. Atwood, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods, K-12 & Pre-College Engineering, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research is focused on the STEM career pipeline, especially related to engi- neering, engineering education and the molecular biosciences. In addition to her work in education re- search, she is also the Director of scientific courses at the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute in Madison, WI, where she coordinates curricula in the area of molecular biology.Christine G. Nicometo, University of Wisconsin, Madison Christine G. Nicometo is an associate faculty associate in the Engineering Professional Development (EPD) Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Within EPD, she teaches technical commu- nication courses in three programs: Technical Communication Certificate

Conference Session

Myths About Gender and Race

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna M Riley, Smith College; Alice L. Pawley, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Minorities in Engineering, Women in Engineering

Purdue University’s ADVANCE program, and PI on the Assessing Sustainability Knowledge project. She runs the Research in Feminist Engineering (RIFE) group, whose projects are described at the group’s website, http://feministengineering.org/. She is interested in creating new models for thinking about gender and race in the context of engineering education. She was recently awarded a CAREER grant for the project, ”Learning from Small Numbers: Using personal narratives by underrepresented undergraduate students to promote institutional change in engineering education.” Page 22.356.1

Conference Session

Communication: From Pecha Kucha to Bullets

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kenneth R. Leitch, West Texas A&M University; Rhonda B Dittfurth, West Texas A&M University; Freddie J Davis P.E., West Texas A&M University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

, Page 22.834.2especially when it comes to job performance and the ability to advance in one’s career path.While computer science and engineering technology have been well established at WTAMU, the mechanical (2003)and civil (2010) engineering programs are relatively new. Curricula for the newer engineering degree programs aresimilar to other ABET-accredited programs which are constrained in the number of credits that can be allotted tospecific English and technical communication courses.The ECS Department at WTAMU recognizes the importance of strong technical communication skills for itsstudents and alumni. In addition to instructional strength in civil and mechanical engineering, engineeringtechnology, and computer science, the departmental

Conference Session

Liberal Education Revisited: Five Historical Perspectives

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John Heywood, Trinity College, Dublin

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

the colleges, and the development of extra- curricular activities. (e) The establishment of contact with institutions abroad.The liberal studies controversy and its evaluation.It is not surprising that the introduction of liberal studies was controversial. Argumentsraged about content and teaching method, whether or not they should be examined,subjects' available to students, compulsory attendance and undue overloading of thestudents by subjects not thought necessary to their professional career. At the time there was a growing body of research in technological education andresearches on various aspects of liberal education in technical colleges were wellrepresented (see notes 8 & 15). The focus of this study is on a small

Conference Session

Rethinking PowerPoint and Other Acts of Communication

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Elena Poltavtchenko, Northern Arizona University; John Tingerthal, Northern Arizona University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Management faculty at Northern Arizona University in 2007. His engineer- ing career spans a wide variety of design and forensic engineering experiences. He spent the first eight years of his career performing structural consulting engineering in Chicago. This work culminated with design work on the Minneapolis Public Library and the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison Wiscon- sin. He was also involved with forensic investigations in Iowa and Wisconsin and participated in structural coordination efforts at Ground Zero in September of 2001. He holds professional engineering licenses in the States of Arizona an Illinois. He is currently working on a Doctorate of Education in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in

Conference Session

Liberal Education Poster Session

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Smitesh Bakrania, Rowan University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

careers, they often fail at delivering an effective presentation themselves. The disparitycan often be explained by the students relying overwhelmingly on the quick-fix-tips they havegained to mend their presentation rather than spending their efforts to diligently practice theirdelivery before the final presentation. Rehearsals allow the students to identify discontinuities intheir flow, avoid awkward pauses, gain confidence with their delivery, reduce reliance on theslide text and better manage the allocated time - all common shortfalls evident during studentpresentations. Rehearsing is often the least favored presentation tip because it requires thegreatest effort and its importance is least apparent to the students. In fact, there is a

Conference Session

Liberal Education Revisited: Five Historical Perspectives

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John Heywood, Trinity College, Dublin

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

industrial training [9. p 340]. Theyreported little difference between dip.tech examinations and those set in the universities. Second,both in terms of student expectations and work actually done as graduates the distinction madeby the Percy Committee that universities should be the primary trainers of R & D personnel thatdip.tech students expected to go into R & D or Management. Among the diplomates from whom Page 22.777.11data was obtained 38% were in research suggesting that their courses had not prevented themfrom getting a research post. As for their future careers the diplomats in this sample lookedtoward having increased responsibility

