Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Avery Schwer; Donna Dufner; George Morcous

Project Management InformaticsAVERY SCHWER, Ph.D. DONNA DUFNER, Ph.D., MBA, PMPAssociate Professor Associate ProfessorDepartment of Construction Systems Department of Information SystemsCollege of Engineering and Quantitative AnalysisUniversity of Nebraska – Lincoln College of Information SciencePeter Kiewit Institute University of Nebraska - OmahaOmaha, NE, 68182-0571Tel: (402) 554-2777 GEORGE MORCOUS, Ph.D., P.E.Fax (402) 554-3304 Assistant ProfessorE-mail: aschwer@unomaha.edu Department of

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Christi L. Patton; Daniel W. Crunkleton; John M. Henshaw; Douglas Jussaume; Robert L. Strattan

The Benefits of an Interdisciplinary Design Project Christi L. Patton, Daniel W. Crunkleton, John M. Henshaw, Douglas Jussaume, Robert L. Strattan The College of Engineering and Natural Sciences, The University of Tulsa Applied Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering / Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering / Professor of Mechanical Engineering / Senior Instructor of Electrical Engineering / Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering, Adjunct Professor of Mechanical EngineeringAbstractChallenge X is a three-year vehicle design competition sponsored by General Motors(GM) and the U.S. Department of Energy. Seventeen universities were

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Lorin P. Maletsky; Charles E. Gabel

1 A Novel Hands-On Project in Computer-Aided Manufacturing Lorin P. Maletsky, Charles E. Gabel Department of Mechanical Engineering The University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 66045AbstractThis paper describes a project that involved designing and fabricating puzzle-type parts to formletters that were machined using a three-axis computerized numerically controlled (CNC) millingstation. The project was part of the Design for Manufacturability course at the University ofKansas. The letters were

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Tim Bower

Incorporating Source Code Reading into Operating Systems Class Projects Tim Bower Assistant Professor Computer Systems Technology Kansas State University at Salina tim@ksu.eduABSTRACTInstructors of operating systems classes have long desired to incorporate programmingprojects into the class that will give students an appreciation for the source code of thekernel of a real operating system. Unfortunately, this lofty goal in practice becomesdifficult to effectively pull off. This paper reviews the motivation and benefits forincorporating programming projects in an

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Carolyne Garcia; John Crone; Jim Gattis; Otto Loewer

Re-Design in West Memphis: Engaging Engineering Students in Multi-Disciplinary TeamsCarolyne Garcia, John Crone, Jim Gattis, and Otto LoewerUniversity of ArkansasAbstractA multi-disciplinary team comprising landscape architecture, civil engineering andart students developed 20 design alternatives for visually enhancing the entranceto the City of West Memphis. The project was directed by landscape architectureprofessor John Crone, in partnership with the West Memphis Chamber ofCommerce and the U of A Economic Development Institute. Its success hasresulted in funded research that will involve more engineering, architecture, andcommunication students in a multi-disciplinary project.

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Scott C. Smith

Group Selection in a Senior/Graduate Level Digital Circuit Design Course Scott C. Smith University of Missouri – Rolla Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 133 Emerson Electric Co. Hall, 1870 Miner Circle, Rolla, MO 65409 Phone: (573) 341-4232, Fax: (573) 341-4532, E-mail: smithsco@umr.edu Website: www.ece.umr.edu/~smithscoAbstractIt is always a difficult task to decide how to select the members for group projects. There aremany different approaches to this problem, including selecting the members to diversify theirskill sets

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Stuart Bernstein

ENGAGING ENGINEERING STUDENTS THROUGH SERVICE LEARNING Stuart Bernstein University of Nebraska, Lincoln at OmahaAbstractIn the Personnel & Supervisory Methods class (CET 4200) the students start off by writing apaper describing what they expect to get from the class. I received comments such as, “nothing,I think this is going to be a big waste of my time” , and “I’ve spent the past six months as anassistant project engineer and already know how to manage people.” That kind of negativeattitude can be difficult to overcome, but each year I have tried new exercises in an effort tomake this an important and enjoyable class.Due to the

