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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Scott Fogler; John T. Bell

procedures that they have been taught.On the other hand, anyone who has ever experienced an accident is likely to remember thatexperience far longer than any set of written safety rules. Obviously we can’t deliberatelyinvolve our students in real accidents just to emphasize the importance of safety, but we can letthem experience virtual accidents, through the use of virtual reality, ( VR )[1-7]. These virtualaccidents will not have the same impact as real accidents, but they will have a more long lastingeffect than written rules on paper.One of the major goals of this project is to create a series of virtual accidents that will have asbroad an impact as possible on a world-wide scale. This goal implies delivering the simulationsvia the world wide

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Jahan Kauser; Carlos Sun; Ralph A. Dusseau; Jess Everett; Joseph Orlins; Beena Sukumaran; Douglas Cleary

reverseengineering. This continues in the Sophomore, Junior and Senior Engineering Clinics. InSophomore Clinic, students work on multidisciplinary design projects. This course is also tied tothe students’ communication courses, allowing faculty from engineering and communications towork together. In Junior and Senior Clinic, students work in small teams on industry orgovernment sponsored projects. Other innovations include a seminar course on practice issuesand a two semester senior design course.Preparation for our first ABET accreditation visit began in earnest in Fall 1999. As our firstgraduating class was in May 2000, our first ABET visit was in Fall 2000. A number ofassessments are used to ensure continual improvement, including evaluation of select

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Neil Opfer; Jaeho Son; John Gambatese

through to heavy construction.In addition, we wanted students to gain insight into construction problems faced by firms inthese markets. These insights might help students to focus on areas of exploration in completingthesis or project requirements for their particular degree study plan. Also, we wanted to exposestudents to research that involved our construction faculty members. A further goal was toencourage student presentations on their selected topics.In order to address these above concerns, it was decided to implement a graduate seminar inconstruction. This is a two-course one-credit (two total credits) sequence spread over twoconsecutive semesters. Currently, we are in the second year of offering this graduate seminar.The subject paper

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Denise Nicoletti; John Orr

Session 2532 An Implementable/Sustainable Outcomes Assessment Process for an Electrical Engineering Program Denise Nicoletti John A. Orr Worcester Polytechnic InstituteAbstractThe ECE department at WPI has adopted four principal means of assessing program outcomes:course-based assessments, assessments of each senior project by the project advisor, acomprehensive biennial review of senior projects, and an annual senior survey. The course-based assessment component is both one of the more important assessment aspects, and one ofthe more difficult to

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Lizette R. Chevalier; James N. Craddock

Page 6.636.1I. IntroductionThe Introduction to Environmental course is a junior level Civil Engineering course required forall civil engineering majors. In addition, students from the environmental studies program maytake this course. The laboratory component of the course includes, but is not limited to, measuringbiochemical oxygen demand, determining solids content, measuring the temperature, pH, anddissolved oxygen profiles in a lake, and conducting coliform bacteria tests. To date, the main focusof the project has been on the development of the environmental laboratory, due in large part to thetime required to purchase new equipment for the mechanics of materials laboratory.Mechanics of Materials is a second-semester sophomore or first

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

William Jemison; James Schaffer; William Hornfeck

undergraduate research atLafayette College, has enabled many of the participating students to gain valuableresearch experience which in turn has given them excellent opportunities to go on tograduate school. Further, this formal program enables the College to sustain its strongrecord in graduate school placement. The program was started in 1986 with fourteenstudents. Now a $250,000 per year program, it supports approximately 100 students eachyear in high quality undergraduate research projects. Support for EXCEL comes not onlyfrom outside faculty research grants but also from endowments, private foundationgrants, and College funds. It is open to students in all majors at the College who havecompleted their first year of study and have achieved a GPA of

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Robin Redfield; Brian Self

physicalunderstanding of dynamics and problem-solving methods.Each area of interest will be presented, with a brief description of student survey results. Thestudents scored the various projects on a five-point Likert scale shown below: Table 1 - Five Point Likert Scale 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly AgreeStudents rated “interest/motivation” and “understanding” for each activity. We makerecommendations for others that may wish to use these projects at the end of the projectdiscussions. We also compare the motivation and understanding derived from the projects tothat obtained from simply doing homework.ROCKET LAUNCHOne of the

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Maria Flores; Arthur Gerstenfeld

