Conference Session

Liberal Education for 21st Century Engineering

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Betty Harper, Pennsylvania State University; Lisa Lattuca, Pennsylvania State University; Alexander Yin, Penn State University; Patrick Terenzini, Pennsylvania State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

highest degree offered (bachelor's, master's, or doctorate), andtwo levels of "type of control" (public or private). The total sample of 32 four-year colleges anduniversities was “pre-seeded” with nine pre-selected institutions. These included six case studyinstitutions that were participants in a companion project (Prototyping the Engineer of 2020: A360-degree Study of Effective Engineering Education23) and three institutions with generalengineering programs. Since one of the six case study institutions offers only a generalengineering degree, three institutions with general engineering programs were purposely selectedfor the sample. Penn State’s Survey Research Center selected 23 additional institutions atrandom from the population within the

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

whatever we wanted; really to do whatever we wanted. So I joined Bell Laboratories. My department head said, “Steve, you can do whatever you want. It doesn’t even have to be physics. All we ask is that you don’t go to a high-energy accelerator and do high-energy physics, because that would be hard on the stockholders.” (My thesis project, and when I was working as a post-doc, addressed a high-energy physics problem.) He said, “And by the Page 15.1189.5 way, don’t do anything immediately. Spend six months. Talk to the peoplearound the labs, and just keep an open mind.” This was a devastating experiencefor me

Conference Session

A Century of Development, Promotion, and Reform: ASEE and Engineering Education

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Carol Johnson, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

up this charge.In 1904 the founding associations, ASCE, ASME, AIME, IEEE, joined in a project to house theiroffices at a single location and combine their libraries in a single collection open to the public.Andrew Carnegie provided $1,050,000.00 for a library and office building in New York City.1Later the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) joined this group, forming theUnited Engineering Society. At first, each society maintained its own section of the library. Theearly library was a simple affair: if there were librarians, they had no offices in which to work sothey worked in the main reading room (Fig. 1).1 Page 13.1226.5

Conference Session

Communication - Needs and Methods

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christine Nicometo, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Kevin Anderson, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Traci Nathans-Kelly, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Sandra Courter, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Thomas McGlamery, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

a moreinterpersonal communication skill set in students. Indeed, as Trevelyan pointed out in his studyof communication practices of engineers in Australia, “assessment of communication inengineering education is misaligned with practice requirements”5. To better align educationalassessment of communication practices in the first place, educators need to know more abouthow this skill set is defined and practiced in engineering workplaces. This paper intends to helpshed light on that question through reporting on the ways that practicing engineers valued,defined, and practiced “communication skills”.Study Description and MethodsThis study is part of a larger project sponsored by the National Science Foundation whichexamines the alignment of

Conference Session

Historical Perspectives for Engineering Education

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Atsushi Akera, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

payto look at the original architects who transformed the American system of higher education intheir efforts to deliver upon the new demands for a technically trained workforce.3As drawn from a larger book project, this paper aims to provide new historical insights bylooking at how the engineering „manpower‟ crisis of the 1950s contributed to the 1960 MasterPlan for Higher Education in California, and how the Master Plan, in turn, shaped engineeringeducation within the state.4 The California public system of higher education was already set upas a relatively novel, tripartite system that created separate estates for junior colleges, statecolleges, and the University of California system. However, as documented by Californiahistorians such as

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

+5/-8% Individual Peer Evaluations Up to 1/3 of a final letter gradeLecture topics beyond the communication process included topics such as non-verbalcommunication, business and cultural etiquette, negative messages, data presentation, andconstructive feedback. Exams required students to demonstrate internalized understanding of thecommunication process and how it impacted and/or was impacted by the many other topicsdiscussed. Multiple email, agenda, mechanics, process, letter, presentation slide, and resumeassignments were made throughout the semester. Likewise, elevator speeches were requiredmultiple times with varying degrees of preparation allowed. Two formal group project papersand presentations were also

Conference Session

Beyond Individual Ethics: Engineering in Context

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna Riley, Smith College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

racist or colonialist projects? • What are the roles of technology, culture, and economic systems in the drive toward bigger, faster, cheaper, and more automated production of goods, and what are the consequences for human relationships and for the environment? • When technology provides means for control, for example in military, information, reproductive or environmental applications, what rights and responsibilities follow?These wide-reaching questions not only underlie all of what scientists and engineers undertake intheir work, but also require the active involvement of citizens outside of science and engineering.These are by no means representative or comprehensive of the full range of possible

