Conference Session

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division Poster Session

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

William E. Genereux, Kansas State University, Salina

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

education ofengineers. ABET accreditation requires “an ability to communicate effectively” as a generallearning outcome for engineering students.7 Communication and other interpersonal skills canmake or break the career of an engineer. As J. Ben O’Neal notes, “most engineers are limited intheir career not by a lack of technical knowledge, but by an inability to reason verbally,communicate their ideas to others, and furnish leadership.” 8Perhaps the most important of communications skills for students is writing. Writing is theprocess through which students think on paper, explore ideas, raise questions, attempt solutions,uncover processes, build and defend arguments, brainstorm, introspect, and figure out what isgoing on. 9 Writing organizes

Conference Session

Integration of Engineering and Other Disciplines (Including Liberal Arts)

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Arthur Felse, Northwestern University; Igor Kourkine

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Multidisciplinary Engineering

to be at the forefront of technologycommercialization. The situation is further complicated by the fact that about 45% of students inengineering MS programs are non-resident aliens, who are even less familiar than domesticstudents with the technology commercialization processes in the United States. Given thesubstantial number of graduate degrees awarded in the USA annually (Table 1), we think thatmore rigorous education in technology commercialization is not just beneficial, but it is Page 24.103.4necessary for graduate students’ career growth and the future success of technologycommercialization. This education should be designed to bridge

Conference Session

The Interdisciplinary Nature of Engineering

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Xiaofeng Tang, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Multidisciplinary Engineering

research seeks tounderstand the forces that motivate educators to blend engineering learning with liberal studies,the institutional and pedagogical strategies used in different integrative programs, and theimpacts of liberal learning on students’ understandings of engineering and its social context. Inthis paper, I focus on a subset of the research questions posed for the dissertation: ● What motivates students to study engineering in a liberal education environment? ● In what ways does the experience of “a liberal education for engineers” assist students’ personal growth and career development? ● To what extent does students’ understanding of engineering take into account the social dimensions?MethodsMy dissertation

Conference Session

Critical Thinking, Leadership, and Creativity

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kacey Beddoes, Oregon State University; Corey M. Schimpf, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Alice L. Pawley, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

in broadening methodological diversity in EER, 2) persistentunderrepresentation of female faculty, 3) limitations of current metaphors, and 4) the significantstructuring role that metaphors play in our thoughts, actions, and research, we wrote an articlethat put forth a new metaphor-based grounded theory and attempted to explain its significancefor contributing new understandings of the careers of female engineering faculty members. Weturn now to a brief overview of how we analyzed the data for that study, what we found, andhow those findings led to a metaphor-based grounded theory analysis.Data analysis: metaphors as theoretical codesData came from semi-structured interviews with male and female faculty members andadministrators in

Conference Session

Integrating Engineering & Liberal Education

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Brent K. Jesiek, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Paper ID #10028Torquing Engineering: Historical and Contemporary Challenges to the Tech-nical Core via InternationalizationProf. Brent K Jesiek, Purdue University, West Lafayette Dr. Brent K. Jesiek is Assistant Professor in the Schools of Engineering Education and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He is also an Associate Director of Purdue’s Global En- gineering Program, leads the Global Engineering Education Collaboratory (GEEC) research group, and is the recent recipient of an NSF CAREER award to study boundary-spanning roles and competencies among early career engineers. He holds a B.S. in

Conference Session

Sustainability

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Justin L. Hess, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Sarah Aileen Brownell, Rochester Institute of Technology; Alexander T. Dale, Engineers for a Sustainable World

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Multidisciplinary Engineering

exposestudents to these complex problems are merited. Engineering has traditionally addressedunintended consequences of technological development (e.g. air pollution), with ‘end-of-pipe’technologies (e.g. scrubbers), but for a more sustainable world, the root causes of wickedproblems must also be addressed and engineering students must learn to analyze and engage withthese root causes.Barriers to Effective InstructionEngineers, engineering educators, and other technical professionals must play a role inresponding to the challenges posed by wicked problems in their careers. Traditional engineeringeducation tends to lack exposure to complex problems.6 As with other ill-structured problems, inorder to solve wicked problems students must develop their own

Conference Session

The Interdisciplinary Nature of Engineering

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alan Chong, University of Toronto; Lydia Wilkinson, University of Toronto; Deborah Tihanyi, University of Toronto