Session 2460 Engineering Education & International Management Initiatives Arthur Gerstenfeld, Maria F. Flores Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Worcester, MassachusettsAbstractThe purpose of this paper is to describe a project, which has been in work for the past two years,which we believe, has several implications for education. This project has been partially fundedby the Department of Education, Business and International Education Division. While we allagree that the economic and technical world is smaller and closer every day, we do not agree onhow we should handle that in terms of educating

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Jerome Schubert

ultra-deep waters. The SubSea MudLiftDrilling Joint Industry Project (SMDJIP) was formed to develop the technology to successfullydrill in water depth as great as 10,000 feet.1The outcome of this JIP is a drilling process referred to in the petroleum industry as “SubSeaMudLift Drilling” (SMD). SMD is a major step change in offshore oil and gas drilling, and it wasrealized in the very early stages of the JIP that education and training for everyone involved inSMD would be essential for success of the project. In SMD, a set of fluid pumps are placed onthe sea floor to lift the drilling fluid from the wellbore annulus to the surface via a return line,reducing the pressure exerted on the wellbore by the drilling fluid from the sea floor to the

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

John Chandler; A. Dean Fontenot

traditionally have been underrepresented in science and engineeringdisciplines into educational and career paths in these fields. In addition, the program alsodirectly addresses the problem of the growing “digital divide.” This program putscomputers in students' homes and teaches them meaningful ways to use the technology torelate to their schoolwork, family, and community. At-risk students work side-by-sidewith their parents and teachers to build their own computers and learn to use them byparticipating in community-oriented projects that incorporate essentials of science,mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) disciplines. They also developcommunication and writing skills with curriculum components involving essay writing,business

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Umid Nejib

boundaries, a highly diverse work force, an elevated educational profile, and rapidcommunication and dissemination media. J.S.S. Mahavidyapeetha Educational System of India andWilkes University of the USA intend to meet the challenge of the new century by developing andimplementing a joint educational venture favoring an integrated approach to engineering curriculum.An approach that will provide a learning environment and instructional strategy between twoorganizations halfway across the globe separated by cultural differences, educational traditions, andmanagement styles. The project is self-supporting and funded entirely by the two institutions, whichis a critical ingredient for the success of this cooperative venture. The obvious reason was to

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert McLauchlan; Jennifer Crosby; Gary Weckman

purpose of this program is toprovide a means of improving current engineering programs in order to produce quality studentsthat can meet the changing and demanding needs of their future employers. This analysis makesuse of data provided by the Assessment and Evaluation (A/E) team at TAMUK. A commitmentwas made by TAMUK, along with six other FC partner institutions, to thoroughly assess andevaluate the work of students to provide a foundation that would ensure student development andlife-long learning in engineering education.I. IntroductionThis work makes use of data provided in the course of developing Assessment/Evaluation (A/E)results for the Foundation Coalition curriculum development research project at Texas A&MUniversity-Kingsville

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Oral LaFleur; Matthew Govindsanny; Joshua Hill; Daniel Jones

, Butterworth, South AfricaAbstractThis paper describes a cross-cultural engineering project involving students in high school andcollege. The primary objective was to inspire under-represented students to study engineering byhands-on experiences with electro-mechanical equipment. Another objective was to givestudents and faculty from the United States the opportunity to interact with colleagues in SouthAfrica. This was accomplished by installing a solar-powered refrigerator in a remote SouthAfrican village that did not have access to electric power. Students participated in all aspects ofthe project. After successful start-up of the refrigerator in a home, faculty at a South Africanuniversity agreed to maintain the refrigerator and monitor its ongoing

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Yi-Zun Wang; Mohammad Saifi

only for project design,but also for collaborative learning. Through team projects, team presentation, and teamevaluation, students gather ideas and share their expertise, they support each other and create acollaborative learning environment. The advantages to teamwork are obvious. On the otherhand, it is difficult to be certain that members of the team all deserve the same grade. There isproblem associated with fairness. We usually assign individual work as a part of project andrequire individual project reports based on the teamwork.Mathematics PreparationMathematics plays an important role in engineering study. One of the problems in freshmanengineering class is the weakness in mathematics. We try to place students in the appropriatemath

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Jeffrey Fergus

from otherdisciplines can take these courses as technical electives. Two of these courses (Metals andPolymers) have laboratories, but the laboratory is listed as a separate course, so that students cantake the lecture portion of the course without the associated laboratory.III. Impact of Curriculum ModificationsMaterials engineering students at Auburn will now gain significant exposure to another technicaldiscipline, which will broaden their educational experience and better prepare them for working oncross-disciplinary projects and teams. The cross-disciplinary specialization could provide anadvantage for the student when searching for employment. For example, the MicroelectronicsFabrication and Devices specialization listed above would help