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2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

R. L. Kolar; K. Gramoull; T. R. Rhoads; R. C. Knox

Preliminary Results from a “Course-less” Curriculum Study R.L. Kolara, K. Gramoullb, T.R. Rhoadsc, R.C. Knoxa a School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science b School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering c College of Engineering University of Oklahoma Norman, OK 73019 kolar@ou.edu (contact author) ABSTRACTIn 2002, we received an NSF planning grant that builds upon our Sooner City project,which was funded through the Action Agenda program

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Kathy Vratil Brockway

1 The Income Tax Return: A Framework for Engineering Economics Kathy Vratil Brockway Kansas State University at SalinaAbstract StatementThis paper will explore the use of the income tax return as a capstone project in an EngineeringEconomics course.IntroductionAs educators, we are faced with the task of connecting textbook theory to real-world application.In Engineering Economics courses, the income tax return is the ideal way to tie together all‘engineering economics’ topics while, at the same time, demonstrating the practicality of thecourse topics

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Stephan A. Durham; W. Micah Hale

. Group and individual projects areperformed by students not only to familiarize but increase interest in concrete materials. Someprojects are required while others are encouraged. Projects include a high-strength concretecontest, concrete Frisbee contest and certification in concrete testing. The high-strength concretecontest introduces students to High Performance Concrete (HPC) by requiring groups of studentsto work together in designing, batching, and testing their own concrete mixtures. This contestcreates a sense of competitiveness between groups when testing the concrete mixtures. Theconcrete Frisbee competition is an optional project offered to the students. The competition isintended to be a fun way for the students to demonstrate their

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Danielle Julie Carrier; Katherine S. Vaughn; Carl Griffis

brainstorming, creation andevaluation of alternatives and, its prototyping. Throughout the semester, the studentspractice their design skills on three sequential projects. This presentation will go overtypical roadblocks encountered by Biological Engineering freshman, while tackling thedesign problems.

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

K. Madhavan

Engaging Students in an Undergraduate Civil Engineering Course K. Madhavan, Ph.D., P.E., Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering 650 East Parkway South Memphis, TN 38104-5581AbstractThe components of the undergraduate course in Design of Foundations in the Civil andEnvironmental Engineering Department (CEE) at Christian Brothers University (CBU)are discussed. The course consists of the following: classroom lectures, project casestudies, failure case studies, ethical case studies and open-ended design problems.Examples of case studies with discussion questions are provided in this paper.Undergraduate CEE Program

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Larry N. Bland

for theseskills, what other institutions have done in the areas of service learning and global studies tomeet these needs without jeopardizing the hard skills, offer an alternative for consideration,highlight some areas of concern and identify areas of engineering educational research that needto be addressed. As the above areas are covered, reports from various institutions cite how thismay actually assist in diversity recruiting.Context The literature recognizes a need for engineering students to have a better understandingof the global nature of our society and the complexity that can arise in addressing and integratingsocietal, cultural and technological issues. The National Academy of Engineering projects thatengineers of the

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Jason Moore; Mitchell A. Thornton; Ronald W. Skeith

such a language is not found, too much timeis wasted teaching the basics of new languages to cover all of those programming topics. Perl is aversatile enough language to cover all of these topics. At first, students are given small text manipulation programs to learn how to use regularexpressions, vi which is a common Unix text editor, and develop in a Linux environment. Theassignments gradually get larger with each requiring an additional skill to complete. All of theassignments build to a final project that requires a mastery of several skills to successfully finish.The class size is usually around 30 students. Students are given three examinations that test theprogramming skills learned from the assignments. Students are expected to

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Wangping Sun; J. M. Zhang; Z. J. Pei

Year Fig. 1. Enrollment for IMSE 564.2. Creation of the learner-centered environment in IMSE 564Learner-centered education was developed a long time ago, and it continues to take on differentshapes 2. The distinguishing characteristics of a learner-centered method are 3-5: • Curriculum based on learners’ needs; • Learners’ responsibility for contributing to their own learning; • Teacher's role as facilitator to guide education experience; • Group activities for practice and learning reinforcement; • Stimulus for discovery and self-learning; • Opportunities for discourse; • Stimulus for inner discipline; • Project-based learning; • Basis for learning throughout life.The

