Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Arthur Heinricher; Brian Savilonis; David Spanagel; Robert Traver; Kristin Wobbe

Great Problems Seminars: A New First-Year Foundation at WPI Arthur Heinricher1, Brian Savilonis2, David Spanagel3, Robert Traver4, Kristin Wobbe5AbstractThe Great Problems Seminars are a new program designed to engage Worcester PolytechnicInstitute’s first-year students with current events, societal problems, and human needs. Eachseminar starts with an important global problem and helps students to find a place where they canmake real progress, no matter how small, in solving the problem.Four WPI faculty representing Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, and Humanities developedand delivered two Great Problems Seminars in 2007. Feed the World

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Ashraf Ghaly; Megan Ferry

thousands of people and in a change intheir lifestyle. This could be a depressing experience for those who cannot smoothly adjust. A new coursehas been developed to explore all of the above issues. China’s Three Gorges Dam is used as a case studydue to its mammoth size and enormous impact. Students are offered views of the pros and cons of each ofthe above factors. They are asked to examine the issues carefully, and to evaluate the positive andnegative aspects of dam construction. Students are expected to make a case to dam or not to dam based onthe evidence presented. The course teaches and promotes an educated and informed approach to decisionmaking. Students will recognize that real world problems are never black and white and appreciate theneed

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Imin Kao

Using Video Podcast to Enhance Students’ Learning Experience in Engineering Imin Kao Department of Mechanical Engineering State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-2200 Corresponding author: imin.kao@sunysb.eduAbstractThe students and faculty today have available to them many technologies that did not exist adecade ago. Such technologies can be great tools for the delivery of course contents to enhancestudents’ learning experience. In this presentation, podcast is employed as an asynchronousonline tool in engineering courses to record lectures and supplementary materials

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Junichi Kanai

coloration tool was available, faculty advisers heavily relied on face-to-face meetings inscheduled classes to assess students’ progress and problems. Implementing this on-line system allowedfaculty advisors to monitor the students’ thinking processes and progress made between classes. Thus, inclasses, the students and faculty advisor were able to focus their attention on important design issueswithout spending time on trivial housekeeping issues. On the other hand, the system was also helpful forfaculty advisors in identifying teams that might need guidance because of a lack of forum activity. 100 90

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Elif Kongar; Paul Kontogiorgis; Nancy L. Russo; Tarek Sobh

and manufacturing as the leading contributor to gross domesticproduct in the world today. As the global economy has become more integrated, and the demand for aworkforce required to run service-focused organizations in an efficient manner grows, the level andvariety of skills needed in this new service economy have also changed and grown. In particular, thegrowth rate of technology-driven service industries is significantly outpacing the growth in other service-oriented sectors. It has been argued that women in general possess many characteristics that make themoptimal candidates to fulfill this workforce gap. However, the percentage of women enrolled inengineering, technology and related programs have been dropping. This paper attempts to

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

David A Gray

context of control charts provides significant feedback that allows primary employees to evaluate their own process, and 3) The only way to improve the output of a process is to change it, ergo, “If you do not like your grade, change your process.” These three ideas paint a realistic picture of the college enterprise, and provide the students with context that allows them to evaluate their own progress and to make decisions directed toward improvement.Messiah College’s engineering department has long had concern for successful transition of first yearstudents into the academic rigors of our engineering program. Reflecting this concern, we

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

John Adams; Charles Kochakian

systems engineering concepts and introducing economicconcepts and business benefits through implementations such as found in Supply Chain andWarehouse Management (SCM/WHM). In addition, RFID is a natural place to introduce ethicalas well as global engineering issues. The course includes selected RFID projects incorporatingbusiness student participation on multidisciplinary teams. As a result, the department has beenable to tailor the course to specifically addresses ABET1 outcomes 3 (d), 3 (f) and 3 (h). Earlyexperience in multidisciplinary teamwork has been favorable, one example provided by a teamthat evaluated possible adoption of RFID by the college’s library. The role of assessment indeciding to adopt this course, and the assessment of the

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Robin K. Burk

competition with Systems Engineering majors teams and that theauthor and the proxy client found useful as a starting point for additional faculty research and analysis.7Two of the eight THEL teams, both from the second term, also took the opportunity to excel. Again, thebest analysis was done by a team that included several quantitatively skilled economics majors. In theircase, however, the excellence was demonstrated by their extensive research into the demographics,sectarian identity and local history of Country X’s populace at each of the candidate site locations, alongwith recent news articles about insurgent activity. Plotting insurgent attack trends, this team projectedlikely changes in attack patterns at several locations and speculated on