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Multidisciplinary Engineering

valuable. Second, students see the relevance of their experiencein these courses to their chosen careers more clearly. And finally, these intersections begin tobreak down traditional binaries between engineering and the arts within an instructionalenvironment that takes for granted their ability to contribute meaningfully to a discourse that isseparate but complimentary to their own.2. Background:Arguments for a liberal education for engineers identify a number of positive outcomesstemming from required courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences: through immersion inthe liberal arts students become more culturally aware, are capable of inter- and cross-disciplinary collaboration, have stronger communication skills, and are capable of

Conference Session

Integrating Engineering & Liberal Education

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dara R. Fisher, Harvard University; Aikaterini Bagiati, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sanjay E. Sarma, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

368 individuals contacted with interview requests,ten volunteered to participate in this study.We selected an open-ended, responsive interviewing model for this study to ensure flexibility incommunication with respondents14. To this end, our interview protocol was divided into threeloose stages: (1) biographic background and experiences at MIT; (2) post-graduation career pathand experiences transitioning from college to the workplace; and (3) impressions of entry-levelengineers based on their experiences as managers or supervisors. In total, each interview lastedapproximately 30-40 minutes, and interviewee responses began to saturate after approximatelysix to seven interviews.When examining the final interview data, skills or attributes were

Conference Session

The Interdisciplinary Nature of Engineering

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mehmet Vurkaç, Oregon Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Multidisciplinary Engineering

the summer of 2013 at Oregon Instituteof Technology (also known as Oregon Tech). The purpose of the course was to introducestudents with engineering, medical technology, computing technology, and managementbackgrounds to the concepts, techniques, knowledge, and perspectives that diverse fields ofstudy (such as classical literature, mathematics, and cognitive psychology) can contribute to theirtechnical careers and to their lives as informed citizens.1The design of the course drew on the instructor’s prior teaching experiences of a number ofgeneral-education courses at a sister institution in the Oregon state system, principally drawingfrom a standard critical-thinking course described below in the section “Course Design andHistory.”The pilot

Conference Session

Integration of Engineering and Other Disciplines (Including Liberal Arts)

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Katherine Hennessey Wikoff, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Cynthia Wise Barnicki, Milwaukee School of Engineering; James R. Kieselburg II, Grohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Multidisciplinary Engineering

into freshman-level humanities course and a junior-level technical course allowed students to make connections with what they learned earlier in their college careers. • Not insignificant is the fact that this interdisciplinary project brought together three people from very different academic areas to exchange ideas.The Museum - Contributions to the Synthesis of Art and EngineeringWhile the seeds may have been planted much earlier, the synthesis of art and engineering atMilwaukee School of Engineering formally began in 2001 with the gift of the Eckhart G. Page 24.784.2Grohmann Man at Work collection to the University

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

hiscommitment to broadening the education of engineers earned him the Olmsted Award in 1987,the top prize of our division.3 Today, we focus on the pedagogic reform that he pursued twodecades earlier at the University of Texas at Austin.Koen and the Emphasis on Teaching at UT AustinKoen was born in Graham, Texas, the child of two educators. When Koen was still a young boy,his father changed his career from teaching to photojournalism and moved to Austin where hebecame the staff photographer for the University of Texas at Austin. Through his father’s work,Koen came to know John J. McKetta, the chair of the Chemical Engineering Department andlater Dean of the College of Engineering.4Koen enrolled at the University of Texas, studying Chemical Engineering

Conference Session

Engineering & Our Global Society

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

wenjuan wang, Beihang University ; Ming Li, Beihang University; Brent K Jesiek, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Qin Zhu, Purdue University; Jian Yuan, Beihang University; Qing Lei, Beihang University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He is also an Associate Director of Purdue’s Global En- gineering Program, leads the Global Engineering Education Collaboratory (GEEC) research group, and is the recent recipient of an NSF CAREER award to study boundary-spanning roles and competencies among early career engineers. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Tech and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech. Dr. Jesiek draws on expertise from engineering, computing, and the social sciences to advance understanding of geographic, disciplinary, and historical variations in engineering education and professional practice.Qin Zhu, Purdue University Qin Zhu is a

