Conference Session

Venturing Out: Service Learning, Study Abroad, and Criterion H

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John Duffy, University of Massachusetts Lowell; Carol Barry, University Massachusetts Lowell; Linda Barrington, University of Massachusetts-Lowell; David Kazmer, University of Massachusetts-Lowell; William Moeller, University of Massachusetts Lowell; Cheryl West, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

meeting real community needs. In engineering thestudents become better professionals and better citizens while the community benefits. There aremany other definitions in the literature, for example, service-learning is the integration ofacademic subject matter with service to the community in credit-bearing courses, with keyelements including reciprocity, reflection, coaching, and community voice in projects (Jacoby,1996)1. Service-learning (S-L) has been shown to be effective in a large number of cognitiveand affective measures, including critical thinking and tolerance for diversity, and leads to betterknowledge of course subject matter, cooperative learning, recruitment of under-representedgroups in engineering, retention of students, and

Conference Session

Learning to Communicate with Engineers and Non-Engineers

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Paul Ross, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

practice apply to portfolios as to any other professional communication;the standards for the professional résumé provide some good general guidance for portfoliocontent: both require excellent overall design and organizational planning, and both must avoidcontent that violates the formal and informal rules for personal information under employmentand privacy regulations.Constraints on portfolio content may also reflect well-understood professional limitations thatmost professionals already work with: intellectual property, confidentiality, and issues offinancial interest. Page 13.860.3Accreditation and ethics will continue to provide an

Conference Session

Critical Thinking and Creative Arts

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Helen Donis-Keller, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

. Understanding the nature of the tools that weuse to communicate will enhance our ability to make the best use of the materials at hand,therefore we should become familiar with state-of-the-art technologies for digital capture andediting, and we investigate the scientific and engineering basis of seeing and hearing.Competencies directly addressed in this course are communication (visual, written, and aural)and life-long learning (researching and learning topics independently).the philosophy and main objectives for the course are embodied in the following specificlearning objectives:1. Learn how to make art that reflects enlarging of one’s awareness and communicates one’s intent. The major objective for each student in the course is to make art

Conference Session

Thinking around the Bachelor of Arts in Engineering

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sharon Jones, Lafayette College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

Member Page 13.1204.2The IssueTechnology encompasses what we do and what we dream of doing, but technology alone will notsolve tomorrow’s problems. Societal leaders must understand engineering’s methods and valuesto successfully shape government and economic policies, design and interpret laws, teach futuregenerations, produce creative work that reflects the modern world, and use technologythemselves. Below are several selected quotes about this topic from national leaders and nationalreports. “Undergraduate engineering should be reconfigured as an academic discipline, similar to other liberal arts disciplines in the sciences, arts

Conference Session

Communication - Needs and Methods

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University; Joanna Garner, Pennsylvania State University, Berks Campus; Sarah Zappe, Pennsylvania State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

, because most presenters fielded questions for a portion oftheir talks, the audiences at the conference were actually expected to read more words perminute than what our analysis reflects. For these 48 presentations, the mean number ofprojected words per minute was about 35, as shown in Table 1. Is this number high? Is this number low? Although these questions are difficult toanswer without more data, these questions raise a research question that deservesattention: On a set of slides for a technical presentation, how many written words perminute can an audience comfortably comprehend and retain? Page 15.1000.5 Assessment System

Conference Session

Innovative Courses/Pedagogies in Liberal Education I

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kyle Simmons, University of Utah; Susan Sample, University of Utah; April Kedrowicz, University of Utah

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

Conference Session

Liberal Education Division Poster Session

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert Meyer, Clarkson University; Dick Pratt, Clarkson University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

become more intentional in the waystudents and courses address expected learning outcomes. Under the old curriculum, studentsselected electives to meet distributional requirements without a real understanding of why suchcourses were required. These courses were often viewed as simply obstacles to be "gotten out ofthe way". Under the Clarkson Common Experience, students select electives which align withthe established set of required outcomes. We believe it is important that students have anunderstanding of the purpose and the role each course plays in their overall educational program.The curriculum implementation should reflect a direct and visible connection among learningexpectations, outcomes and specific courses. This connection is

