Conference Session

Communication, Professional Development, and the Engineering Ambassador Network

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Johanna Gretchen Hatzell, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Melissa Marshall, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Karen A. Thole, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Christine Haas, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Renata S. Engel P.E., Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Joanna K. Garner, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute is to engage younger generations in theSTEM fields and make the engineering study seem more accessible and exciting, meanwhile stillgarnering leadership, presentation, and project management skills of their own.10 This paper presents an overview of the Engineering Ambassador Network. Connectedwith this overview paper are four more specific papers that provide analysis about specificaspects of the Network. One such paper focuses on the outreach done by EngineeringAmbassadors,14 a second paper focuses on the leadership development of the EngineeringAmbassadors,15 a third focuses on the establishment of Engineering Ambassador programs atthree additional schools,16 and the fourth assesses the

Conference Session

STS Perspectives on Engineering Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Wesley Marshall P.E., University of Colorado, Denver; Michael Tang, University of Colorado, Denver; Stephan A. Durham, University of Colorado, Denver

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

approved as interdisciplinary general studies course options that satisfy university corecurriculum requirements in the areas of: gender and multi-culture diversity (ENGR 3400); andinternational perspectives in an increasing global environment (ENGR 3600). Since becoming a part of the University-wide core curriculum, the two courses haveattracted considerable attention across majors and academic colleges. Students typically takethese courses to satisfy their general education requirements, and the courses are offered everyfall and spring semester in two formats: in the regular classroom as a blended course or strictlyonline during the summer months. Table 1 is a projection of next year’s enrollments based onaverage enrollment from the last

Conference Session

Rethinking Engineering Writing

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Steven R Walk, Old Dominion University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

focused problem, question, or topic appropriate for the purpose of the task 2. Identify relevant knowledge and credible sources 3. Synthesize information and multiple viewpoints related to the problem, question, or topic 4. Apply appropriate research methods or theoretical framework to the problem, question, or topic 5. Formulate conclusions that are logically tied to inquiry findings and consider applications, limitations, and implications, and 6. Reflect on or evaluate what was learned.Toward improving these outcomes through LtW, ODU implemented two faculty initiatives: (1)Faculty Workshops designed to teach faculty the techniques identified as the best practices toteach and assess writing, and (2) Action Projects designed

Conference Session

Innovations in Promoting Technological Literacy II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

J. Douglass Klein, Union College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

tools that dwarf human abilities. Page 25.476.3 Moore’s law, which states that the number of transistors on a standard chip will double everytwo years, has held since 1970. It is, of course, a law in neither the political nor the scientificsense, but rather is a pattern of technological evolution, spurred by human ingenuity andcompetitive spirit. The human genome project, predicted to take 15 years to complete in 1990,was finished in only ten and the life-cycle of technology products gets shorter and shorter.McKibben talks about our moment in technological history as being at the “knee of the curve” ofexponential growth in technological

Conference Session

Innovations in Promoting Technological Literacy II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

William R. Loendorf, Eastern Washington University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

. Initiallythe teaching methods included lectures, discussions, videos, exams, and written projects(Loendorf6, 2004). Over time the teaching methods have been expanded to include recreatedartifacts (Loendorf & Geyer9, 2008), demonstrations (Loendorf & Geyer10, 2009), othercollections of technologies (Loendorf & Geyer11, 2010), and innovative visual content(Loendorf8, 2011).An additional teaching method was incorporated right from the very beginnings of the course butwas so tightly integrated into the course that it was almost overlooked. That method wasstorytelling. Stories with a historical perspective as well as personal experiences abouttechnology are intertwined throughout the entire course. These stories, in many ways, help thestudent

Conference Session

Sustainability

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James E. Wilcox , Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Atsushi Akera, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Multidisciplinary Engineering

Paper ID #9583Nature/Society: Situating student learning outcomes in a first-year Sustain-ability Studies courseMr. James E Wilcox , Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute James Wilcox is a doctoral student in Science & Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where his dissertation project investigates the practices and politics of energy policy interventions. From 2011 to 2013 he was the Program Coordinator for Vasudha, an Undergraduate Living & Learning Com- munity dedicated to sustainability at RPI. Prior to coming to RPI, he served as an Education & Outreach Fellow in the Office of