Conference Session

Teaching Communication II

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Victoria Vadyak; Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Joanna K. Garner, Old Dominion University; Christine Haas, Christine Haas Consulting

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

part of being in the group or to identify the waysin which UTREE is preparing students for the next stage of their careers. Other questionsprobed for specific details such as the number of UTREE activities that a studentparticipated in or the number of class periods that a mentor has taught. Eighteen of those26 members responded to this survey. To identify the impact that UTREE classes have on the students who view thepresentations, ten faculty members at Penn State were surveyed. Six of those tenresponded. The questions of this survey addressed to the effectiveness of the UTREE classperiods. As with the first survey, the actual questions of this survey appear in theAppendix. The main audiences of the UTREE classes, including

Conference Session

Teaching Communication I

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Marie C Paretti, Virginia Tech; Kelly J Cross, Virginia Tech; Holly M Matusovich, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Paper ID #10703Match or Mismatch: Engineering Faculty Beliefs about Communication andTeamwork versus Published CriteriaDr. Marie C Paretti, Virginia Tech Marie C. Paretti is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, where she co- directs the Virginia Tech Engineering Communications Center (VTECC). Her research focuses on com- munication in engineering design, interdisciplinary communication and collaboration, design education, and gender in engineering. She was awarded a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation to study expert teaching in capstone design courses, and is co-PI on numerous

Conference Session

The Interdisciplinary Nature of Engineering

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Benjamin Cohen, Lafayette College; Jenn Stroud Rossmann, Lafayette College; Kristen L. Sanford Bernhardt, Lafayette College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Multidisciplinary Engineering

implementation wassuccessful in achieving the desired outcomes. Further, while the authors leveraged institutionaladvantages, the methods and content should be transferable to other types of institutions.IntroductionIn our experience, engineering is often viewed as a discipline for people who “don’t want to reador write much.” This has been particularly true of a sub-set of undergraduate students who seeengineering as a career path in which they can leverage their aptitude for math and science into astable, well-paying career. In this worldview, engineers are technical experts who are recipientsof problem definitions and apply scientific and mathematical principles to solve the problems ina technically elegant and efficient manner. This caricature of

Conference Session

Integrating Engineering & Liberal Education

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Pete Hylton, Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis; Wendy Otoupal-Hylton, IUPUI

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

in common.”2 Page 24.516.2Snow and his colleagues interviewed over 30,000 engineers and scientists, nearly 25% of thetotal members of those careers in the United Kingdom at that time. He referred to be “shaken”by how little non-technical reading the technical experts did. He was concerned that they viewedpopular and easily readable authors such as Dickens as “esoteric, tangled, and dubiouslyrewarding.” On the other hand, he found his literary compatriots unable or unwilling to relate tosuch simple scientific concepts as mass, acceleration or entropy, which he considered equivalentto an engineer refusing to try to read Shakespeare.2 His “two

Conference Session

Teaching Communication II

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jodi F. Prosise, St. Ambrose University; Hank Yochum, Sweet Briar College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

used by students for team collaboration (typically Skype andsimple integrated webcams) works very well because of the comparatively smaller number ofindividuals utilizing the technology at a given time.One of the greatest advantages for students at small liberal arts institutions is the relationshipdeveloped with faculty. Students have faculty as an instructor for several courses throughouttheir undergraduate careers and interact with them at many different levels (e.g. advising,tutoring, and club mentoring). A lack of this history with collaborating faculty has, in the past,caused some stress in students and impeded progress on design teams. We would like to find away to make it possible for each faculty to spend a few days at the beginning

Conference Session

Teaching Communication I

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Brad Jerald Henderson, University of California, Davis

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Paper ID #10394A Math-Based System to Improve Engineering Writing OutcomesMr. Brad Jerald Henderson, University of California, Davis Brad Henderson is a faculty in writing for the University Writing Program (UWP) at University of Cali- fornia, Davis. Henderson holds a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo and a Masters in Professional Writing (MPW) from University of Southern California. Currently focusing his career on engineering communication and professionalism, he has worked as a design engineer and technical education specialist for Parker-Hannifin Aerospace and Hewlett

Conference Session

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division Poster Session

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Canek Moises Luna Phillips, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