Conference Session

Liberal Education Division Poster Session

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joanne Lax, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

rules of emailetiquette and style for various audiences; how email reflects the author, positively or negatively;and how to establish appropriate tone in the message. At the end of the class, I informallyquestioned each section of the class about whether their emails had been suitably written, giventhe designated audience. For instance, I asked the section which wrote emails to potentialemployers whether any of the students had used emoticons in their writing.ResultsAfter I collected the papers from the two classes, I separated them according to the intendedaudience. Taking two of the eight common rules for email writing documented16--“Use ‘onlinelingo’ abbreviations cautiously” (for example, “C U” and “OMG”) and “Reserve emoticons forpersonal

Conference Session

Integrating H&SS in Engineering II

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

M. Pinar Menguc, University of Kentucky; Ellie Hawes, University of Kentucky; Jane Jensen, University of Kentucky; Ingrid St. Omer, University of Kentucky

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

new concepts through virtual companies. Thestudents were divided into six groups of three- or four-persons. They chose their ownfocus areas and established companies in nano-medicine, entertainment, defensivemilitary concepts, energy, arms, and novel materials. Then they explored how they couldimpact society within their choice of a nanotechnology company. They thought about thenew ideas and developments, in a similar vein to James Watt. They considered thepotential impact of the ideas beyond the obvious, reflecting on what the compassachieved. They considered the long-term impact on common people, as was the case inPompeii. Finally, they ventured into the question of “playing god!” We are sure that theygained a solid insight into a new world

Conference Session

Liberal Education Division Poster Session

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Tom Moran, Rochester Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

early responses relative to the educational experiences of theseengineers and their reflections on them.An examination of the experiences of the contemporary engineer-writers raises several questionsabout both engineering education and the practice of engineering, especially as it is seen byyoung, creative entrants into the profession. The paper introduces and discusses these questions,positing some possible future areas of exploration.Homer HickamHomer Hickam, Jr., is best known for his story of growing up in a small West Virginia mining Page 12.1022.3town, designing and test firing rockets, and yearning to join Werner Von Braun in

Conference Session

Approaches to Learning Outcomes Assessment in Liberal Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kyle Oliver, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Traci Nathans-Kelly; Sandra Courter, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Laura Grossenbacher, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

students who were enrolled for twocredits completed a formal research paper in which they could explore an issue of interest ingreater depth.Although the pilot course could not be formally assessed, we have some evidence of its positiveoutcomes because the participants were so moved by their experience that they felt compelled toshare their thoughts with others; the instructor and five of the six students presented papers aboutthe course at their regional ASEE section’s annual conference in fall 2005. Reflecting on whatsome of the students wrote, we’re glad we chose a flexible, open-ended, egalitarian modelbecause we believe it did help bring about the three goals Haws mentions—what he calls“‘enabling’ objectives.” For instance, one student

Conference Session

Learning to Communicate with Engineers and Non-Engineers

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Leslie Potter, Iowa State University; John Jackman, Iowa State University; K. Jo Min, Iowa State University; Matthew Search, Iowa State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

outcomes can be divided into “engineering” skillsand “professional” skills, with professional skills including not only communication, butteamwork, ethics, professionalism, engineering solutions in a global and societal context,lifelong learning, and a knowledge of contemporary issues.2 ABET prioritized these professionalskills as relatively equal in importance to those of technical competence in its Criteria forAccrediting Programs, and in doing so, made it possible for engineering programs to not onlyrecognize the importance of professional skills, but to teach them to their students. ABET’sdecision to formalize this priority reflects what industry has been emphasizing in its recruitingand advising for many years. Companies such as IBM and