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2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

W. R. Penney; G. J. Thoma; R. R. Beitle

one another in solving real environmental problems. Typical projects include thethinning of forests to minimize the potential for fire damage, the prevention of foodborneillnesses due to bacterial contamination of tomatoes, and the design of a mobile treatmentfacility to treat mixed transuranic wastes. The students must select the “best” technologyfrom a number of alternatives, run the necessary experiments to prove the concept,construct a scale model of their design, prepare a market analysis and business plan whileaddressing community relations and environmental regulations, and make oral and posterpresentations at the competition. This paper compares and contrasts the WERCexperience with the traditional classroom capstone design experience.

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ken Vickers

in industry. Sincestudents in the microEP program were projected to be substantiallyoriented toward industrial careers, the Cohort Methodology was createdto give them practice in the behaviors that would most strongly benefitthem in organizations with large common goals.The Cohort Methodology was recognized as an interesting new approach toPhD education in 1999 when the microEP graduate program won a NSF IGERTgrant for $2.5 million to support its experiment in PhD education. Thetactics implemented in this grad program have had the result ofpreparing microEP graduates for early career success in both industryand academics, as well as resulting in a supportive work groupatmosphere that has been attractive to underrepresented group students.The

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ken French

visits are made to laboratory equipment like the gas turbine, wind tunnel andhigh-pressure test vessel. Industrial and professional engineers are invited forpresentations on employment prospects, safety, liability and industrial expectations. The vortex tube project commences about one-third of the way into the semesterand extends to semester's end. The project is interleaved with several shorter team designprojects with duration of one class to three weeks. From the first lecture introduction ofthe project, students are challenged check patents and to surf the 'web' with keywords"vortex tube","ranque", "hilsch", and "air coolers", and from the search create a URL list.Using different search engines and pursuit strategies a few of the

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Theodore W. Manikas; Douglas E. Jussaume; Gerald R. Kane

the University of Tulsa, the Electrical Engineering department contains a laboratory that hasspace and equipment for approximately twenty students. In order to meet ABET requirements,we typically offer two laboratory courses per semester. During the fall semester, the laboratory Proceedings of the 2005 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education 2is used by both a microprocessor design course and a senior project design course. For thespring semester, the room is occupied by laboratory courses for both digital logic and electronics.A brief history lesson is in order to understand how these constraints

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

R. L. Kolar; K. M. Dresback; E. M. Tromble

includesthe following: holistic, interdisciplinary approach to civil and environmental infrastructure prob-lems; collaborative research within and outside CEES that teaches valuable partnering skills; par-ticipation in CEES’s novel educational efforts, including integrated curriculum projects,multidisciplinary design experiences, team learning, team teaching, and K-12 alliances; a full yearin the classroom team teaching with a faculty member; and participation in new faculty seminarsand at least two educational methods courses. Table 1 below lists 10 measurable objectives takenfrom our GAANN contract, that we are using to track progress of the fellowship program. Ourbroad-based program exposes GAANN Fellows to all of the rigors associated with a

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

A. Lambert; D. J. Russomanno; P. Palazolo; S. Ivey

examples of such activities andprograms that are underway at Herff College of Engineering, The University ofMemphis, and we note specific links to the expectations of the NAE and potentialindustry and technological employers.Proceedings of the 2005 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education 4Example 1: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Enhancing and Supporting UndergraduateEngineering EducationThis example involves an NSF-funded educational study titled “A Scholarship Programfor Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Students: An Industry-AcademiaPartnership Approach (CSEMS).” This project represents a

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Thomas Carter; Mary Gomez

thedevelopment of student leadership skills. A student can gain these skills by takingleadership roles in the organization or by working in teams. Leadership roles, such aspresident or any other officer, give the student a sense of responsibility and commitmentto succeed. The leaders of the organization receive great exposure by speaking in public,organizing activities, or encouraging members to get involved. Students learn first handhow to take control, a skill that is very helpful when they need to face the real world asworking professionals. Students that are involved have the opportunity to interact withother members while executing projects. This interaction gives them a great chance todevelop their team building skills, which are important when

