Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Doug Jacobson; Barbara L. Licklider

year nearly 1400 ISU freshman students are currently members of 59 learningcommunities on campus. A learning community is comprised of approximately 15 students withina common academic area of study and they take a core block of classes together. Nearly half of the1400 students involved have a residential component to the learning community concept. Theresidential component involves having same-gender students within a learning community live onthe same residence hall floor. This experience during the freshmen year helps the student adjust tothe personal and social aspects of college life, and surviving the academic demands to which fewstudents are prepared to enter

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Mark L. Smith; Kenneth E. Rowe; Carlos R. Morales; Rick L. Homkes

around the classroom.The large size of this class was, in part, due to the fact that the students where from severaldifferent majors within the university. This provided a challenge in that not only where thestudents coming with different levels of experience and backgrounds, but were also looking togain a view of IS that applied to their major. A student in Computer Technology is looking atthe tool he/she will use and create as an IS professional, and a management major is looking atunderstanding what tools he/she can use in decision making. The students had little interest inthe parts of the course that did not apply to their major. This is one place where havingindustrial experience really helped. I was able to give real life examples of my

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

John Mitchell; Katherine Sanders; Chris Carlson-Dakes; Patrick Farrell

“successful” faculty developmentexperience. To begin with, we view a visiting scholar as a person who is hired by an institutionto come give a talk, lead a workshop, or in some other way communicate particular expertise orskills to a local audience. This visitor is typically chosen because of expertise in a specific area,and that area has already been defined by someone at the institution as of value and/orcomplementary to the direction the organization wishes to move. In sum, someone hasdetermined that what that visitor has to offer is a valuable contribution to the local community.In the context of this paper, the person making this decision might be running a facultydevelopment center, an administrator, or a faculty member who has a personal

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Kirk H. Schulz; Noel Schulz

survey are listed in Table 2. One of the most telling numbers is thatalmost 50% of the current or upcoming graduate students did not decide to attend graduateschool until their senior year. The top three reasons for going to graduate school were: 1. To get more depth in my discipline 2. To provide future job opportunities 3. To explore/investigate a topic in my disciplineThe biggest positive influences that helped students decide in favor of graduate school wereadvice from a faculty member, encouragement from a family member and interactions withgraduate students. Over two thirds of the students had an immediate family member who hadgone to graduate school. Only 29% had a parent go to graduate school. The rest were samegeneration

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Rose M. Marra; Thomas Litzinger

syllabi including specific statements of student learning objectives • Collaborative learning, • Project-based learning1. Faculty will learn strategies for balancing the demands of their careers as well as their careers and personal lives.Agenda, Workshop Format & LogisticsFink [7] describes several models for conducting faculty “orientations”. One criterion by whichthese models vary is when they are held during the academic year. Our workshop is offered justprior to the beginning of the fall semester for a day and a half. We chose this timing as most ofour new faculty positions begin in August. Other institutions validly choose to offer new facultyorientations in an ongoing fashion throughout a first term or academic year. Such

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Rahul Bargava; Michael Rosenblatt; Howard M. Choset; Amy Graveline

thefollowing working list. This list served as a design template for the new course, and hasnow become our benchmark for evaluation.Goals of Directed Constructionism Design• Develop an artifact construction component to the course.• Provide ample tools, both physical ones and ideas. In both cases, do not simply give minimum ingredients for a recipe, but enough to do a task many ways. (In the case of providing ideas, this is largely the job of instructional component.)• The hands-on component should be closely tied with theoretical ideas in the curriculum.• Challenges should be personally meaningful to students. Not toy tasks, but realistic, creative design challenges.• Give freedom to explore, but remain within constraints of time allotted per

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Andrew T. Rose

reallywanted more interactions with others in my work environment. I believe that a career inengineering education would provide this. As a registered nurse, my wife’s work experiencesprovided similar personal interactions and rewards so she easily understood my needs and careergoals.V. Understand the Commitment InvolvedTo avoid any surprises, make sure that everyone involved is aware of the amount of workrequired for a faculty position. The family of any faculty member must be willing to activelyplan family activities with the demands of the faculty position in mind. Family members notfamiliar with the amount of work associated with a faculty position versus an industrial position,may not understand the changes in free time available after this type

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Robin H. Lovgren; Michael J. Racer; Anna P. Phillips

teaching o Team projects, with a balanced evaluation of three elements - group dynamics, technical merit, and communicationTable 2. University of Memphis Mission StatementThe University of Memphis is a member of the State University and Community CollegeSystem of Tennessee and is governed by the Tennessee Board of Regents. As an urbanuniversity, The University of Memphis provides a stimulating academic environment forits students, including an innovative undergraduate education and excellence in selectedresearch areas and graduate programs. The academic environment extends beyond thecampus boundaries to encompass the entire community. o Education is enhanced through exposure to diversity in the composition of the student body, faculty

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Sohail Anwar

and their teachers. Theprogram is designed to address each one of the above mentioned skills.A major problem that currently exists in the schools in the United States is the lack ofappropriate methods and tools which should be used to motivate students to explore careers inscience and engineering (Anwar, 1998). In most of the schools, excellence in mathematics isregarded as a key to success in science and engineering. Students are taught numerousmathematical concepts without teaching them how these concepts are put into application in thereal world. Many math teachers are unfortunately unaware of how engineers and scientists usemathematics to solve real-world problems (Mowzoon, White, Blaisdell, and Rowland, 1999). Byinfusing science and