Conference Session

Ethical Responsibilities of Engineers in the World of Corporate Business

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna Riley, Smith College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

projects, the models on which they were implemented,and factors in their success or failure is instructive. Riley and Miller20 discuss the structure andcontent of the Smith course in greater detail. Using pedagogies that focus on praxis, connectinglearning with action, will ground student critiques of neoliberalism in the real world, informingand transforming their perspectives and ultimately resulting in reflective action for change.342. Ask who wins and who loses. Students need to develop an understanding of powerrelationships, a sense of the history of colonialism and its relationship to globalization today.Neoliberal economic policies produce winners and losers, and students need to develop a senseof how market economies play out to help

Conference Session

Communication and Collaboration

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Julie Sharp, Vanderbilt University; Marilyn Dyrud, Oregon Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

the“You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours” syndrome, the actual grade each student receives forthe peer review is a combination of scores from other students and a score reflecting formcompletion, based on the review guidelines in Figure 5. Page 14.1287.12 Oregon Institute of Technology Civil Engineering & Communication Departments CIV/COM 401. Senior Project Peer Review Guidelines You will receive two scores for your peer reviews: one for how well you complete the forms and

Conference Session

Engineering for Social Justice

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

George Catalano, State University of New York-Binghamton; Caroline Baillie, Queens University-Kingston

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

, Page 11.581.7ever recasting itself, and not to seek to halt or reverse all such changes. This does notpreclude efforts to protect endangered species per se but it does call for a carefulconsideration prior to intervention. Perhaps, after reflection, society may wish to preservegray wolves or Bengal tigers through government action while not permitting continueddredging of the Atchafalya River Basin near New Orleans, Louisiana. Biodiversityconsists of an appreciation for the place in the web of life of the various plants andanimals, a commitment to the protection of species, particularly endangered species and acommitment to conservation in concert with the dynamic nature of ecosystems. Naturalbalance encompasses an appreciation of the

Conference Session

Recent Developments in Engineering Ethics

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Marilyn Dyrud, Oregon Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

different rules.Enron, for example, touted a 64-page code of ethics, which the company required all employees–including management–to read and then sign an oath attesting to their commitment to highethical standards. Enron took its ethics code very seriously, at least on paper, as noted in a 2000memo penned by CEO Ken Lay: “I ask that you read them [“commonsense rules of conduct”]carefully and completely and that, as you do, you reflect on your past actions to make certain thatyou have complied with the policies. It is absolutely essential that you fully comply with thesepolicies in the future.”1 Similarly, Tyco’s board of directors established as a goal “highstandards of honesty, integrity, and ethics throughout the organization.”2 Yet corporate

Conference Session

Innovative Courses/Pedagogies in Liberal Education II

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Katherine Wikoff, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

] The article title is itself a pun, a “play” on words: the author’s name isJames Early. He says: The early days of transistors began wonderfully, built mightily, and became the foundation for a major industry. They also paid our wages, and were great fun. The view of our occupation held by many of us is reflected in the words of my wife, Mary Agnes Early, circa 1956: “You go to Murray Hill to play while I take care of the house and the children.” Early in my work at Bell Labs, I grasped Bell’s personnel strategy, which was to hire the ablest persons they could find having suitable background, and subsequently offer them a wide range of problems to attack. In his book “The Gifted Child

Conference Session

Liberal Education Division Poster Session

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Daniel Walsh, California Polytechnic State University; Stacey Breitenbach, California Polytechnic State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

understanding their basis, their capability ortheir inherent limitations. Neither of these situations is optimal, engineers must become moreaware of the implications of their work, and societal leaders and citizens must become moretechnology - literate. It is critical that higher education reflect these complexities and providethese connections.It is almost too fashionable to point out the shortcomings in American education. However,whether the investigator is concerned with engineering education, science and mathematicseducation or education in the liberal arts, it is critical to recognize that our traditional academicstructure does not provide proper motivation for comprehensive learning that is appropriate for

Conference Session

Beyond Individual Ethics: Engineering in Context

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Byron Newberry, Baylor University; William Lawson, Texas Tech University; Kathy Austin, Texas Tech University; Greta Gorsuch, Texas Tech University; Thomas Darwin, University of Texas at Austin

