teaching for ENGE 1024, is an ENGE Ambassador, is actively involved in the Graduate Engineering Education Consortium of Students (GEECS), and is serving as the secretary for the VT ASEE Student Chapter for the 2011-2012 school year. Her current research interests focus on graduate teaching assistant (GTA) motivation to teach and GTA teacher identity development in first-year engineering courses.Mrs. Jeremi S. London, Purdue University, West Lafayette Jeremi London is a graduate student at Purdue University. She is pursuing a M.S. in industrial engineering and a Ph.D. in engineering education.Ms. Ida B. Ngambeki, Purdue University, West Lafayette Ida Ngambeki is a doctoral candidate at the School of Engineering Education
AC 2012-4530: USING WRITING ASSIGNMENTS TO IMPROVE CON-CEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING IN STATICS: RESULTS FROM A PILOTSTUDYMr. Chris Venters, Virginia Tech Chris Venters is a Ph.D. candidate in engineering education at Virginia Tech. His primary research in- terests involve studying conceptual understanding among students in early undergraduate engineering courses. He received his B.S. in aerospace engineering from North Carolina State University and his M.S. in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech.Dr. Lisa D. McNair, Virginia Tech Lisa McNair is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, where she also serves as Assistant Department Head for Graduate Education and co-directs the
, anddiversity is an asset that leads to innovation14.Lack of role models and mentors in the already low critical mass of URM faculty exasperate the Page 25.68.4problem. Minority students in search of PhD granting institutions usually wish for faculty rolemodels in the classroom who can inspire them for graduate studies and ultimately becomefaculty members. In their recent study on these issues, Nelson and Rogers 13 concluded that the“presence of science and engineering minority faculty is a crucial factor in encouraging andensuring the continued interest of young minorities in science and engineering.” It was noted thattheir presence is equally
necessarychanges to engineering curriculum to attract a more diverse student and practitioner population. Page 25.321.6Engineering IdentityThe construction of professional or personal identity is dynamic and multiple. In other words,identity reflects membership in many groups and changes over time. Socialization into aprofession may be done via many avenues. However, it is commonly suggested that havingexamples of people like oneself may be a strong contributor. In STEM fields with low femalemembership, this may hinder the entry and retention of females into engineering38–40.STEM study and work is perceived by students as more difficult than many social
describes the initial stages of a longitudinal project to design, implement, and assess an ePortfolio curriculum that supports graduate engineering students in developing professional identities both as educators and as engineers. It is part of an NSF-‐funded research study that addresses the major task, articulated in Jamieson & Lohmann’s 2009 report Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systematic Innovation in Engineering Education1, of institutionally prioritizing connections between engineering education research and practice. The purpose of this project is to use electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) to help engineering graduate students achieve the
discussion matter including study skills, stress management, study abroad opportunities,and time management. As seen through both academic results (GPA, % honors, % probation, %transfers) and quantitative survey results, the program has been demonstrated to have a positiveeffect and has been lauded as a major success [6]. Page 25.678.3Similarly, the Graduate, Undergraduate Initiative for Development and Enhancement (GUIDE)program at Michigan Technological University groups entering 1st year engineering studentswith a sophomore, junior, or senior student as well as a graduate student mentor. Together, thesegroups of 3 are required to attend weekly
minor in engineering mechanics from the Pennsylvania State University and an M.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT. He spent 22 years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force and is a Flight Test Engineer graduate of the USAF Test Pilot School. Gibbons spent most of his AF career performing flight test on advanced aircraft weapons systems. His interests include thermo-fluid sciences, teaching, experimentation, traveling, SCUBA, and botanical sciences.Mr. Philip Knodel, U.S. Air Force Academy Philip Knodel is currently a senior at the U.S. Air Force Academy and will commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Air Force this May. At the Academy, Knodel has studied to earn a B.S. in mechanical engineering for the past four
particular of 1st yearstudents, who apparently have difficulty in building their engineering identity and opt-out toother non-engineering area, while students from other disciplines very rarely transfer toengineering.The key motivation in initiating the proposed study is thus a quest for new educational solutionsthat will help explaining in appealing terms what engineers do and how they contribute to thewell-being of society in the short term, and that will, in the long term encourage potentialstudents to take on engineering careers.Declining engineering enrollment trends are directly related to the public understanding ofscience (PUS), technology and engineering (although that relation is far from simple). PUStrends are closely monitored by a
with quantitative social science studies of collegestudent experiences and outcomes, an engineering faculty member, and doctoral students whohad worked in colleges of engineering, had previous engineering experience in both college andindustry, or were graduate engineering students. Once drafted, the survey instruments were reviewed by engineering faculty andadministrators at Penn State who met in focus groups with the members of the team to revise andrefine the individual items. The faculty, four-year student, and two-year college studentinstruments were then pilot tested as described in a subsequent section. After the pilot test, theresearch team again met with focus groups of engineering faculty members and administratorsfrom Penn