Conference Session

Rethinking Engineering Writing

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

David M. Beams P.E., University of Texas, Tyler; Luke Niiler, University of Alabama; Beth Todd, University of Alabama; Marcus Brown, University of Alabama; Garry W. Warren, University of Alabama

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

courses is great. This need has beenshown in studies such as the Engineering Writing Initiative (EWI), which tracked thedevelopment of engineering students’ writing skills at the University of Texas at Tyler over afour-year period. In that study, the presenters identified two key deficiencies in engineeringstudents’ written communications: rhetorical skills (awareness of audience, purpose, andmessage) and visual communications (graphs, figures, etc.).The work begun by EWI continues with The Coach, a collaborative, NSF-funded project atthree institutions: the University of Alabama (UA); the University of Texas at Tyler (UT-Tyler), a state-supported regional university and a component of the University of TexasSystem; and Bevill State Community

Conference Session

Teamwork: Priming, Empathy, and Metacognition

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Nathalie Al Kakoun, Swansea University; Frederic Boy, Swansea University; Catherine Groves; Patricia Xavier, Swansea University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

engineers’ engagement with public-welfare related, human-centred designing frameworks.Dr. Frederic Boy, Swansea University Frederic Boy is an Associate Professor in Digital Analytics and Cognitive Neuroscience at Swansea Uni- versity’s School of Management and an honorary Senior Lecturer in Engineering at University College, London. Previously, he did his PhD in Grenoble University and trained in Cardiff University, where he held a Wellcome Trust VIP fellowship. His research interests include brain science, cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering. He is working on a range of multidisciplinary projects at the intersection of neuroscience and engineering, digital humanities and, more

Conference Session

Promoting Communication Skills

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Lisa R. Volpatti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Alex Jordan Hanson, University of Texas at Austin; Jennifer M. Schall; Jesse N. Dunietz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Amanda X. Chen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rohan Chitnis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Eric J. Alm; Alison F. Takemura, U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute; Diana M. Chien, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

TechnologyDr. Eric J. AlmDr. Alison F Takemura, US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute Alison loves wading into a good science story. Her first was her MIT doctoral thesis project, unlocking the gastronomical genome of a Vibrio bacterium. For some of the Vibrio’s meals, she collected seaweed from the rocky, Atlantic coastline at low tide. (Occasionally, its waves swept her off her feet.) During grad school, Alison was also a fellow in MIT’s Biological Engineering Communication Lab. Helping students share their science with their instructors and peers, she began to crave the ability to tell the stories of other scientists, and the marvels they discover, to a broader audience. So after graduating in 2015 with a

Conference Session

Restructuring/Rethinking STEM

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Nicola Sochacka, University of Georgia; Kelly Woodall Guyotte, University of Georgia; Joachim Walther, University of Georgia; Nadia N. Kellam, University of Georgia

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Paper ID #6555Faculty Reflections on a STEAM-Inspired Interdisciplinary Studio CourseDr. Nicola Sochacka, University of Georgia Dr. Nicola Sochacka received her doctorate in Engineering Epistemologies from the University of Queens- land (Brisbane, Australia). She currently holds a research and teaching position at the University of Geor- gia where she transfers her expertise in qualitative research methodologies to a variety of research contexts at the intersection of social and technological issues. This includes engineering education projects con- cerned with transdisciplinary education, student reflection, and

Conference Session

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division Technical Session 7

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kenneth W. Van Treuren, Baylor University; William M. Jordan P.E., Baylor University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

students to face the future, but practicing these topicswill give students a confidence to face the challenges that will occur on the road to graduationand after. For instance, Business Understanding is essential for a student to function in theindustry environment. How do companies operate? What is the role of engineering in acompany? What career paths are available? How would an advanced degree help or hurt mycareer? Is an advanced technical degree or a Masters of Business Administration appropriate?The answers depend on the career aspirations as often engineers become project managers in acompany. Understanding how a company operates will also help when new technologies areintroduced. Recognizing the impact of the technology on the work of the

Conference Session

Assessment and Liberal Education

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Caitlin Donahue Wylie, University of Virginia; Kathryn A. Neeley, University of Virginia; Toluwalogo Odumosu, University of Virginia