. Potentially, informal learning environments offer the opportunity to promote scienceand engineering learning, which Bell et al. spoke to when they said, “There is mounting evidencethat structured, non-school science programs can feed or stimulate the science-specific interests ofadults and children, may positively influence academic achievement for students, and may expandparticipants’ sense of future science career options.” (p. 3) Furthermore, Bell et al. also said, “It isgenerally accepted that informal environments provide a safe, nonthreatening, open-endedenvironment for engaging with science.”I have connected the public forum I studied, a public engagement about an engineering topic, toBell et al.’s research that suggested that the event could

Conference Session

Engineering as a Professional Calling

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Qin Zhu, Purdue University; Brent K Jesiek, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Jian Yuan, Beihang University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

improving the practical effectiveness of engineering ethics that draws on theories in hermeneutics, practical philosophy, and discourse ethics has recently been awarded the ”Outstanding Dissertation Award” in Liaoning Province, China.Prof. Brent K Jesiek, Purdue University, West Lafayette Dr. Brent K. Jesiek is Assistant Professor in the Schools of Engineering Education and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He is also an Associate Director of Purdue’s Global En- gineering Program, leads the Global Engineering Education Collaboratory (GEEC) research group, and is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award to study boundary-spanning roles and competencies among early career engineers. He holds a B.S. in

Conference Session

Teaching Communication I

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Rebecca R Essig, Purdue University; Cary David Troy, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Brent K Jesiek, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Josh Boyd, Purdue University; Natascha Trellinger Buswell, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Associate Director of Purdue’s Global En- gineering Program, leads the Global Engineering Education Collaboratory (GEEC) research group, and is the recent recipient of an NSF CAREER award to study boundary-spanning roles and competencies among early career engineers. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Tech and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech. Dr. Jesiek draws on expertise from engineering, computing, and the social sciences to advance understanding of geographic, disciplinary, and historical variations in engineering education and professional practice.Prof. Josh Boyd, Purdue University Josh Boyd is associate professor and director of undergraduate

Conference Session

Engineering & Our Global Society

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Bhavna Hariharan, Stanford University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

reportsand also directly through interviews. Similarly, another interest would be to track alumniof the course through the remainder of their undergraduate careers and see if exposure tothese readings encourages them to take more classes in humanities and social sciences.What this paper demonstrates is that creating a course where student engineersunderstand the relevance and importance of research in other disciplines to theirengineering problem makes them more receptive to interdisciplinary readings. Thearticulation of care allows them to create their own meaning and narrative, which in turnenables them to better understand and appreciate interdisciplinary content and providesthe necessary impetus to actively engage with interdisciplinary research

Conference Session

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division Poster Session

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Steve E. Watkins, Missouri University of Science & Technology; Les Kinsler, Kansas State University, Salina; Julia L. Morse, Kansas State University, Salina; Doug Carroll, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Technology Doug Carroll is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Missouri S&T and is the Director for the Cooperative Engineering Program, a cooperative effort with Missouri S&T and Missouri State University. Dr. Carroll founded the student design center at Missouri S&T and served as its first director. He also served as the advisor for the solar car project for 12 years, including two national champion teams. He has worked with many students on design projects in his career. Page 24.964.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

Conference Session

Engineering as a Professional Calling

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joseph M LeDoux, Georgia Institute of Technology; Jacquelyn E. Borinski, Georgia Institute of Technology; Kimberly Danielle Haight, Georgia Institute of Technology ; Elaine Catherine McCormick, Georgia Institute of Technology; Alisha A.W. Waller, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Conference Session

Teaching Communication II

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Nabila A. Bousaba, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; James M. Conrad, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Jean L. Coco, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Mehdi Miri, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Robert W. Cox, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

success in their professional careers. We focused on threeimportant skills in oral presentation: audience analysis, message coherence / focus, and messagedelivery. A team of five faculty--four from ECE and the CAC director--worked together todevelop a rubric to evaluate students oral presentation skills in the sophomore design (ECGR2252), junior design (ECGR 3157) and senior design (ECGR3253 and ECGR3254) courses. Theimplementation of the process began by using the rubric in Appendix (a) to evaluate student andteam presentations in each of the four courses above. We videotaped the presentations forstudents to review later so they could learn from their mistakes. We followed teams of studentsfrom the sophomore design in the spring 2012 to the