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Ashraf Ghaly

mandatedregulations.INTRODUCTIONLocated in the Capital District of the State of New York State, Union College was founded in 1795, thefirst college chartered by the State’s Board of Regents. Union is an independent, liberal arts college withengineering.In its Vision Statement, Union College states “Our graduates will be people inspired to make a differencein the world, who know how to use academic methods of inquiry to bring about beneficial change. Theywill be equipped to address complex 21st-century societal and intellectual challenges that require theability to interact perceptively with people of many backgrounds and viewpoints. They will be able tothink critically and creatively, with an informed sensitivity to aesthetic and ethical concerns.”Furthermore, in its Mission

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Hudson V. Jackson; Evelyn A. Ellis

Early and Continuous Exposure to Engineering as a Profession: Career Imprinting in Grades PK-12 Hudson V. Jackson, PhD, P.E and Evelyn A. Ellis, Ed.D United States Coast Guard Academy, New London, Connecticut, U.S.A.AbstractIn recent years, there has been much discussion about declining interest in engineering programsthroughout U.S. colleges and universities. Several possible causes for the decline have been identified andare fodder for debate: (1) PK-12 educational systems are not adequately preparing students tocomprehend the connections among science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) andfuture career opportunities and (2) College engineering curricula need to be more

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Yiming (Kevin) Rong

worldsituations, the problem and the project goals are usually vague at beginning and the WPI students, withtheir previous project experience, usually take the lead in developing the initial conceptual design. Theyask a lot of ‘what if’ questions. But, the HUST students catch up quickly with their strong analytical andtechnical skills and become a real asset as the designs became more specific. All team members—bothstudents and faculty— found it challenging to work on teams with students and advisors from differentcultural backgrounds. Language is not a big issue since all the Chinese students are selected and fluent inEnglish. It is, however, a rewarding experience. Both the co-advisors from WPI and HUST feel that boththe WPI and the HUST students

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

David I. Schwartz

would be lost, a more complexmodel would offer greater insight into how a game changes state. Deciding which game components andstates should contribute (and to what degree) to a score needs further work. 8Finally, educators may wish to introduce mathematical concepts from a game design and analysisperspective. Ultimately, scoring could provide an essential link between theoretical fundamentals andsoftware implementations.7. AcknowledgementsI would like to express my gratitude to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Rome, New Yorkfor providing a Visiting Faculty Research Professorship for the summer of 2007 and a subsequentextension grant. Research into wargame design and development methods

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

John Hartke; Robert Kewley; Greg Kilby; Greg Schwarz; Gunnar Tamm

cadets and faculty involoved inthis work were forced to become conversant in fields outside their own. They were all required to learnthe basics of lasers operation and beam propagation, heat management, the systems engineering designprocess, electrical energy generation and storage, and the law of armed conflict as applied to weaponsdevelopment. This exposure supports the education mission and instills confidence in the cadets as totheir ability to select a subject, learn on their own, and apply what they have learned to new andchallenging situations.4. Acknowledgement We would like to thank and acknowledge the financial and educational support of theDirected Energy Professional Society, the High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Mir M. Atiqullah

. Albeit new inour Mechanical Engineering Technology department, two students were selected to participate in aresearch involving defects in composite materials. These students did have minimal background incomposites from the general Engineering Materials course. These minority students were supported bysummer scholarships from Peach State Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (PSLSAMP).The issue of defects and their effect on the mechanical properties of composites is of great concern amonghigh end users. A limited set of experimental investigation with defective composite flat panels wasselected for investigation. One of our adjunct faculty offered access to his fabrication facility andguidance to the students for fabricating these

Collection

2008 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Saikat Ray

U.S.A. have only an M.S. program with no (or a verysmall) Ph.D. program. A representative list of universities compiled by the author using the ASEEdatabase can be downloaded fromhttp://raysaikat.googlepages.com/us_univ_classification.txtIn this list, the universities are separated into different categories based on the number of graduatingstudents at different levels. The list shows that almost 75 universities in the U.S. have a graduate levelthat (almost) exclusively serves M.S. students. These graduate programs are primarily teaching orientedand resemble undergraduate-only schools in many ways; e.g., 3 or more sections per semester of teachingload on the faculty members is quite common. The M.S. programs serve as a convenient source