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

between technical and non-technical skills is, to useengineering terminology, “nontrivial.”part of these courses, the student produce an undergraduate thesis portfolio that consists of atechnical report on engineering research or design, an STS research paper, and a sociotechnicalsynthesis that establishes the relationship between the two major deliverables of the project. Allparts of the portfolio demonstrate the extent to which students have mastered particularoutcomes, but none of them directly assesses their ability to apply the professional skillscomprehensively in the context of a particular engineering project, in other words, their masteryof the whole to which all of the professional skills contribute. The STS faculty scheduled a

Conference Session

The Big Picture in Engineering Education

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Stephanie Quiles-Ramos, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Donna M. Riley, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Atsushi Akera, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

, international accreditation will provide global mobility for many technical graduates from all over the world. ABET accreditation will increase the professional opportunities of graduates from ABET-accredited programs as they pursue employment, education, licensure and certification, and other opportunities at home and abroad (2).19We might note that this rhetoric, found in ABET’s 2008 annual report, has the tenor of acolonialist project, in promoting U.S. educational standards within a global arena.Indeed, from the standpoint of governance, ABET’s international expansion raises questionsabout representation and fairness. While foreign universities have begun to adopt ABET’s EC2000, ABET’s volunteer workforce has not yet

Conference Session

The Big Picture in Engineering Education

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Stephen Secules, University of Maryland, College Park

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Conference Session

Identity, Culture, and Socialization

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Sara A. Atwood, Elizabethtown College; Shannon Katherine Gilmartin, Stanford University; Angela Harris, North Carolina State University; Sheri Sheppard, Stanford University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

University, and the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.Dr. Angela Harris, North Carolina State University Dr. Angela Harris joined the faculty at NCSU in August 2018 as an Assistant Professor. Harris is a member of the Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (Global WaSH) cluster in the Chancellor’s Fac- ulty Excellence Program. Her research seeks to better characterize human exposure pathways of fecal contamination and develop methods to interrupt pathogen transmission to protect human health. Harris is engaged in computational and laboratory investigations in addition to conducting field work in inter- national locations (prior work includes projects in Tanzania, Kenya, and

Conference Session

Studying Engineering Education Research & Institutions

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Atsushi Akera, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Xiaofeng Tang, Penn State University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

interviews of officials within Denmark’s ministries, this can only beconsidered a preliminary look at the institutional responses in Denmark. We also note that ouraccess at DTU was also limited by a recent, controversial decision on the part of one of thePROCEED co-investigators to relocate from DTU to Aalborg University. We believe ourfindings to be of significant interest to engineering educators in the United States. While the fullfindings of our study will be released in an edited volume produced by the PROCEED project, asummary of our findings is presented here for the ASEE audience. In the following section, wefirst present a brief introduction of the Bologna Process and the diverse reactions to it acrossnations and institutions.Varied

Conference Session

Critical Thinking, Leadership, and Creativity

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Atsushi Akera, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

1986-1987 fiscal biennium.38 A shift towards research hadalready occurred during the retrenchment during the second half of the 1970s (in no small partbecause Texas had reached peak oil in 1972), but this latest economic turn prompted the state toplace even greater emphasis on research, and a “high tech” economy modeled after SiliconValley and Route 128. It was said that educated minds would become “the oil and gas” of Texas’future economy.39The state’s most concerted bid to enter into the high tech era occurred through its successful bidto bring the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) to Austin. MCCwas the nation’s first research consortium, said to be the U.S. response to the Japanese “FifthGeneration Project” in

Conference Session

Institutional Perspectives and Boundary Work

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ron D Dempsey, Southern Polytechnic State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

just a different way to become an engineer. Based on the comments made by students, not us: The professors of ET programs are more experienced and they teach engineering courses much better. We have new, mostly not-yet accredited E programs with nothing to distinguish them from many other programs and among the most highly reputed, accredited ET programs.The changes proposed by the ET faculty as a mean of delineating between the two programs are1) establishing entrance or admission requirements to the programs, 2) the engineering programsneed to become more theoretical rather than applied, and 3) a repackaging of ET pedagogythrough project based education. The ET faculty members are quite adamant that they will

