Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Zhanping You; Sanjeev Adhikari

. In the class lectures, the basic concept ofasphalt specification, mechanical properties and test methods are discussed. The sustainabilityconcept of the materials is also integrated in lectures. Homework is assigned to students so thatthey have the chance to bridge the concepts and practical problems. The most important parts ofthe class are the hands-on experiments in laboratory, and the sustainable material concepts inlectures. The relationship between students’ homework, exams, labs, and total grade are compared.Three semesters’ results are analyzed to improve the curriculum.IntroductionThe Civil Engineering Materials class (CE 3101) is designed for junior and senior undergraduatestudents. This class covers different materials such as

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Robert A. Marlor

INCORPORATING A TRUSS DESIGN PROJECT INTO A MECHANICS & STATICS COURSE Robert A. Marlor, P.E., Ph.D. Associate Professor of Engineering Technology Northern Michigan UniversityINTRODUCTIONWhen teaching engineering design concepts in engineering technology programs, instructors arechallenged to create realistic, hands on, intuitive design experiences at an early stage in thestudents’ development. This paper describes a balsa wood truss design competition used in aStatics & Mechanics course at NMU to motivate the learning of the concepts of staticequilibrium and truss analysis.Balsa wood bridge projects have been used

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2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

P. B. Ravikumar

EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF INDUSTRY SPONSORED SENIOR DESIGN PROJECT COURSE P. B. Ravikumar Professor, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering University of Wisconsin, Platteville, WIABSTRACTSenior design project courses in mechanical engineering are a challenging and importantclassroom experience for students often in their final semester of undergraduateengineering education. Senior design project courses are often structured to emphasizeteam work on projects initiated and/or sponsored by industry. Faculty involved inteaching such courses need to effectively manage the course offering and lead byexample to students who are learning to manage their own

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Michael A. Rother

company liaisons will have to do a lot of work for little or nobenefit. Another concern which potential sponsors often express is that much of the material inany project offered would be proprietary. Since the final design reports are in the public domain,many times companies decline to participate on this basis alone. To get around this obstacle, Igenerally point out that we can change specific numbers in the reports, so that there would betwo versions, one for the company and one for the university. In several of the projects whichhave been completed in the last three years, some process information has been omitted to satisfyindustrial interests.2. Characterizing Projects Granted that the sample is small, with three years of experience

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

fromperspectives very different from those of academia. Upon the completion of an internship,students share their experience with other SF IGERT scholars. Involvement in projects at thehost organizations serves to develop professional skills and contributes diverse insights tosustainability research.In the private sector as interns at Caterpillar, an environmental engineering IGERT Traineeparticipated in corporate policy development and a mechanical engineering IGERT Trainee Proceedings of the 2007 ASEE North Midwest Sectional Conference 6examined environmental effects of new materials. In the public sector, a chemical engineeringIGERT

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Michele H. Miller; Debra D. Charlesworth

materials and scheduling, and persisting in the face ofinconclusive experimental results. Question Low Experimental High Experimental Hands-on ability 1.40 3.33 Tolerance for ambiguity 2.20 3.93 Time management 1.80 3.31 Ability to work with other people 0.40 1.80 Proceedings of the 2007 ASEE North Midwest Sectional Conference Figure 1: Most important factors for grad student success based on faculty survey responsesGraduate Advising ExperienceFaculty responses

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Zhanping You

and the particulatemedium may deform as a solid, flow as a fluid, or behave as individual particles (ItascaConsulting Group 2004). All of these “phases” may play important roles in the analysis,yet at present there is no model available to account for these different characteristics ofthe particulate material behavior. In order to describe the particulate mechanics problems,a model which simulates the material as a collection of individual particles that interactonly at inter-particle contact points are referred as distinct (or discrete) element method(DEM).Application of DEM in Course WorkClass demonstrations included different packing methods for granular materials andDEM coding as well as the simulations. Students liked to see different

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

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

North Midwest Sectional Conference Table 1Comparison of 1985 and 2005 UWP Curricula for Civil and Environmental Engineering 1985 Curriculum 2005 Curriculum Dept.No. Course Credits Dept.No. Course Credits CE 212 Computer Applications 2 CEE 2120 Computer Applications 3 CE 213 Statics 3 GE 2130 Statics 3 CE 220 Mechanics of Materials 4 GE 2340 Mechanics of Materials

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

David A. Rogers

humanactivity. Films or video materials can tell much of the technology and society story, fromtwentieth-century development of the media to the great environmental dilemmas of today.Contributions by people like Abraham Lincoln to the debate on government and theenvironment, and the experiences of the nations of the world, inform student thinking. Studyquestions sharpen student knowledge of significant facts and figures. Essay questions honecritical thinking skills. The technology and society course is a great opportunity to pursue issuescritical to all of life.INTRODUCTIONThe technology and society course has been a fixture at many colleges and universities at leastsince the days of the Vietnam Conflict. Although this course might find a home in one

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Robert M. Nelson; Benjamin D. Braaten

