Conference Session

Engineering Management Curriculum

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Ken Vickers; Ronna Turner; Greg Salamo

activities during the retreat combineelements of creativity training, team building, awareness expansion, etc. The camp is required ofall program students, both the entering Cohort members and the returning Cohorts.Activities are chosen that require both small and large group cooperation, and some activities aredesigned to foster a good-natured competitiveness between the Cohorts while growing the sinceof identity with the graduate program as a whole. The camp resembles at times a toy factory inan interior classroom environment, and then transforms itself into a ropes course-type outdooractivity with students being manhandled through a spider-web like rope maze.The group identity is strong at the end of the summer camp, but would be subject to rapid

Conference Session

Mentoring Graduate Students for Success

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Amyl Ghanem

; sponsors, sources of information about and aid in obtaining opportunities; models,of identity, of the kind of person one should be to be an academic." (Zelditch, 1990).Additionally, although the Circle defined a distinction between mentoring and supervising oradvising a student in research, we did choose to include elements of advising in our discussion.It was the opinion of the Circle that including mentoring in your advising or supervising stylewould contribute to the student’s success in research. Additional benefits of mentoring theresearch students include: Page 7.883.2• Increase the likelihood of a positive and productive research

Conference Session

Professionally Oriented Graduate Program

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Raymond Willis; Duane Dunlap

time faculty course loads weredecreasing to make way for increased research and publication. Graduate students tooksome of the slack but increasingly it was necessary to turn to adjuncts to staff courses.Adjuncts were too often looked on as second class stand-ins or “warm bodies” fillingvacant lines in the class schedules. Too often also they perceived themselves in the sameway. They were assigned classes, syllabuses, and textbooks and took as given theacademic teaching role assigned. During this process, the potential for the practical,“clinical,” and critical perspectives for which they are particularly fitted have too often belost.Building a New Type of Graduate FacultyThe authors believe that a major task in reshaping graduate education

Conference Session

Retention: Keeping the Women Students

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Susan Miller; Mara Wasburn

is a strategy that can connect students on what can seem dauntingly large andlonely university campuses 22. Learning communities can be organized around common interestsand curricula. “These can be used to build a sense of group identity, cohesiveness, anduniqueness … and to counteract the isolation that many students feel” 23.Networking mentoring has a long, rich tradition within academe as a strategy for bringingwomen together for their mutual benefit and support 24, 25. Defined as “an ever-changing seriesof dyadic contacts in which each person plays the role or mentor or mentee to differing degreesin each dyad” networking mentoring is an empowering strategy that has been successful inassisting women with academic progress both as faculty

Conference Session

Knowing Students:Diversity and Retention

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Elaine Borrelli

engineering. I asked two of them in a direct manner ifthey met with the professor who was recommended by their academic advisor and they said“No”. Students appear to value graduating on time and earning high grades. Two of the studentsindicated that they were honor students in high school and that they had to work harder at theuniversity to earn high grades in the engineering, science, and mathematics courses. There was aconsistent concern expressed about graduating on time. These were students who were still intheir first two years of their engineering courses. Taking more than four years to finish theirundergraduate degree was not agreeable to them even though they knew that many engineeringstudents do balance their course load over five or

Conference Session

Trends in Mechanical Engineering

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Bijan Sepahpour

groups are encouragedto design meaningful experiments. In this process, the coordinator may be able to discover thosestudents with a high level of interest and enthusiasm. Some of these student-proposed experimentsmay be expanded/fine tuned into conceivable and practical entities. Several such experiments andtheir associated apparatuses that have been successfully conceived through the proposed approach arebriefly discussed. These case studies range from a simple and yet quite an ingenious experiment tothose that are novel and not commercially available. Elements of Group Dynamics and theinstrumental role of the coordinator in recognizing the capabilities and limitations of each group andhis/her necessary willingness to spend the time for

Conference Session

Focus on Undergraduate Impact

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Kathryn Jablokow

world; how to give good presentations; and about the dynamics of human resource management.” · “Not only did I learn a lot of information about a wide variety of subjects, but I learned how to solve problems critically and completely.”The impact of the ILTM program on our students while they are at Bucknell is exceptional. Wehope that it is at least equally relevant to their future careers, preparing them to become leadersof institutions that can take advantage of the unprecedented technological, information, andenvironmental changes occurring in the world today, and that also understand the need to actethically and responsibly to sustain a healthy balance between man and his technologies and theglobal environment

Conference Session

Interdisciplinary Approach to Env. Engrg

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Maya Place; Markus Flury; Jennifer Shaltanis; Geoff Puzon; Brent M. Peyton; James Petersen; Candis Claiborn

them into adisciplinary research group, and determines when the students are ready to graduate. Finally,most research in the US is funded by grants to individual faculty members, thus reinforcing thetie between the student, faculty mentor and academic discipline, and which further encouragesthe view that graduate education should be a byproduct of immersion into an intensive researchexperience.Students trained using traditional educational methods are at a disadvantage in a world whereunderstanding of complex interrelationships, interdisciplinary thinking, and experience incollaborative problem solving are needed most.2,3,4 Further, relevancy is often difficult for thestudent to grasp, in part because the unifying relationships are the

Conference Session

Trends in Mechanical Engineering

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

John Brader; Jed Lyons

values of three resistors mustbe known. Since it was a sensitive piece of machinery, the values of the resistors needed to bedetermined without disassembling the circuitry. This fictitious, but realistic scenario providessome motivation for the students to understand the introductory theory of electric circuits.As an alternative to the role-playing introduction, interest can be generated through a discrepantevent. The circuit used during the laboratory has an inherent discrepancy if a student tries todirectly measure resistance across each of the three resistors. Two of the resistors are in parallel,so when measurements are taken, both resistors will exhibit an identical value. (See Figure 1,resistors R2 and R3.) However, the two resistors