Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Swaminathan Balachandran; Justin Kile

other learning opportunities to get students toparticipate in activities that decades of research studies show are linked to students’ emotionalcommitment to learning (6). Student engagement gained momentum when studies by Stanford Research Institute andthe Carnegie Mellon Foundation among Fortune 500 CEOs found that 75% of long term jobsuccess depended on people, emotional or soft skills and only 25% on technical, discipline-specific or hard skills (7, 8). The Harvard University studies reported that achievements on 2career are determined 80% by soft skills and only 20% determined by hard skills. Technicalskills are defined as "those skills acquired through training and education or

Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Joseph Dobmeier; Joseph Gehrke; Matthew Simones; Patrick Tebbe

activities revealsthat all of these outcomes have been touched on by the research project.Overall, this project was an invaluable experience to the students involved. The students wereunanimous in the opinion that the project was able to tie together diverse elements of theireducation. It has helped to reinforce concepts and skills that were learned in the classroom.Using mathematical equations to analyze data; applying thermodynamic and heat transferconcepts to understand flow rates, temperature differences, and energy transfers; andincorporating soft skills such as spell checking, paper formatting, and use of proper grammar areall examples of learned classroom skills used on this project. More importantly it has given thestudents experiences that