Conference Session

Making Students Aware of Their World: Five Perspectives

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Linda M. Head, Rowan University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Integrated CurriculumIntroduction and BackgroundThere have for many years been efforts to bridge the gap between educational experiences inengineering and the liberal arts and sciences. Such efforts typically take the form of coursesdesigned to promote technological literacy for liberal arts majors, or courses designed toencourage engineering or science majors to consider the social and political implications of theirprofessions.Technological literacy for non-technology majors has been addressed in a variety of ways. Onevery popular version is to provide a course for students, early in their collegiate career, to learnan engineering application that has direct relevance to their lives. This approach has been used atYale University in the course

Conference Session

Communication: From Pecha Kucha to Bullets

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Micah Hale, University of Arkansas; Richard A. Coffman, University of Arkansas

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

course and whether journal submission should be included. After obtaining Page 22.1115.6faculty feedback, a course may be developed and offered.If a “technical writing” course is not developed there are changes or additions that can be madeto our current undergraduate curriculum to at a minimum expose our students to technicalwriting. The recommendations are listed below. 1. In each of the first discipline specific course that requires a laboratory report, provide students with a style manual from a top journal. The students will then learn at an early stage in their career proper terminology and sentence structure

Conference Session

Myths About Gender and Race

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Deborah Kilgore, University of Washington; Sheri Sheppard, Stanford University; Cynthia J. Atman, University of Washington; Debbie Chachra, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Minorities in Engineering, Women in Engineering

evolution of the engineering curriculum since she joined the faculty in 2003. Her current research interests are twofold: as well as her research in biological materials (cur- rently focused on bioderived plastics synthesized by bees), she also researches the engineering student experience, including persistence and migration, differences by gender, and the role of self-efficacy in project-based learning. In 2010, she received an NSF CAREER Award in support of her research on engineering education. Page 22.1081.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2011 Motivation

Conference Session

Ethical Perspectives on the Grand Challenges of Engineering

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna M Riley, Smith College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

government/public service,and a third from industry, with a nearly exclusive emphasis on inventor/entrepreneur/CEOs inthat sector. Some committee members had work and/or life experience outside the United States,including in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, but all or nearly all had strong ties Page 22.1677.3to the United States. All were over 35 with impressive career records, including at least 12members of the National Academies. Data on race and ethnicity were not available.19Input was sought from the general public via the NAE website. The NAE boasts that over 1000people from over 40 countries submitted comments.20 However

Conference Session

Making Students Aware of Their World: Five Perspectives

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Warren N. Waggenspack Jr., Louisiana State University; Warren R. Hull, Louisiana State University; David Bowles, Louisiana State University; Sarah Liggett, Louisiana State University; Stephen O. Sears, Louisiana State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

comments by a respondent with 20+ years of experience and employed by a multi-national corporation:“Language skill is a tremendous plus for any career but as long as the US market is one of thelargest then success can be achieved without it. However, the globe is a much more excitingand lucrative opportunity and language along with appreciation for cultural diversity istremendously important. Cultural appreciation is even more so. This appreciation can beachieved in many ways including but not limited to study abroad. These things only enhancepotential…”Another senior engineer respondent commented:“It would be an amazing coincidence if the foreign language an engineer knew happened to berelevant to any assignment offered.”During our research into

Conference Session

Rethinking PowerPoint and Other Acts of Communication

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christine G. Nicometo, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Traci M. Nathans-Kelly, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

welldocumented in recent years. Using industry and academic input, ABET, Inc. firstpublished the “a-k” list of skills a decade ago, outlining the skills that undergraduatesshould attain in order to become effective engineers.4 In similar gestures, otherorganizations and publications emphasized communication, business acumen,interdisciplinary teamwork, creativity, life-long learning, and technical problem solving,and other non-technical skills as keys to career success. The National Academy ofEngineering, in The Engineer of 2020, described just such skills that education shouldemphasize, with a focus on the changing nature of engineering work.5 At theprofessional society level, The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)Corporate Membership

Conference Session

Integration of Liberal Education into Engineering

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kacey Beddoes, Virginia Tech; Maura J. Borrego, Virginia Tech; Brent K Jesiek, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Ethics, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Education at Virginia Tech. She is currently serving a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship at the National Science Foundation. Her research interests focus on interdisciplinary faculty members and graduate students in engineering and science, with engineering education as a specific case. Dr. Borrego holds U.S. NSF CAREER and Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) awards for her engineering education research. Dr. Borrego has developed and taught graduate level courses in engi- neering education research methods and assessment from 2005-2010. All of Dr. Borrego’s degrees are in Materials Science and Engineering. Her M.S. and Ph.D. are from Stanford University, and her B.S. is