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

” and values of the profession.20 Through interaction with facultyand peers and experiences inside and outside the classroom, students engage in anticipatoryprofessional behavior as they begin to master professional competencies, gain comfort withuncertainty, identify with valued symbols, enact expected norms, espouse professional truismsand learn to project a confident, capable image to others.10,11,17,18,21Socialization includes, then, assimilating the profession‟s “myths,” or the symbols, norms, andtruisms of engineering. Building on the centrality of scientific method, engineering embodies acommitment to meritocracy: an anchoring point of engineering‟s “folk wisdom” is thatindividuals who work hard and have the appropriate skills in math

Conference Session

Engineering Communication I: History and Praxis

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Marcy Bloom Milhomme, Pennsylvania State University; Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University; Lori B. Miraldi, Pennsylvania State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

-ineffective topic-subtopic approach often used in presentations. Because data for the pilot course was considered a success by the collaborative team, thecourse was implemented and has since grown in the number of sections offered each semester.Since the piloted course in 2007, the curriculum, class size, and credit hours for the targetedcourse stayed the same as the pilot. The one exception was that the number of course sectionsavailable to students has increased. We believe that other colleges and universities would benefitfrom a detailed description of the targeted course projects, assignments, and exercises. To thatend, we next offer a detailed overview of the key curriculum that can elevate course designersfrom a theoretical to a

Conference Session

Professional Formation and Career Experiences

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Stephen Campbell Rea, Colorado School of Mines; Kylee Shiekh, Colorado School of Mines; Qin Zhu, Colorado School of Mines; Dean Nieusma, Colorado School of Mines

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

effective pedagogies andlearning activities that achieve those outcomes in a more-or-less straightforward way. HCteaches us that the process by which faculty determine instructional strategies to achievepredetermined learning objectives could be more dynamic, nuanced, and indirect, with HCplaying a central role in mediating students’ achievement of desired learning outcomes.Engineering educators should carefully examine the assumption that students will always learnexactly what (and not just how much) their backward-design efforts are intended to achieve. Andthis is true regardless of the level of sophistication of their engineered learning projects andassessment measures. By accounting for HC mediation, we believe engineering educators cantake a

Conference Session

Sociotechnical Thinking I: Classroom Experiences, Identity, and Theory

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Desen Sevi Ozkan, Tufts University; Kenyetta Anisah Rose Neal Akowa

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

socialization includes an implicit understanding of what constitutes'evidence' to base engineering decisions [5-6]. The joke quoted in Donna Riley's Engineeringand Social Justice synthesis lectures satirizes the engineer's method of 'brute force' problem-solving that ultimately takes much longer than the sociologist's method of valuing localknowledge. As an added value, the rapport between the sociologist and the sexton may provehelpful in future stages of the project that could require local engagement and community buy-in.Students learn what counts as engineering knowledge in the engineering curriculum and can bequick to employ such 'brute force' methods of problem-solving. However, what perceptions ofproblem-solving are these students coming into

Conference Session

Engineering Communication I: History and Praxis

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Royce A Francis, George Washington University; Marie C. Paretti, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Rachel Riedner, George Washington University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

; ● uncertainty about operational performance rather than certainty in projections; and, ● augmented memory or information processing through interaction with external sources, tools, and experts rather than complete and adequate internal memory.The interaction among these characteristics yields complex, potentially poorly structuredproblems—having poor data quality, ambiguity, and high-stakes. Thus, developing engineeringjudgment in order to make decisions in the face of complexity is an important educationalobjective. Prior research suggests that decision making under complexity involves severalinteracting cognitive processes including but not limited to: perception (reception or collection ofinformation from the natural, social, or

Conference Session

Improving Presentation Skills Through Summer Research and Ambassador Programs

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joanna K. Garner, Old Dominion University; Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Christine Haas, Engineering Ambassadors Network; Suzanne Sontgerath, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Avi Kaplan, Temple University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

paintactivity, the ambassador team seemed to recognize the possibility that the activity was toochallenging. The ambassador said “we realized that what we were thinking about was probably alot to ask for and just a lot of stuff to do and maybe a little bit too much at times.” Sub-theme: Consideration of technical constraints. Whereas sometimes the activitychoices seemed to be very open, one ambassador discussed the need to incorporate projects ortechnology that are peculiar to the institution. One ambassador explained that her group was“trying to expand on something that we had found but also tie it in with some of the projects thatwe do at [Institution] and some research in [Institution]. They were creating a small robot thatmoved around out of