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

education forengineers.2,3 This is reflected in current ABET accreditation standards that require “anunderstanding of professional and ethical responsibility” as well as other competencies related tounderstanding engineering’s role and impact in the wider world. This has by no meansguaranteed that ethics education for U.S. engineering undergraduates is of a uniform content,quality, or depth.4 Nonetheless the movement appears to be clearly in the direction of morecoverage, whether in the form of stand-alone ethics courses or ethics modules embedded inexisting courses; at the very least, engineering programs must show that their graduates havebeen exposed to ethics content to a level adequate to satisfy evaluators.The underlying presumption of such

Conference Session

Critical Thinking and Creative Arts

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Beth Todd, University of Alabama; Garry Warren, University of Alabama; Susan Burkett, University of Alabama; David Cordes, University of Alabama; Marcus Brown, University of Alabama

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

having to do something that seemsartificial during class. Students tend to value activities that are reflected in their grades, and an Page 14.392.3example of this implementation follows with samples of student work.Each week, one faculty member has the task of making an initial pass through the Sciencesection and identifying a set of potential articles for discussion. Once this set of articles isidentified, this selection is distributed via e-mail to all participants (current and past) in thereading group. Students can either read the Tuesday NY Times in print or access these articleselectronically to prepare for the meeting. However, some

Conference Session

Liberal Education and Leadership

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Val Hawks, Brigham Young University; John Harb, Brigham Young University; Alan Parkinson, Brigham Young University; Spencer Magleby, Brigham Young University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

) Managing conflict and conflict resolution Understanding and use of power, authority and influences Managing and measuring performance Communication and interpersonal skills Project managementGlobal (Holistic) Understanding: Effective leadership occurs within the context of global,meaning general or comprehensive, systems. This has always been true, but the nature of themodern society adds emphasis to this dimension of leadership. The complexity of modern,worldwide systems is reflected in the changing ethnic composition of organizations, the potentialof political change to quickly alter environments and situations, and the extent to whichinternational issues, including trade, business, and employment, affect local

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary and Liberal Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Richard Fry, Brigham Young University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

should be able to take advantage of adding the previous section’s skills to theirpersonal toolbox. But because not all people have the same personal aptitudes, and talents, theresults can differ significantly. The following section deals with skills which, if a person has Page 11.1363.5them (or can learn them), will enhance the results of using design thinking.The characteristics of a design thinker are: 1. High Tolerance for Ambiguity 2. Curiosity 3. Visual ThinkerSome may be tempted to place these skills in the section on design thinking. However, they areseparated out here because they reflect more attributes of the

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary and Liberal Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Hilkat Soysal, Frostburg State University; Oguz Soysal, Frostburg State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

, Technology, and Society-STS” programs. Engineers and scientists have beenprime movers in developing interdisciplinary STS curriculum for liberal arts studies. Ageneral overview of TLC programs in American colleges is presented in [2].Art Hobson [3] points out alarming statistics of 1990s reflecting the science education atpre-college and college level. He states that “Only 21% of our high school students takeany kind of high school physics course, let alone a course that includes socially relevanttopics. It is depressing that only 20% of all elementary school science teachers havetaken any college physics course, and only 35% took a college chemistry course. And asurvey of 1800 college campuses indicates that only 50% of the nation campuses offerany

Conference Session

Normative Commitments and Public Engagement in Engineering

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gary Downey, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

with analyses in narrative form that locate the researcher’spoint of view within the analysis [43-47]. Including the author in the text always risks reducinganalysis to autobiography, introducing mere “narcissism,” as social anthropologist Judith Okelyput it in an early reflection on the issue. The reason for this is of course the danger of shifting thefocus in the account from the object of study to the author. Yet perhaps most scholars todaywould agree with Okely’s contention that “[s]elf-adoration is quite different from self-awarenessand critical scrutiny of the self” and that including the author as a “positioned subject” in the textcan add much to it [48]. Exactly what including the author in the analysis adds or subtracts depends upon