Conference Session

Rethinking PowerPoint and Other Acts of Communication

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

April A. Kedrowicz, University of Utah; Maria Dawn Blevins, University of Utah

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

withactual engineering projects to show students how intricately linked communication andteamwork skills are with engineering problem solving and design. Much emphasis is placed onsenior capstone courses, as this meets the immediate demand of preparing graduating seniors forthe non-technical aspects of their careers. In contrast, freshman classes receive less attention interms of their position to “set the tone” for the coupling of communication and engineering,likely because the demands placed on freshman engineering classes are already high. They serveas a recruitment tool, pique interest in engineering, expose students to the many and varied areasof concentration in the discipline, and perhaps, introduce students to engineering projects andbasic

Conference Session

Why Industry Says that our Engineering Students Cannot Write

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

William K. Durfee, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Benjamin Adams, University of Minnesota; Audrey J. Appelsies, University of Minnesota; Pamela Flash, University of Minnesota

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Mechanical Engineering

mathematics (STEM) educators in particular to engagetheir students in higher order modes of learning. The uneven rate at which writing and STEMreforms are implemented3,4 reinforces the need for a new approach to reform, one that isdiscipline specific and faculty-driven.The Writing-Enriched Curriculum (WEC) model is informed by shifts in the perception ofwriting itself. Since the mid-20th century, the traditional view of writing as a mode ofcommunication, has evolved. Guided by psycholinguistic research, the current, expanded view isthat writing is a mode of communication and learning. Writing is now recognized as an abilitythat students continue to develop throughout their academic education and later careers as theyengage with increasingly complex

Conference Session

Making Students Aware of Their World: Five Perspectives

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Cherrice Traver, Union College; Douglass Klein, Union College; Borjana Mikic, Smith College; Atsushi Akera, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Steven B. Shooter, Bucknell University; Ari W. Epstein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; David Gillette, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

individual schools and programs have begun to demonstrate the feasibility andthe benefit of integration, and many have been showcased at the Symposium on E&LE.63, 121Next steps are to provide tools that empower more faculty to act, to create a national communityof practice, and to demonstrate how the integration of E&LE elevates engineering students’capacities for innovative and entrepreneurial careers.3. EXAMPLES OF INTEGRATION OF E&LEExperiences and activities presented in this section all represent existing integrative activities.They illustrate ways to leverage expertise from non-engineering disciplines into importantcomponents of the engineering education spectrum. Study of these successful activities will leadto the insights and

Conference Session

Making Students Aware of Their World: Five Perspectives

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gary Lee Downey, Virginia Tech; Masanori Wada, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Conference Session

Communication: From Pecha Kucha to Bullets

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Isabel Simões de Carvalho P.E., ISEL, Lisbon, Portugal; Christy Moore, University of Texas, Austin

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

and society’” as well as “globalization and the relatedinternationalization of enterprise.” As a result, one of the crucial challenges facingengineering educators is the need to train future engineers for careers in a multi-faceted,global community that faces enormous energy and environmental problems (NAE, 2005;2008).Unfortunately, as Carol Del Vitto (2008) points out “university engineering programsoften focus on ‘hard’ technical skills” in spite of the fact that “it is becoming increasinglyevident that in order to compete in a global environment” engineering students mustdevelop “soft skills” that will allow them to understand other cultures and respond to thedemands of the global workplace. Researchers such as Grandin (2006) and Camuti

Conference Session

Why Industry Says that our Engineering Students Cannot Write

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kathryn Mobrand, University of Washington; Jennifer A Turns, University of Washington

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Mechanical Engineering

. Dannels16 draws parallels to the field ofcommunication, asserting that speaking is a contextually-motivated, cultural event. Withprofessional communication instruction becoming increasingly focused on cases and client-basedprojects, and with technology driving changes in workplace writing, writing curriculum ismoving away from formulaic responses to rhetorical situations in favor of providing studentswith some theoretical background in writing and rhetoric.17 Understanding students’ prior genreknowledge is believed to be helpful for designing educational experiences that assist students asthey acquire genre knowledge that will in turn give them strategies they can transfer to newcontexts, which will help them in their engineering careers.12, 18