Conference Session

Communicating Across Cultural and Epistemological Boundaries

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gordon D. Hoople, University of San Diego; Joel Alejandro Mejia, University of San Diego; Diana A. Chen, University of San Diego; Susan M. Lord, University of San Diego

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

strictly “social” or “technical.” In this paper, we briefly reviewapproaches taken to teach energy in engineering. We then examine CSPs and make the case forhow they might be used within engineering. We discuss our preliminary ideas for the course itself.The goal of this paper is to stimulate discussion within the ASEE community to improve courseeffectiveness in enhancing student learning. This project is part of a larger overall effort at theUniversity of San Diego to integrate social justice themes across the curriculum of a new generalengineering department. This paper will present our progress towards instantiating in theclassroom the broader vision laid out for our program. 1IntroductionThere is

Conference Session

Trends in Accreditation and Assessment

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Nathan M. Hicks, University of Florida; Richard J. Aleong, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Stakeholder Meetings Faculty and administration meet with program advisory board. Interviews Faculty chair meets individually with senior students to discuss educational experience. Course Related Data Exams, quizzes, assignments, projects, presentations Instructor Objective Evaluation Course instructors complete self-assessment of the achievement of outcomes.Figure 2. The mapping of Perceptions, Ability, and Behavior dimensions onto outcome (i)We organized our findings into what we call the “Curriculum-Outcomes Matrix.” This matrix(Figures 3–5) organizes the items identified throughout the self-studies into similar components

Conference Session

Writing and Communication I

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Nancy B. Barr, Michigan Technological University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

writing from completing these reports.This project officially began in summer 2012 with one comprehensive goal – to help the GTAseffectively evaluate student writing in their lab courses. Knowing that a faculty member in theuniversity’s Department of Physics had developed a one-day training session for GTAs involvedwith the first-year physics sequence required of all engineering students, my first step was tomeet with him to learn the structure and results of his efforts. While the actual structure was notgoing to be applicable to our needs (the Physics assignments required much less writing and,therefore, less feedback), the program was successful in reducing the failure rate by a significantamount thanks to a GTA handbook, common rubric, and

Conference Session

Infusing Engineering with Art (and Vice Versa)

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Andrew Findley, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; John A. Mirth, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

, as well as the aesthetics of speed and performance in the automobile industry.The ninth week of the course examined aspects of industrialization and project management,with the continuing dual perspective of the artist and engineer. Course participants were firstintroduced to the processes and principles of mass and lean production. As the week progressed,the class considered a variety of topics, including 3rd century BC Greek innovations in the massproduction of decorative mold-made ceramic bowls and the ways in which the massive projectsof artists Jean-Claude and Christo can be viewed as examples of corporate management and themanagement of populations.The other weeks of the course were built along similar lines, with each week exploring

Conference Session

Communication and Engineering Careers: Motivating Our Students

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Katherine Golder, British Columbia Institute of Technology; Deanna Gail Levis, British Columbia Institute of Technology; Darlene B Webb, British Columbia Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

the main focus of this polytechnic institute?The institute that is home to Idol focuses primarily on preparing students for successful careers,and most often hires instructors who bring prior industry experience to their teaching positionsalong with their academic credentials. Industry involvement with instructors, course materials,and collaboration with student projects is common and encouraged, so students get firsthandexperience with workplace standards and practices.For students, assignments and extracurricular activities that have clear links to their futureworking life make their courses more meaningful to them and more practical for the workplace.For instructors, this system demands time in keeping up to date on current industry

Conference Session

Accreditation and Outcomes-based Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna M. Riley, Smith College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

lend support toneoliberal trends in academia.It may be premature to begin a conversation about alternatives before the critiques of OBE inengineering education have been fully articulated. Tentatively, then, I will point to somestrategies that may address the concerns I have raised here about OBE and EC 2000.We have learned from critical pedagogy that our apparatuses of university administration andaccreditation will reproduce structures of power that we ultimately seek to dismantle, resist, orchange. We cannot retain the same decision-making structures – neither in our universities nor inour accreditation system, and expect to see different results. Thus, a project as simple aschanging ABET outcomes - for example to include diversity as a new