Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Ben Erwin

presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with abad presentation is doomed immediately.In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrustassertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.Biographical Information:Ben Erwin is Curriculum Coordinator for the Center for Engineering Educational Outreach at Tufts University. Hereceived a S.B. degree in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Planetary Sciences from the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, and a Masters of Arts in Teaching degree from Tufts University. He also holds a teaching certificatefor secondary Physics. As a volunteer at an after school center, he has helped to start an Engineering Club amongfifth through eighth graders. He is a regular visitor to

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Douglas H. Baxter

graphics or mechanical drawing departments during the 1970’s and1980’s. Hence, many engineering schools have found it necessary to reinstate theirgraphics education. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute faced this problem in 1990 and in1991 created the course Engineering Graphics and Computer Aided Design (EG&CAD)to provide an entry-level course in the fundamentals of solid modeling. Furthermore,solid models and documentation are now required in design courses throughout theengineering curriculum. This combination of a course in solid modeling fundamentalsand required solid model creation and documentation for the students’ design courses isthe solution Rensselaer has created to fulfill the requirements of the firms that employRensselaer

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter D. Heimdahl

, were it not for gender or cultural biasing, have the potential to become excellent engineers.Without intervention of the nature represented by the STEPS for Girls concept, most youngstudents make critical high school curriculum choices that limit their ability to follow, enter, andsucceed in an engineering program in college. Therefore it is essential to reach them early withsolid information about the excitement of an engineering career and what it takes to follow one.This program was designed to do that.As a result, the concept of a summer engineering and technology camp for girls entering theseventh grade was developed. An initial goal was that 50% of the campers would representminority populations. Only 30% minority was actually realized

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Greg Hilker; Fred Jenkins; David Westine

outputs a current that depends onthe rotor speed error, on its time integral, and on its time derivative (PID). This output current is inputto the SCR power controller which uses a pulse-width-modulation scheme to control the switching(duty cycle) of resistive heaters to the alternator. As the control current increases, the duty cycleincreases, thereby causing the apparent rotor torque to increase. This increase lowers the rotor speeduntil the integrated error between rotor speed and rotor setpoint decreases and an error of zero isreached. The Omega PID controller is a self-tuning controller, and that option was used on the windmachine with satisfactory results. As shown in Figure 3, wind speed is the disturbance into the systemand is

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Gary H. McDonald; Charles V. Knight

in the spreadsheet program developed by the student toperform a similar computation. Nine tests are run for the system as the air flow rates are set atlow, medium, and high for both coils. The results demonstrate how the Trainer’s performance isrelated to airflow capacity over the condenser and evaporator coils.The Trainer had been used some over the years in a Heat Transfer Lab (Engineering 406) withtemperatures, pressures, and Freon flow rate being read from indicators located on the system.No extensive use had been made of it to support a student’s retention of fundamentalthermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer principles as an integrated system.2. Heat ConductionThe objectives of the lab are (1) to introduce basic graphical

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Fathi Finaish

realization: design, manufacture, test, and correlateproduct performance with analysis results.With this motive, this article describes a product realization exercise integrated recently into anew design course. This course is introduced as a part of a restructuring of the aerospaceengineering curriculum at the University of Missouri-Rolla. The primary goal of this new courseis to introduce students to open-ended problems and to the processes of engineering design andto provide an environment that encourages students to interact with each other at early stages oftheir study program. The students are required to design a small radio-controlled model, analyzeits performance, and construct it. Once the model construction has been completed and

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Larry Hoffman; Kevin D. Taylor; Russell A. Aubrey

upper division courses in an Engineering Technology department. Page 3.406.3There were two full-time teachers in the lower division (one instructor, one tenured assistant)who did not support the administration’s decision to offer upper division courses, and thereforerequested not to teach any of those courses. The mood was somewhat hostile. For example,Albert could not use equipment from “their” lab. Most of the upper division courses had neverbeen taught, and the curriculum was modeled after a program at another university. Albert wasnot aware of the situation in the department when he joined.Mentoring was non-existent. Albert’s department head