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Larry McIntire; Ka-yiu San; Ann Saterbak

applied to understand and to model different aspects of asystem. Case studies of the kidney, cellular metabolism and the circulatory system have beendeveloped. Finally, a group term project focused on modeling an organ and describing an assistdevice synthesizes material. The term project also emphasizes team work and written and oralpresentation skills which are taught in conjunction with the Cain Project in Engineering andProfessional Communication. Assessment includes extensive mid-year and terminal surveyswhich focus on content, mode of presentation and quality of teaching. Conservation Principles inBiology and Medicine is serving as the template for incorporating ABET 2000 into a newdepartment. Course notes are being developed into a textbook

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Donald Goddard

integrated PRP component in undergraduate design courses, there isusually no requirement for product realization prior to the “Capstone Senior Design” course, if itoccurs at all. When students study production techniques using desktop or larger equipment,such as might be utilized in prototype development, they experience product realization and aremotivated to return to this equipment for the creation of parts such as are needed to complete the“capstone senior design” project. This is only possible provided the equipment is capable ofproducing real parts, not just wax models. Even prior to a capstone design course, in a coursesuch as machine component design, product realization equipment allows the students to makeand examine actual components

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Carl Zorowski

berepeated for the students who misses a presentation or becomes confused or lost in the normalprogress of the class. There is no way in this live format for a student to rehear or review what issaid in the classroom short of the course being taped. This aspect of the graduate education process is neither very efficient nor does it makefor a very effective learning environment. However, it is generally accepted that when thislecture course format is supplemented with one-on-one personal research project interaction witha faculty advisor the total graduate educational experience appears to work quite well andproduces acceptable results. But just because it works quite well is no reason why the processshouldn’t be informed to be even better

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

William Clark; Lisa Comparini; Anthony Dixon; David DiBiasio

. The major new features were a restructuring and spiraling ofspecific chemical engineering topics around a framework of open-ended, team-based projects. Inthe following we will refer to the group that took the new curriculum as the spiral-taught and thetraditionally taught students as the comparison. Note that "spiral-taught" is a convenient term weuse that includes all the teaching and curricular changes implemented during the project, not justthe spiral topic structure.The spiral curriculum was delivered through a variety of channels including cooperative-groupprojects, traditional lectures, homework problems, in-class active learning sessions, interactivemultimedia learning tools, and laboratory experiments. To assure individual

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Sean DiBartolo; Linfield Brown; Chris Swan

workers and off-site abutters), and community relations. The project also requires theteams to obtain audits by professional and/or experts in each of these areas. All solutions andrecommendations must be defensible.The contest opens at the start of the academic year and culminates in a four-day “conference” atthe NMSU campus in April. Tufts University has participated in the WERC design contest for 5of the last 6 years. Beyond its competitive aspects, the design contest serves as a valuableeducational tool in the undergraduate curriculum. For example, students are exposed to "realworld" aspects of environmental design, and learn the importance of working in multi-disciplinary teams. In addition, they are encouraged to confront the interplay

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Gurbax Singh; Abhijit Nagchaudhuri

problems; comprehension of physical principles; engineering problemsolving and teamwork and development of communication skills.UMES mathematics, science and engineering faculty members are directly involved incurriculum development and providing the enrichment activities. Engineeringundergraduate students who are in good academic standing act as project advisors fordesign activities and software efforts integrated with the program. SEBP students alsolook up at them role models and can approach them for advise and counseling. Agraduate student in mathematics and computer sciences provides additional tutoringsupport and is also responsible for enhancement of the project website.I. IntroductionUMES is a historically black university and the 1890

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Ryan Wicker; Connie Della-Piana; Bill Diong

, Curriculumand Laboratory Improvement program to develop such a laboratory with the following expectedstudent outcomes. First, students will become adept at using common industry software packagesfor system modeling, analysis, control design and simulation. Second, students will learn how touse common industry measurement instruments as well as techniques for frequency-domainmodeling, analysis and control design purposes when working with hardware. Third, and mostimportantly, they will gain experience in using a DSP development system to implement thecontrol algorithms they have designed for the given electromechanical systems. The last item distinguishes this project from other recent similar projects that allowstudents to experiment with

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Patricia Brackin; Julia Williams