pedagogy is that the instructorsimply cannot cover the same volume of content as s/he might in a traditional class (lecture +homework). The expected benefit is that somehow the students will learn the concepts better, inthe sense they are learned in context. This contextual learning, our argument goes, should lead to1) rapid integration into the workforce upon graduation5, and 2) better structural foundation ofsoftware engineering knowledge that will evolve in an orderly way even after graduation. Thatis, the students understand less “stuff” but understand it in a way that is deeper and betterorganized so as to be better prepared to assimilate new and changing conceptual information, arequirement in the computing sciences. Concept map evaluation
engineering.Jean S. DeClerck, Michigan Technological University Jean Straw DeClerck has supported two National Science Foundation (NSF) grants through the design, facilitation, and ongoing improvement of ethics education instruction to science and engineering students. She is an Engaged Learning and Integrated Technology Specialist at Michigan Technological University’s Van Pelt and Opie Library. Her undergraduate studies included technical communication and mechanical engineering coursework, and she will complete her master’s of science degree in rhetorical and tech- nical communications at Michigan Tech in early 2012. Her current interests include engaged learning environments, mentorship, and the rhetorical aspects of
separate activity prior to attempting tocode the data set, which is consistent with previous literature on protocol analysis 35. During thesegmenting, it was important to define what constitutes the thought which was defined as a pausebound utterance as suggested by Atman 9.Two graduate students who were involved with the pilot of this study were tasked withsegmenting the data. Each was assigned one-half of the data set. To ensure quality segmenting,each graduate student segmented ¼ of a video assigned to the other student. This provided 25%overlap based on video time. Videos very divided into quarters and determining which quarter ofthe video to overlap was randomly done by the research leadership team. Segments generated byeach graduate student
acquisition systems home andconduct experiments and design projects. This paper presents the results of a pilot project inwhich a first-year engineering course at a large university was modified to use data acquisitionhardware systems and a graphical programming environment. This paper will discuss thecurricular structure, the implementation of the graphical programming language and hardwarecomponent, examples from the class, and initial assessments from the experience in the form ofclass surveys. Challenges and opportunities are discussed. Overall, students reacted positivelyto the inclusion of the graphical language and extremely positively to the inclusion of thehardware aspect, which allowed for more hands-on activities. The instructional team
excellence. One of the signature programs offered is the “Academic ExcellenceWorkshop” (AEW). This program is offered as a one-credit pass/fail course for students in theirfirst and second years in the College and has met with varying levels of success, as measured bystudent performance, feedback on student surveys, and faculty perceptions of their effectiveness.Approximately 100 AEW courses are offered throughout the academic year for mathematicscourses (pre-Calculus through Calculus III) and select engineering classes. Students register forAEWs that correspond to the particular mathematics and/or engineering course(s) in which theyare enrolled. Because Syracuse University students pay block tuition, there is no financialdisincentive to enrolling
extensively with students from kindergarten to graduate school, parents, and pre-service and in service teachers to both educate and excite them about engineering. As the Co-PI and Project Direc- tor of a National Science Foundation GK-12 grant, Parry developed a highly effective tiered mentoring model for graduate and undergraduate engineering and education teams, as well as a popular family STEM event offering for both elementary and middle school communities. Projects include providing comprehensive professional development, coaching, and program consulting for multiple elementary en- gineering schools in several states, serving as a regional professional development partner for the Museum of Science, Boston’s
contrast, students with a weak connectionbetween their engineering-related identity and the activities in which engineers engage showedcontinual renegotiation of their commitment to engineering. Many students’ decisions aboutmajoring in engineering are malleable and that this flexibility even continues up to the point of Page 25.437.2choosing a job (or other opportunity) after graduation [2].Research into the undergraduate preparation of engineers has largely been focused on how toretain students in the major, and several studies over the years have identified reasons thatstudents migrate into other majors or interventions that might increase
interest. Non-persisters tended to choose SME fields for reasons not related to the nature ofthe work associated with the major such as the influence of family members, high school 2 teachers, and others, for materialistic reasons, and/or through uninformed choices, such aschoosing engineering because they did well in high school math and science courses (p. 290).In their study, Matusovich and her colleagues found that women did not have a strongconnection between engineering-related values and their attainment value, or the value that anindividual places on an activity as it fits with one’s identity. The authors had suggestions on howto encourage students to persist in engineering by focusing on
engineering and fine arts students, and studies the impact of this and other courses using mixed-method approaches.Ms. Bailey Renee Leppek, University of Colorado, BoulderMrs. Kara E. Gray, University of Colorado, Boulder School of Education Page 25.206.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012 Art for the Sake of Improving Attitudes towards EngineeringAbstract Since 2003, a course that incorporates art and engineering has been offered to mixed teams ofengineering and fine arts photography and video students at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The course