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Vipin Kumar; Scott Grove; Rajendra K. Bordia; John E. Weller

in Table 3. When considering the other benefits this lab brings to the course and theentire curriculum, we believe they far outweigh any negative effects from any science content that mayhave been lost.Future DevelopmentsAfter improving the labs for four quarters, we feel that some topics that were covered in the original labsare still missing. These include a welding demonstration, and a sheet metal forming lab. Although theseprocesses could be integrated into the Stirling engine project, they would probably be best coveredseparately. To show these processes would require shortening of the Stirling engine project. In Page

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

G.J. Freeman; A.M. Mankowski; Daniel J. Pack

power supply module. Once the four separate modules arecreated, they must then be integrated into an overall control module for the fire-fighting robot. Page 3.10.1In this paper, we discuss two different fire-fighting robot projects and their impact on thecorresponding teams concerning the desired educational outcomes. The emphasis of the paper isbased on the project completed during the 1997 spring semester with discussion on the secondfire-fighting robot project currently under construction. For the remainder of the paper, we willrefer to the group who completed the project in the spring of 1997 as the past team, and the groupnow creating

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

E. L. Gerber

conditions to obtain the complete solution to the circuit.This process can be repeated with other voltage sources applied, including piecewise functionsdefined earlier.• Now consider the RLC circuit shown below with the voltage source and initialconditions known, i(0) = 5A and di(0)/dt = -3A/s.The Kirchhoff voltage equation of this circuit, written below, is an integral-differential equation andit can be solved with Maple in one statement. t t di 1 di v s(t) = Ri(t) + L + ∫ i(t)dt = 3i(t) + 1 + 2 ∫ i(t)dt dt C o dt o

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1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Marc A. Mesmer; Elizabeth A. Eschenbach

usingweb based forms for peer evaluation, a copy of the code can be down loaded fromhttp://www.humboldt.edu/~cdc/peerrev/AboutPeerRev.html.Course Overview: ENGR 111, Introduction To DesignHumboldt State University has one of the oldest and largest accredited programs inenvironmental engineering in the country. The Environmental Resources Engineering Departmentwas accredited in the 1970Õs and currently has about 270 majors. Students work in teamsthroughout the curriculum of the ERE major. All ERE majors are required to take ENGR 111Introduction to Design, which has no prerequisites, and provides an introduction to the types of 3skills that students need to be successful in the major . Students

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Betsy Palmer; Rose M. Marra; Thomas Litzinger

development? • How do first-year students’ Perry ratings at our institution compare to freshman engineering student ratings at other institutions? • How do first-year studentsí comments about knowledge and learning vary based on student Perry ratings? • How do men and women engineering students score relative to one another on the Perry scheme? • What are the implications of the subjects’ Perry ratings for teaching?Literature ReviewThis section provides the line of reasoning for the studyís research questions as well as for thetools chosen to address these questions. We begin with an overview of the trends in changes in

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Melody Ivory; Kathleen Luker; Kathleen Coppock; Erol Tutumluer; David Hill; Christine Masters; Amelia Regan; Alkim Akyurtlu; Eric Matsumoto; Sandra Shaw Courter; Sarah Pfatteicher

and learning strategies, small group/cooperative learning, and professionaldevelopment. Seven cases are presented to illustrate how participants have made substantialprogress in their understanding of important areas of pedagogy. These cases also demonstratehow this learning has translated into confidence in implementing fresh—and often successful—approaches in the classroom. Participants additionally credit EESP with an early opportunity to“learn the ropes” of the academic career, including valuable insight into the hiring process,mentoring, promotion and tenure, and writing grant proposals. The positive impact of EESP hasmotivated NSF and others to spread EESP around the country to benefit larger numbers of futurefaculty members. Lessons

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1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Youngmee Lee; Yasuo Kuga; Thomas Stoebe; Minoru Taya; Mani Soma

frequency devices.MANI SOMA Page 3.532.5 5Mani Soma is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Associate Dean for Organizational Infrastructure, College ofEngineering at the University of Washington. His research interests include the design, test, and reliabilitycharacterization of integrated circuits and systems. He is chairing a major industry-driven curriculum developmenteffort, the IEEE Test Education Committee in the Computer Society. As Associate Dean, he works with the Collegefaculty and ABET in curriculum and teaching improvements to meet the new ABET 2000