Session 2625 Teaching and Assessing Team Skills in a Senior Level Design Course Patricia Brackin, Julia Williams Rose-Hulman Institute of TechnologyABSTRACTIndustry wants to hire graduates with good teaming skills. As a result, many universities areintroducing projects that require students to work in teams. Unfortunately engineering educatorsfind it difficult to assess a student’s team skills adequately. Requiring students to work in teamsdoes not necessarily improve a student’s ability to be an effective team member. Engineeringeducators must decide what teaming skills students need

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Paul Flikkema

parts and programmed in the high-level NQC language using the Robolab RCX microcontroller module. As the semester proceeds,students tackle an array of interrelated problems that motivate the study of sensor signal process-ing, control, scheduling, and resource sharing. In a final project, the students tackle a distributedintelligence project in which an odometry-equipped robot communicates with a PC-based pro-gram that tracks the robot’s position. To encourage adoption by other electrical engineering andcomputer engineering programs, a detailed description of the required resources and their cost isincluded.IntroductionThere is no doubt that developments in microelectronics and computing technology in the last halfof this century have changed

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Phillip J. Cornwell; Charles Farrar

included 1) lectures on various engineering topics such as computationalstructural dynamics, experimental modal analysis, random vibrations, signal processing, etc., 2) adistinguished lecturer series in which prominent guest lecturers gave talks about cutting edgeresearch in structural dynamics, 3) field trips and 4) an eight week project having both ananalytical and an experimental component. In this paper the details of the program and of how itwas assessed will be presented.I. IntroductionOver the last 20 years there has been a 20% decline in the number of engineering degreesgranted while university degrees in general have increased approximately 20%1 . Engineeringdynamics, which encompasses areas such as flight dynamics, vibration isolation

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Edgar Conley; Linda Riley

Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Educationwe redesigned the freshman course. The following sections discuss the specifics of the courseredesign and the challenges and rewards in adopting the new format.General - Syllabus - The class joint syllabus overviewed both the IE and ME components of theclass as well as ABET-required syllabus information for each of the two engineering disciplines.In detail, the syllabus described course credit awarded in an even mixture of engineering basicsand projects (60%), with the remaining 40% based on sign-in attendance plus the final exam.We viewed mandatory attendance as critical to our retention goals

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Ronald E. Musiak; Richard A. Grabiec; Eric W. Haffner; Steve Schreiner; Alan K. Karplus; Mary Vollaro

selected by using the results of Belbin's personalitytype questionnaire (administered before classes started during summer registration andorientation) [4]. Each team had a balanced mix of personality types (idea sources, detailers,finishers, etc.).V. Course ContentThe following outlines the content of the various activity areas used in the course.1. Design Activity: 1.1. Summer orientation class in engineering responsibilities and ethics 1.2. Presentation of the engineering design method, tasking a project, design-team behaviors and responsibilities (including team contracts), engineering reports (oral and written) 1.3. Design competition problem 1 - Design a scale model of a material mover that can move the most

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Kathryn Jablokow

course. Specific classroomactivities and delivery techniques will be discussed, along with typical homework assignmentsand the semester-long individual course project. Student outcomes and feedback will be reportedas well. While the present audience for this course is composed of working adults, it is highlysuitable as a junior or senior level design elective and may be easily integrated into anundergraduate curriculum.1.0 IntroductionWhat do the processes of invention, engineering design, and creative problem solving have incommon? This paper describes a course that answers this question by examining invention andcreative design from the perspective of the practicing engineer. The primary objective of thiscourse is to help students

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Otto Loewer; Ken Vickers; John Ahlen; Greg Salamo

different fields will work side-by-side, and around which ideas will flow freely, as a team effort produces the needed proof-of-principle. Equipment within the appropriate departments that could breadboard an idea under consideration will be brought to this table. Initially, such a table will exist in physics and in electrical engineering to focus the proposed effort in Nano and Microelectronics-Photonics. After the first two years the program will be evaluated, which will then indicate any value to expand into other engineering and science areas. These collaborative projects will enrich both the larger community and our own educational mission by integrating students’ research, creative work, classroom learning, and

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert Parden

stems from the change in the work environment.Empowerment and dispersed processing means that each individual must assume greater self-leadership. The first step is to become a value-added contributor. This is the traditional goal forengineers. But then must come the ability to work more effectively in project teams. The day ofthe lone ranger has long since passed. Now it is collaboration to reach higher levels of increasinglycomplex achievement. Next is the need for leadership in the project groups within in which mosttechnical professionals work. This is where facilitation enters our program as described in theparagraphs that follow.Santa Clara's Engineering Management CoursesWe begin with a broad survey in three, two-quarter-unit