Conference Session

Philosophy of Engineering Education: Epistemology and Ethics

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gayle Ermer, Calvin College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

alsoserve as case studies for discussion of technological risk in engineering courses or in liberal artscourses that reflect on the role of technology in society. The paper will conclude with somerecommendations for what we need to do as engineers to reduce the risk of engineering disastersand how we can integrate the awareness of these concepts into the experiences of undergraduateengineering students.2. Technology, Engineering and RiskDoing technology is central to what we are as humans. Anthropologists have chosen to describethe first modern humans as “homo habilis,” therefore expressing the centrality of our “tool-using”and tool creating capabilities to our very nature.2 But, everyday observation reminds us thattechnology, like all other human

Conference Session

Communication and Collaboration

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University; Are Magnus Bruaset, Simula Research Laboratory; Melissa Marshall, Pennsylvania State University; Marianne M. Sundet, Simula Research Laboratory; Sarah Zappe, Pennsylvania State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

represented 27 other countries. These countries were spread across every continentexcept for Antarctica. Table 1 presents the distribution of participants across the disciplines. Thisdistribution of disciplines reflects the distribution of engineers and scientists in Norway. Page 14.1197.7Table 2 presents the distribution of institutions in which the participants are studying orworking. As shown in Table 2, more than half of the participants came from Norway’stwo largest institutions: the University of Oslo and the Norwegian University of Scienceand Technology in Trondheim.Figure 1. Distribution of the 28 home countries of the participants. All

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II: Practical Perspectives on Teaching and Assessment

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Luke Niiler; David Beams

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

. We make the followingobservations from Fig. 1: • Organization was noticeably improved; this could probably be attributed to the fact that all assignments in this sample were laboratory reports were apparently created using standardized guides or templates. • Neither author noted much change in the quality of the content of laboratory reports. This is somewhat surprising, given the expectation that students at this level would be adapting to the idiom of their professional communities of discourse. A possible explanation is that wide discrepancies in participants’ writing samples were noted, and this range of responses was reflected in the overall rating. • Evaluations of mechanics showed problems

Conference Session

Engineering Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Endeavor

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John Brocato, Mississippi State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

authentic engineering situations. The first case study, “The Pendergrass Circuits E-mail,” is a one-page story that literally puts students into the narrative as a character, requiringthem to read, analyze, discuss, and reflect on the story’s details before deciding what sorts ofactions and written documentation are necessary. The second case study involves close analysisof the space shuttle Challenger disaster, in particular the written and oral communication thattook place prior to the disaster itself. As this paper shows, using case studies as described herecan provide students with valuable exposure to the types of decisions they might have to make intheir professional careers while also providing engineering programs with a sound method

Conference Session

Innovative Courses/Pedagogies in Liberal Education I

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Deborah Sinnreich-Levi, Stevens Institute of Technology; Susan Metz, Stevens Institute of Technology; David Silverstein, Stevens Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

) Page 15.703.10 (Slide 2) (Slide 3)Other specific changes in the content of the WCC Workshops with regard to messaging includethe following. 1) Slides were included to reflect the ways various companies rephrase or reposition similar information for different audiences (e.g., less and more technically minded cohorts). Slides 4 and 5 on Fermilab below target respectively a general or lay audience, and physicists seeking information about Fermilab. Using more vs. less technical detail, different graphics, and different levels of diction are highlighted

Conference Session

Writing Is Fundamental

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

David Beams, University of Texas, Tyler; Luke Niiler, University of Alabama

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

, memorandum, oral presentation, other);≠ Intended audience;≠ Report requirements.While this was a well-intended effort, the results were not particularly impressive. Studentsseemed to treat it as another hoop through which they were to jump and not as a prompt forthoughtful reflection. This was underscored by the observation that frequently students wereobserved printing the forms immediately after entering the laboratory and completing them byhand to be submitted on the spot, with little apparent forethought.ConclusionOur study of the maturation as writers of the cohort of EWI students has culminated in an NSFproposal (#0837338) to improve the quality of student writing at all levels of the Engineeringcurriculum. In the study Drs Beams, Niiler