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

seemed to be areasonable amount of time to request graduate students to leave their research projects,travel to a location in the country, and focus on these communication skills. Becausewriting critique sessions require significantly more time (both the time to read themanuscripts and the time to discuss the manuscripts), we decided to provide feedback onthe writing in a different manner from what Simula had done in 2008. Once we established the scope of the workshop, we needed to secure funds. Themain portion of the funding was needed to provide a conference site with lodging andfood for the participants. While we decided to require the graduate students to providetheir own transportation to the conference site, the lodging and food

Conference Session

Learning to Communicate with Engineers and Non-Engineers

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mieke Schuurman, Pennsylvania State University; Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University; Melissa Marshall, Pennsylvania State University; Christopher Johnstone, Pennsylvania State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

Public Speaking Self-Efficacy of Engineering UndergraduatesAbstract This paper reports on how tailoring a speech communication course at The PennsylvaniaState University specifically for engineering undergraduates affected the public speaking self-efficacy of those students—a project partially funded by the Engineering InformationFoundation. This paper focuses on the following research question: Did engineering studentswho completed an engineering section feel more confident in their ability to communicateeffectively than engineering students who completed a regular section? Overall, students in the engineering sections increased their public speaking self-efficacyslightly more than students in the regular sections; this

Conference Session

Engineering Ethics and Contemporary Issues

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michael Davis, Illinois Institute of Technology; Heinz Luegenbiehl, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

- Page 11.561.5Picayune, New Orleans’ daily newspaper, even obtained the “final review set of design 4drawings for the project”. These showed “the pilings on the New Orleans side of thecanal were to be driven 10 feet”.10 That seemed to be the last word. Even on December 22, 2005, the date I stoppedmy research, the entry for Katrina in Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia) still asserted:“The flood was caused by several levee breaches due to misdesign by the United StatesArmy Corps of Engineers, improper construction, and lack of supervision by the OrleansLevee Board.”11Cause: “take 3” As of that date (December 22), the Corps of Engineers still

Conference Session

Critical Thinking and Creative Arts

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christy Moore, University of Texas, Austin; D'Arcy Randall, University of Texas, Austin; Hillary Hart, University of Texas, Austin

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

AC 2009-1879: THE BIG PICTURE: USING THE UNFORESEEN TO TEACHCRITICAL THINKINGChristy Moore, University of Texas, Austin CHRISTY MOORE is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin where she teaches engineering communication courses and a signature course on “Society, Technology, and the Environment.” Her pedagological and research interests include service-learning projects, engineering ethics and professional responsibility, research ethics, and strategies for advancing students' analytical and rhetorical skills. She is co-PI on an NSF project, The Foundations of Research Ethics for Engineers (FREE) and collaborated on the

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

writing and speaking • Outcome 5: Identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems related to professional and ethical responsibilities, including interdisciplinary approaches to said problemsOur three-pronged assessment scheme measured success of the learning outcomes through (1)interviews with a student focus group and with individual instructors; (2) written student surveys,including a short mid-semester evaluation and Elaine Seymour’s Student Assessment ofLearning Gains (SALG) protocol at the end of the semester; and (3) review of the onlinediscussion forum transcripts and the final research projects. Results suggest that studentssatisfactorily achieved Outcomes 1–3 but that adjustments should be made to the course to

Conference Session

Philosophy of Engineering Education: Epistemology and Ethics

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John Heywood, Trinity College-Dublin

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

in elementary education there should be no attempt to help precision orgeneralisation. Those who inspired the philosophy for young children movement have shownyoung children are quite capable of precision and generalisation54 but in their own terms a viewthat is supported by the work of Bruner. Furthermore as Crynes argued at an FIE conferenceengineering educators have as much to learn from elementary education as engineeringeducators have to give to it.55Applied to Whitehead’s theory the project method that has long been employed in primaryschools is relevant to the stage of generalisation in university education just as it is to first yearuniversity courses where in some programmes design rather than engineering science is theirchief

Conference Session

Tree-huggers, Diggers, and Queers--Oh my!

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

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

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

local officials,university officials, family and friends all in attendance along with local and nationalpress. David thoroughly enjoyed the festivities and was immensely pleased by his device.At that time, the project seemed an incredibly successful effort for everyone. Subsequentto the celebration, David continued his work for a while as an attendant at the theater butsoon things began to change. He became much more withdrawn than he had ever beenand soon quit his job. The seeming depression became worse and worse notwithstandingthe heroic efforts of his social worker. David now is completely withdrawn and in factinstitutionalized.An objective judging of this case would clearly point to the fact that notwithstanding allthe noblest of

Conference Session

Integrating H&SS in Engineering I

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna Riley, Smith College; Lionel Claris, Smith College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

