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2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Zhanping You

Recent Developments in Distinct Element Methods in the Civil Engineering Graduate Education and Research Zhanping You, P.E., Ph.D. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Michigan Technological University 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, Michigan, 49931 - 1295 zyou@mtu.eduAbstractIn this paper, the recent developments and experiences of the Distinct (or Discrete)Element Method (DEM) in Civil Engineering Education are summarized. The DEMprovided an economical approach in many complicated Civil Engineering problems. Theauthor of this paper was among the researchers who applied DEM in civil

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Kurtis G. Paterson

interested in havingone-hour long standard lectures or exam review sessions via podcasts. It is important tonote that a couple students thought having podcasts for all these possibilities would be agreat idea, but several clearly thought the same possibilities would be a poor use ofpodcasting. Lastly, the students were split as to which type of courses should havepodcasting; a growing majority believe all classes should have podcasts, whereas slightlyless felt introductory courses only should have them. Few students believed only upperdiversion courses (junior, senior, graduate), or no courses should have podcasts. Studentsbelieve podcasting has educational value.5. ConclusionsEnhanced-podcasting holds considerable promise as a modern tool for

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Amber J. Kemppainen; Alex S. Mayer; Jacqueline E. Huntoon

development in order to protect the environment for future generations” (Eide, et al., 2002). But how do we include the concepts of public service and sustainability into early engineering education? At Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech), first-year engineering students are preparing for the future by learning to incorporate sustainability into their overall design decisions. Through completion of integrated coursework and design projects, students are learning to consider the economic, environmental and social impacts of a problem in order to create sustainable solutions. These activities coincide with Michigan Tech’s emphasis on sustainability in both educational and research activities (see www.sfi.mtu.edu, for example). Michigan

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2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

William S. Helton; Michele H. Miller; Robert Pastel

Barriers, Bridges, and the Trolls under the Bridge: Issues in Human Factors Education for Engineers and Others William S. Helton, Michele H. Miller, and Robert Pastel Michigan Technological University Houghton, MichiganAbstractHuman Factors (HF) is the scientific discipline concerned with the interactions amonghumans and built systems. HF requires the knowledge of both human experts(psychology) and machine experts (for example, computer science and mechanicalengineering). In this paper, we will present our observations of teaching HF from theperspective of a psychologist, a mechanical engineer, and a computer scientist. We willdiscuss our observations in

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Valerie J. Fuchs; James R. Mihelcic

self-taught. With the inclusion of the Certificate in International Sustainable Development, undergraduates will gain the balance of sustainability topics in their coursework. PCMI students gain a more balanced education in environment, economy and society through two focused courses and a 27 month international experience in the Peace Corps. 2. The content analysis of report text showed that students could generally balance the sustainable development concepts, but they were often subordinate to the specific engineering topics, as may be expected in a research or project report. Figure 4 shows how well students in the two programs balanced writing about environmental, economic, and societal

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

K. R. Haapala; M. J. Hutchins; J. L. Rivera; V. Kumar; A. R. Clarke; T. D. Eatmon; R. A. Harris; M. H. Durfee; J. R. Mihelcic; D. R. Shonnard; J. W. Sutherland

(Mihelcicet al., 2003). However, educators are struggling to incorporate sustainability into pedagogicalactivities, including those at the graduate level. An international survey concluded engineeringstudents are familiar with environmental issues, but that a knowledge gap exists for legislation,policy, and standards (Azapagic, Perdan, & Shallcross, 2005). Glavič (2006) reported thatsustainability is often a topic covered in other courses, but not a stand-alone subject, worldwide.Part of the struggle in educating engineers in sustainability is due to the lack of an operatingdefinition that has widespread acceptance and offers useful strategies for research and for policy.Discussions of sustainability within and between the disciplines often

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Pasi T. Lautala; William J. Sproule

several years and has continuedto grow annually with additional course offerings.The students in the Michigan Tech program take two courses – Introduction to RailroadEngineering (3 credits) and Finnish Language and Culture (3 credits). The railroadengineering course is a technical elective for our students and the Finnish language 2007 ASEE North Midwest Sectional Conferencecourse can be used as a general education elective. Typically the railroad classes are inthe morning and the Finnish classes are in the afternoon. Field tours and visits areincorporated throughout the program and are technical, cultural, or a combination ofboth. Tours may occur in the evenings or during the weekends. For example, one visit toa