will be designed based upon socialconstructionist theories using communicative prospective 11, which will reveal how femalestudents create, negotiate and shift their identities while selecting, studying and practicing inSTEM field. Research questions include: a) what do they think about graduate education; b)what does pursuing career in STEM field mean to female?; c) what messages are enunciate aboutSTEM discipline, and how does these messages differ at different points in a female’s life?; d)what were the initial factor(s) compelling females to choose STEM as field of study?; e) whatfeatures of STEM discipline seems enticing or dispiriting to females from pursuing educationand practice in these area?; f) what kind of guidance, mentoring, and
simple phraseologyand this was achieved by carrying out a pilot study with six senior module coordinators. Thequestionnaire comprised two main areas: active-like and passive-like teaching methods.One hundred survey questionnaires were distributed to construction project managementstudents and fifty-six were returned giving a response rate of fifty-six percent. By using anexploratory case study approach, quantitative data was gathered in order to highlight somekey phenomena about students‟ views towards teaching methods. These phenomena werethen explored qualitatively in more depth using focus group interviews in order to gaininsights into the way these students experienced different teaching methods. The students
engineering education; quantitative and qualitativecontent analysisIntroduction Researchers from a variety of social science disciplines have long been interested instudying the ways in which parents influence their children. Thus far, their findings demonstratethat parents play a pivotal role in children‟s education.1, 2 Many societies have alsoacknowledged the importance and benefits of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics(STEM) education for international leadership roles in the 21st century global economy. AmongSTEM disciplines, increasing the focus upon engineering education is a recent and growingtrend. In particular, a great number of efforts to include engineering learning in pre-kindergartenthrough 12th grade (P-12
mentoring relationships for women pursuing technical careers”, Journal of Engineering Education, Volume 89, 2000.11 Judge, J. and Leary, J. “Department-Specific Mentoring Network for Women Students in Engineering”, Proceedings of 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Indianapolis, IN, 2005.12 Wilder, P., Kenefic, R., and Burke, A., “Integrating engineering practice into undergraduate curricula using project simulation: outcomes related to retention and persistence” Proceedings of 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Indianapolis, IN, 2005.13 Rippon, S., Collofello, J., and Hammond, R., “Helping Freshmen Develop a Personal Identity as an Engineer” Proceedings of the 2011 American Society for
StudentsIntroductionThe College of Engineering at Rowan University, a four-year, mid-sized, suburban, publicuniversity in the North East, is in the fourth year of a six year NSF S-STEM grant (Scholarshipsfor Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). In addition to providing two cohorts ofstudents with four year $3,000 dollar annual scholarships, students are provided targetedmentoring, participate in an Engineering Learning Community (ELC) in the first year, and areprovided with tutoring-on-demand for core engineering courses throughout the four-year degreeprogram.Only students with financial need were accepted into the S-STEM scholarship program and ELC.Students from under-represented groups in Engineering were aggressively recruited, i.e., women,African
AC 2012-5229: FACULTY SURVEY ON LEARNING THROUGH SERVICE:DEVELOPMENT AND INITIAL FINDINGSDr. Olga Pierrakos, James Madison University Olga Pierrakos is an Associate Professor and founding faculty member in the School of Engineering, which is graduating its inaugural class May 2012, at James Madison University. Pierrakos holds a B.S. in engineering science and mechanics, an M.S. in engineering mechanics, and a Ph.D. in biomedical en- gineering from Virginia Tech. Her interests in engineering education research center around recruitment and retention, engineering design instruction and methodology, learning through service (NSF EFELTS project), understanding engineering students through the lens of identity theory
technology. Page 25.937.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012 Millennials Perception of Using Clicker to Support an Active Classroom Environment: An Early Adoption PerspectiveAbstractThis paper presents a multi-year study of students’ perception associated with the introduction ofa technology tool, personal response systems, starting from its initial stage to date. The goal is toprovide a reflective perspective of this topic that intertwines the instructor’s and students’ viewsassociated with the adoption of a technology tool that addresses Millennia’s need for quickfeedback
AC 2012-3832: THE PATHWAYS TAKEN BY EARLY CAREER PROFES-SIONALS AND THE FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO PATHWAY CHOICESMs. Cheryl A. Carrico P.E., Virginia Tech Cheryl Carrico is a Ph.D. student in engineering education at Virginia Tech and a graduate research as- sistant. Carrico is conducting research on early career professionals and their pathways as part of the engineering pathways study. Carrico has industry experience including as an engineering manager for General Dynamics.Ms. Katherine E. Winters, Virginia TechMs. Samantha Ruth Brunhaver, Stanford University Samantha Brunhaver is a fourth-year graduate student at Stanford University. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a focus in
AC 2012-3989: PK-12 COUNSELORS KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDES, ANDBEHAVIORS RELATED TO GENDER AND STEMMs. Meagan C. Ross, Purdue University, West Lafayette Engineer turned engineering education enthusiast, Meagan Ross is a doctoral candidate in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University and a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She received a B.S. in computer science from Texas Woman’s University and a M.S. in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she worked as a microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS) engineer for Texas Instruments. Ross is currently a K-12 STEM consultant, curriculum developer, professional development