2006-259: POWER/KNOWLEDGE: USING FOUCAULT TO PROMOTECRITICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF CONTENT AND PEDAGOGY INENGINEERING THERMODYNAMICSDonna Riley, Smith College Donna Riley is Assistant Professor in the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College. Her work focuses on implementing liberative pedagogies in engineering education.Lionel Claris, Smith College Lionel Claris holds a master's degree in education from Smith College and currently teaches Spanish and French to elementary school students in Springfield, MA. He is a passionate advocate for new ways of thinking about learning, involved locally in the Holistic School Project of Amherst and the Re-radicalization of Hampshire College

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

-module score of 3.7 to apost module score of 4.3 on a 5-point Likert scale. Another approach has been to combine studyof contemporary issues and ethics through case studies.14,15 Authors discussed the challenges ofteaching a truly contemporary ethical case study, where new information became available everyday. Needy introduces students to the impact of contemporary issues on project management byincluding articles from the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and the local paper as discussiontopics in her engineering management course.16ImplementationPrior to starting the actual meetings each semester, it is necessary to identify a time and locationfor the meetings and to publicize these events. Setting the time for the meeting is

Conference Session

Liberal Education and Leadership

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James Hanson, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Julia Williams, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

Gathering Storm (Committee onProspering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century, 2007) and Educating The Engineer of2020 (National Academy of Engineering, 2005), publications that pointed us toward revising ourinstitutional outcomes. In a project taken on by our institute-wide committee responsible formaintaining our student learning outcomes process—the Commission on the Assessment ofStudent Outcomes (CASO)—we determined that adding a leadership outcome to our set ofinstitutional outcomes would be a significant revision.The decision to add leadership to the list was reinforced by the development of Rose-Hulman Page 14.458.2president’s

Conference Session

Integrating H&SS in Engineering II

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John Krupczak, Hope College; James Heisler, Hope College; Thomas Ludwig, Hope College; Roger Nemeth, Hope College; James Piers, Hope College; Neal Sobania, Pacific Lutheran University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

active learning techniques should anticipate the needto acclimate the class to these procedures.A common expectation by students is that it should be possible to pass a course bypassing the final examination. In other words, grading schemes that factor in homework,class participation, projects, along with multiple examinations are not familiar. Classattendance is not seen as essential, and attendance is typically around 75%. There is anexpectation on the part of the students that it should be possible by outside studyexclusive of class attendance to pass a course. The connection between this mode ofthought and the university entrance examination system is obvious.In our experience, a major theme in successfully negotiating the exchange process

Conference Session

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

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joe Tranquillo, Bucknell University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

lecture. Active learning can help reenergize a classroom.• By offering a variety of active learning, different learning styles may be targeted.Identifying Kinesthetic LearnersMarilee Sprenger has compiled a list of characteristics may help identify students whowill be most deeply impacted by kinesthetic activities:• Sit comfortably, slouching or fidgeting. Leans back in chair or taps pencils• Distracted by comfort variations such as temperature, light or movement• Accesses memories by recreating the movements associated with those memories• Says things like, “Can you give me a concrete example?”• Enjoy taking things apart and putting them back together again, working on projects• Don’t like to read manuals but rather like to “figure it out

Conference Session

Questions of Identity

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mike Graham, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Amy Wendt, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Paul Peercy, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Patrick Farrell, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jay Martin, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Sarah Pfatteicher, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jeffrey Russell, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

leadershipskills in the areas of change management, creativity, and diversity with explicit attention to theapplication of these skills to the leadership and development of faculty, administrative staff, andstudents. Our goal was to assist engineering education leaders in enhancing their knowledge andskills in areas required for achieving the visions of the NAE report, The Engineer of 2020.”1Inaddition, each of the eight schools was required to identify three challenges faced by theirschool. Prior to attending the retreat, each of the teams was to have developed a plan foraddressing these challenges or a project to pursue.The EELI retreat was a remarkably effective means for the development of our task force, in partbecause of the ideas presented at the

Conference Session

Normative Commitments and Public Engagement in Engineering

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Erin Cech, University of California, San Diego

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

theyadapt values and norms, identify with particular symbols, and learn to project a confident,capable image to the public.1, 16, 19, 20, 10 This socialization process is so vital because it is“crucial to both professional identity (marking oneself as an engineer with rights to speakauthoritatively in the profession) and competence (getting engineering work done).” 21The effects of professional socialization go beyond students’ perceptions of the engineeringprofession and engineering work. It is deeply attitudinal in nature, and the culture, skill and Page 15.1274.4etiquette of a professional appear in the individual as personal traits. The

Conference Session

Philosophy of Engineering Education: Epistemology and Ethics

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mark Valenzuela, University of Evansville; James Allen, University of Evansville; Brian Swenty, University of Evansville