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Leonard Bohmann; Dana Johnson; Kris Mattila; Nilufer Onder; John Sutherland

undergraduate students: One danger in developing an interdisciplinary curriculum is to pack too much course content due to the diversity of topics. Each course is scrutinized to merge common topics while allowing for a healthy amount of material from other courses to be reviewed. Changes in the general engineering education classes were requested to seamlessly incorporate Service Systems Engineering. • Soliciting feedback regarding the curriculum from academic and industry professionals: Proceedings of the 2007 ASEE North Midwest Sectional Conference A workshop was conducted to gather input on the curriculum from academic professionals in the field of Production and Operations Management

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Nihad E. Daidzic; Vojin R. Nikolic

students have been familiarized with the fundamental concepts and relationships of science and engineering in general, and of aerospace engineering and aviation, in particular. Two major team projects have been completed and tested. The activities have culminated in an FAA approved flight simulator sessions and the students’ flights aboard Piper Seminole twin-engine airplanes. The participating students have provided extensive positive feedback on the program. To the teaching faculty, this has been a very pleasant and rewarding experience. The outcomes of the two-week Camp have been discussed in detail and some very useful guidelines for successful outreach efforts have been presented. Introduction

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2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Matthew Roberts; Philip Parker; Christina Curras; Michael Penn; Max Anderson

department proposes to infuse the infra-structure theme across the curriculum. Specifically, four main strategies will be used: creating a new social sciences course and/or using general education classes to fulfill a “theme” requirement for graduation; creating a new class(es) on “Introduction to the Infrastructure”; ensuring that infrastructure topics are covered in every CEE course; and requiring students to write infrastructure report card chapters in various courses.New Social Sciences Course and General Education ThemeAll CEE students are required to take a total of seven Humanities and Social Sciencescourses. Students often do not ask their academic advisors (we, the faculty) for direction onwhich courses to take

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2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Michele H. Miller; Kari L. Jordan

active roles than men in cooperative learning groups [45]. Educators musttherefore stress the importance of valuing contributions from all group members. They may alsowish to avoid creating mixed groups in which men outnumber women. More investigations ofthe effects of team composition on team functioning are needed, however. In one of the fewstudies involving engineering student teams, Laeser, et al. at the Colorado School of Minesstudied the effect of team composition on performance and found that majority male andmajority female teams performed better than evenly mixed teams [46].Creativity and Design ThinkingReal-world problems usually have multiple possible solutions. Central to the design process arethe generation of many alternative

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Richard Smith

strategy that incorporates certain classical elements ofcryptographic analysis (e.g. assessment of key strength), engineering requirementsanalysis, and fundamental elements of computer engineering.IntroductionThere has been a significant growth in post-secondary courses and majors in informationsecurity. This includes the topics of computer security, network security, cryptography,and information assurance. Agencies of the US Government, notably the NationalSecurity Agency (NSA), often use that final term to capture all aspects of informationsecurity. To promote security training at the post-secondary level, the US Governmentstarted evaluating course offerings and degree programs in 1998. As of 2007, over ahundred 2-year, 4-year, and graduate

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Tamer Ceylan

, placement of graduates, etc.) is not a common problem area. Student transcripts should provide evidence that the program requirements are met. Student advising should be effective, consistent, and documentable. There should be sufficient documentation on acceptability of credits for transfer students, especially for engineering topics courses. The program evaluator asks for a random sampling of some transcripts to see if the program is following its own rules. Criterion 2 on Program Educational Objectives is a common problem area. ABET defines Proceedings of the 2006 ASEE North Midwest Sectional Conference2007 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference, Educating Engineers for a Sustainable Future, September 20-22, 2007 Program

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Michael P. Hennessey

first 2 simulation labs were designed toendow the student with some facility in using MATLAB®, especially as it is applied to thesimulation of fairly generic dynamic systems. Some critical topics in the MATLAB® Basicssimulation lab include 1D arrays, 2D arrays, script style M-files, 2D graphics and plotting basics,functions, function style M-files, solution of simply structured ordinary differential equations,and user interface basics. A “cheat-sheet” was also provided that summarizes some of the mostcommonly used MATLAB® commands. More MATLAB® Basics continues on with thefollowing topics: polynomial functions, anonymous functions, detailed 2D and 3D plotting,miscellaneous functions, some basic programming concepts and additional commands

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

P. B. Ravikumar

strategies and methods used in managingprojects and educating students on key topics ranging from design processes toengineering management are provided. Methods used to assess students’ performance asindividual team members and as project managers as well as their learning of differenttopics of importance are also discussed.INTRODUCTIONMechanical engineering majors of today are challenged with the need to acquire a broadand yet good level of knowledge of various topics that are both technical andmanagement related. The Senior Design Project course in the final semester beforegraduation needs to serve as the pathway and the proving ground for students todemonstrate their readiness to meet such a challenge in the workplace. To meet theseobjectives