755 (“Antenna Theory and Design”) fit into this material? In addition, we may beable to illustrate ties to other disciplines – such as optics, thermodynamics, mechanics and fluiddynamics.In terms of course organization, the goal will be to use specific problems (i.e., “canonical problems”)as springboards to illustrate both the analytical and computational methods. Although this approachmay not always work, we think it has the potential of providing a natural link between the analyticaland computational methods. For example, one of the canonical problems will be determining thecharge and current distribution on a conducting wire. After a review of Maxwell’s equations andboundary conditions, examining this problem provides a natural

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Paul J. Weber

applications and/or technologies that embodied thetheoretical class information. In order to do so, students were required to research topics of theirown choosing and then communicate their findings to their peers, thus developing “soft skills.”The other central objective was for students to analyze the engineering design process as a wholerather than focusing on one aspect without examining the broader consequences. By examiningthe physical materials used, potential societal benefits of the product, and the practices of themanufacturing/sales companies, students were to study the impacts of these decisions anddetermine which would be sustainable. Furthermore, these objectives were carried out in such amanner that encouraged sustainable learning.The

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

James E. Hertel; Amy J. Hamlin

questionstargeted by our study are more focused toward learning where and when students move out oftheir originally planned major.A third study at Frostburg State University (Soysal, et al., 2003) looks at the enrollment profile oftheir first year classes from 1997 through 2002. [3] From this they were able to determinemigration out of either electrical or mechanical engineering programs. The work, however,measures a relatively small sample (about 40 students per year) and does not track the otherengineering majors.As such, a research gap exists that this study aims to fill. The scope of this paper is to observe,not necessarily analyze. To be clear, at the time of this writing we are not looking to answerquestions regarding students underlying motives for

Collection

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

Nihad E. Daidzic; Vojin R. Nikolic

, constraints and material 52007 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference, Educating Engineers for a Sustainable Future, September 20-22, 2007 properties, and then analyze the state of stresses and deformations throughout the model. ¾ Touring mechanical and civil engineering laboratories. Touring electrical and computer engineering and technology laboratories. The thermal-fluids and materials testing laboratories were toured. During that time the students were able to see and understand to a good degree in what types of testing structural engineers as well as those engineers

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

John L. Irwin

Comparison Research Design Methodology The design structure for the quantitative research is quasi-experimental because of the lack of true randomization. Observations will be conducted at the conclusion of each unit of intervention using a standard post-test instrument. The post-test only design is used because the subject matter being taught is new information that students in the study have not been exposed to in the past so they need not be tested on their prior knowledge of the material. 2007 ASEE North Midwest Sectional Conference 3 4Data

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

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

create the services of the future. Unlike other industries, where engineers are commonlyutilized to design better products and processes, and solve the day-to-day problems that arise, theservice industry has not benefited from engineering talent. In spite of the fact that the servicesector dominates the economy, the academic world is not preparing students for careers inservice systems engineering. To meet the need for service systems engineers, Michigan Techhas embarked on an interdisciplinary effort to develop a new curriculum. Faculty from businessmanagement and operations, civil engineering, computer science, electrical and computerengineering, and mechanical engineering are working together to develop a standalone degreeprogram that

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Tamer Ceylan

mean that the program should document the satisfaction of each criterion for each graduate. However, a review of the documentation should make a reasonable person to conclude that the Criterion is being satisfied. Classifying course materials by outcome within a course is a possible approach, but there are equally acceptable other approaches. It is important that the results of the assessment process are applied to the further development and improvement of the program. The assessment loop at various levels (course-, curriculum-, and program-level) should be closed and this process should be documented. The outcomes assessment should be based on direct measurements of student learning. The evaluators look for assessment analysis results

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

John P. Iselin

Bernoulli’s equation(Bueche, 1980). In Munson, Young, and Okiishi (2006) the third chapter following introductoryand fluid statics chapters is entitled “Elementary Fluid Dynamics – The Bernoulli Equation”.This chapter precedes material where the more complete momentum and energy principles areintroduced. When asked what are governing principles of fluid dynamics, it is no surprise thatmany students answer “Bernoulli’s equation”.However, since it has the four assumptions of incompressible flow, steady state flow, frictionlessflow, and either irrotational flow or flow along a streamline its quantitative abilities are quitelimited. Students easily learn Bernoulli’s equation from hearing a lecture, seeing a few examples, Proceedings of

Collection

2007 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Pasi T. Lautala; William J. Sproule

, local travel, lodging in Chicago and Finland, some meals,and administrative and promotional activities are covered by the course fee.ExperienceBased on the student evaluations and feedback, the program has been a tremendoussuccess. In the first year, 16 students participated in the program and they were primarilysenior and graduate students in civil engineering. The program has since attractedstudents from other engineering disciplines on campus and other universities and in thefirst three years 40 students have taken the program. This year 23 students participated inthe program and the mix of disciplines included mechanical, electrical, civil, surveying,materials engineering, and construction management students.Six of the largest Class 1