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

democratic institutions and expanded human freedom and justice, and direct experience in addressing the needs of the larger community. • “Inquiry- and project-based learning: multiple opportunities to work, independently and Page 13.853.6 collaboratively, on projects that require the integration of knowledge with skills in analysis, discovery, problem solving, and communication.”In 2004 ASCE published its first attempt at defining the Civil Engineering Body of Knowledgefor the 21st Century.7 In this first edition (BOK1) ASCE defined 15 outcomes necessary in theeducation of a civil engineer, paralleling and also augmenting the

Conference Session

Philosophy of Engineering Education: Epistemology and Ethics

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gayle Ermer, Calvin College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

asking questions about its future.”7Fortunately, engineering science gives us a great deal of understanding of the way things work,and we should be grateful that the vast majority of our modern engineering hypotheses turn out tobe true, but our limited creativity has contributed to disasters as well. Martin and Schinzinger, intheir widely used engineering ethics textbook, have a chapter on “Engineering as SocialExperimentation” that also emphasizes the point that engineering projects are generally “carriedout in partial ignorance.”8 The nature of engineering is to push the envelope. We are alwaysoperating at the edge of our ability to predict. This is intrinsic to the discipline (and part of whatmakes engineering fun), but it is also what makes

Conference Session

Tree-huggers, Diggers, and Queers--Oh my!

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Erin Cech, University of California, San Diego; Tom Waidzunas, University of California, San Diego

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

Page 14.1384.2definitions of LGBT categories and issues facing LGBT persons in engineering workplaces, and 1makes recommendations for creating LGBT-friendly workplace cultures.3, 4 Nevertheless, thistopic has yet to be systematically examined in either professional engineering settings orengineering education. We break new ground with a study of LGB students enrolled in a majorUS engineering college we call “Gold University.”This project draws on intensive interviews and focus group meetings with seventeen engineeringstudents from a variety of engineering sub-disciplines and educational levels. Our researchquestions investigate (1) the climate

Conference Session

Approaches to Learning Outcomes Assessment in Liberal Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Zhiwei Guan, University of Washington; Jennifer Turns, University of Washington

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

portfolioassignment. His high rating seems aligned with his high personal interest in mechanicalengineering. While the other two students had taken the course only because it was arequired course, Paul reported personal interest in the material (“I mean machining Ithink is interesting stuff”), which is also further evidenced by the fact that he is doinganother project in the campus to gain extra mechanical engineering experience.Despite these positive survey ratings, Paul, like Danielle and Ned, also held a negativeimpression of the portfolio assignment before creating the portfolio, as illustrated by thepassages below. Before creating the portfolio: “[The very first impression on the portfolio assignment is] Not probably all that favorable…I

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

as part of the United Nations’Earth Charter18 and offer suggestions for a revised ABET Criterion III.19 We offer a codeof ethics for engineers and engineering societies which includes the promotion of socialjustice and peace rank them as importantly as safety and more importantly than making aprofit. As a result of the new ethics code, we offer an engineering design algorithm,which places the promotion of peace and social justice as key elements in everyengineering design project. Page 11.581.5A New Paradigm for Engineering EducationBackgroundIn June 2000, an international conference entitled “Connecting Ethics, EcologicalIntegrity and Health in the

Conference Session

Engineering for Social Justice

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Steven VanderLeest, Calvin College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

humility as a norm.3 Design NormsWhen designing a product, the engineer works iteratively through a step-by-step process: • Specification: Define the problem. Clarify the requirements of the project. • Ideation: Identify alternative solutions to the problem, often by brainstorming a variety of ideas. • Prioritization: Identify decision criteria to rate the various solutions, such as cost or weight. • Decision: Apply the decision criteria to decide between the alternatives, often using a decision matrix. • Implementation: Work out the details of implementing the chosen solution.Frequently the knowledge and ideas generated during one step in the process leads back toearlier steps for refinement and modification. Thus, the

Conference Session

Recent Developments in Engineering Ethics

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Marilyn Dyrud, Oregon Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

much more cost-effective than hiring high-priced outsideconsulting firms to develop programs, an ironic side effect of the mandated ethics andcompliance provision.Educational AppropriatenessIndustrial ethics games can be a boon to the classroom, for not only do they reinforce the notionwith students that business and industry care about ethics (indeed, now they are required to careabout ethics!), but the games offer insights into organizational structure, which, for mosttraditional-aged college students, is truly new information.As an eight-year veteran of using “The Ethics Challenge” in a variety of classes, including a civilengineering senior-level capstone design project, I can say with certainty that this game is adelight in the classroom