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Margarita Takach; Yiyuan J. Zhao; Reza Langari; Ray Taghavi; Mehrdad Ghasemi Nejhad; Luigi Martinelli; Linda Ann Riley; K. Krishnamurthy; Janet M. Twomey; Degang Chen; David Radcliffe

facilitators for change.There are several challenge areas for any curriculum change. They are:• Any significant redesign of curriculum offerings requires the coordination and consensus ofmany faculty members, and crosses different departmental and college boundaries. At the sametime, faculty members already have substantial workloads in research and teaching.• The current university reward system does not encourage efforts in curriculum redesign.Faculty members are rewarded for individual achievements within the university and the academiccommunity in the broadest sense. Within the university, faculty are rewarded for the number ofpublications, the number of graduate students advised, and the amount of funded researchobtained. This is the primary

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Hisham Alnajjar

ILBs are centered on a body of work that is common to allthe FIGed courses, it allows faculty members to pursue the learning goals of integrationand critical thinking together. Students experience a learning situation that is notfragmented by discipline or course; their learning about the common work will employmultiple perspectives of the courses. It creates among the faculty, a community ofcommon learners, or students. When designing/establishing the activities to support the Page 5.316.3ILBs an essential component should not be overlooked: a main project [1]. Teams ofstudents will have to work on a project(s) and the projects should be structured

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Diana G. Somerton; Craig W. Somerton

subgroups are used to develop decision-making input: • Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (MEUCC) which consists of members from the faculty and academic staff and student constituent groups • Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Continuous Quality Improvement Program External Review Board (UG/ERB) which consists of members from the alumni and employer constituencies • Department Faculty Meetings which consist of the entire department facultyThe department chair appoints a faculty member to serve as the ME 2000 coordinator tochampion the effort and to interact with the department chair and constituent groups. Anindication as to how the stakeholder groups interact

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert L. Armacost; Robert Hoekstra; Michael A. Mullens

doing things that “givesomething back to the community”.12Service learning has not only benefited the community and the student. Ansell17 reports thatobserving the personal interface of student and patient (client) and the metamorphoses resultingin attitudes, friendships, and overall learning, was one of the most rewarding experiences of his38 year career as an engineering professor. Gokhale and Aldrich12 indicate that the School ofEngineering and Technology also benefited from a service learning project through the publicityit received in local newspaper and on television.While liberal art educators have been on the forefront of service learning, the engineeringeducation literature does describe some service learning type experiences. Large

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Lisa A. Haston; James S. Fairweather; P. David Fisher; Diane Rover

Investigator for the project "Visions for Embedded Systems Laboratories" sponsored by the NationalScience Foundation Combined Research-Curriculum Development Program. She serves as the Director of theundergraduate program in Computer Engineering. Dr. Rover received an NSF Career Program award in 1996.LISA A. HASTONLisa Haston is a doctoral student in Educational Administration at Michigan State University. She received her B.A.in German and M.A. in Educational Administration: Student Affairs at MSU. Previous to her doctoral studies, Ms.Haston directed the Academic Resource Center and was on the faculty at Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan. Ms.Haston currently holds two graduate research appointments, and is involved in the Tech Prep Initiative in

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Barke

andLatucca, 1996: 44-45). Curricula assume consensus in which the relevant faculty agree that aparticular set of courses and material comprise the appropriate body of knowledge. Acurriculum depends on its implied determinism: students who take the prescribed courses inDiscipline A will be able to solve A-type problems, and when they complete the curriculumthey will be qualified as members of A. With insulated feedback from the multidisciplinarynature of the real world, the graduate in most fields is likely to be shocked to find that (his)college education has made him a specialist who is “not learned, for he is formally ignorant ofall that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he. . . ‘knows’ verywell his own tiny

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Nancy L. Johnson; Edward S. Pierson

Page 5.49.7students study dc circuits, and the second-year students study ac circuits (requires more advancedmath tools). In both cases, the basic concepts are introduced in lecture/discussion sessions taughtby an engineering faculty member. As the need for mathematical tools is demonstrated, the mathteachers teach the necessary math. Hands-on laboratory sessions reinforce the concepts byallowing the participants to build and test appropriate electrical circuits. At the same time theylearn to use modern electrical test equipment -- multimeters, power supplies, oscilloscopes, etc.In companion computer sessions, specialized software (Pspice or Electronic Workbench) is usedto model electrical circuits, and the results of the computer models are

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael T. Hertz; Luna P. Magpilli; Michael E. Gorman

negativeside effects of specialization and compartmentalization by building an intimate link between technical andethical training. With support from the National Science Foundation1, we created a research andeducational experience that focuses on producing engineering graduate students who will be able tounderstand the social and ethical dimensions of complex, heterogeneous technological systems. As part oftheir training, the students in this option produce case studies that emphasize ethical issues in the designprocess. Students then undertake a thesis that combines ethical and technical aspects of engineering byfocusing on the case study. Our goal is to turn out ethical professionals who are able to engage in moral imagination.According to

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

William C. Beston; Sharon B. Fellows; Richard Culver

. Students do not havetime to reflect on what they are learning or to explore personal interests through elective courseswhile in college. The seeds of effective LLL must be sown at the beginning of the program if thecollege experience is going to support this type of development in engineering students. Thispaper describes activities being introduced in the DTeC course at Binghamton University (BU)and the engineering science program at Broome Community College (BCC) to start students onthe path toward becoming self-directed learners (SDL), the key to LLL.A successful program for teaching SDL must have two components. First, it must motivate thestudents to aspire to be self-directed learners. This is not easy. In the traditional program