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Larry N. Bland

engineering world, math and basic sciences arefoundational to our courses. Herein lies our dilemma, how to make engineering fun while notsacrificing the technical truths. The University of Tulsa (UT) uses undergraduate research and competitions as their funelements. The undergraduate research program is very challenging academically, but from arecruiting perspective can be presented as very interesting, exciting and rewarding. The studentsare discovering new frontiers, helping humanity, and going somewhere no one else has gone.Some of the projects have been community service learning activities of mentoring and teachingunderprivileged youth. Some projects are sold as adventuresome, cutting edge technicalresearch. These projects are an

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Chris Ramseyer; Beth Brueggen

“Camp Concrete” – An Experiment in Undergraduate Research Chris Ramseyer, Beth Brueggen University of Oklahoma, Norman OklahomaAbstract:The summer experience of a faculty member, two graduate research assistants and tenundergraduate research assistants is discussed. The students who participated in the inaugural2004 program coined the name "Camp Concrete" after they cast and tested more than 50,000pounds of concrete specimens at Fears Structural Engineering Lab, University of Oklahoma.The goal of Camp Concrete is to involve undergraduate students in high-quality research.Research projects are selected to address immediate needs of local businesses and agencies, suchas the

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Melissa Miller; Randall Reynolds

project based upon sound curriculum. The challenge for the project was to create anactivity involving a simulation-based video game relating to a particular aspect of IndustrialEngineering. The activity was to then be used as a laboratory exercise for INEG 1103:Principles of Industrial Engineering and also modified for use as a classroom activity for juniorhigh school students. Obviously, a major issue was designing the activity with a proper level ofdifficulty for both age groups while keeping the subject matter relevant to meaningfulengineering and junior high instruction.The materials developed are intended to help students acquire fundamental problem solvingcapabilities as well as a basic understanding of some tools used in Industrial

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Hunter Epperson

. Increasing numbers of enlightened schools are offering light, survey,hands on, fun project courses to generate interest in engineering. This is a good thing, anobviously necessary first step in recruiting individuals for engineering education and practice.However, some enthused students that succeed in building a kit or playing with software may“hit the wall” in their sophomore year of university studies when confronted with realengineering mechanics or systems problems, not to mention design projects later on.Courses are needed that give an accurate preview of and background preparation for universitydemands of pursuing an engineering degree. These courses would incorporate a few specificexamples of problems in circuits, statics, dynamics

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

William W. Ryan; Tiffany Wiederstein; Danny King; Malcolm Fowler

potentialengineering students. Therefore, the Academy was designed to allow high school students(sophomores, juniors and seniors) to attend one-half of each school day at their sending highschool and the other half of the day at the Technology Center.During their day at the Academy, each student is enrolled in one Pre-AP (Honors) or AP mathclass and one Pre-AP or AP science class. Each student also completes two engineering courseseach year. The math and science classes are taught by secondary certified math and scienceteachers and meet all requirements of the Oklahoma State Board of Education. The engineeringclasses have been developed nationally by Project Lead the Way and are taught by the samemath and science teachers – thus providing opportunity for

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Stephanie Ivey; Anna Lambert

When They Stay and When They Don’t: Examples of First Semester Retention Rates and Relationships to Learning Styles Stephanie Ivey and Anna Lambert Department of Civil Engineering, The University of MemphisAbstractOur research presents initial findings of a pilot-scale project performed at The Herff College ofEngineering, The University of Memphis, in the 2004-2005 academic year. This projectinvestigates the persistent issues surrounding difficulties in retention of first-semesterengineering students and examines the possibilities of variances in student learning styledifferences as potential contributors to students leaving engineering programs. While theresearchers

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Stephan A. Durham; Mark L. Kuss; Ernest Heymsfield; Hanna Sheppard

in a college preparation program.1The federally funded program is aimed at preparing students that excel in math and science forcollege upon graduating high school. The program includes a six week summer session as wellas continual involvement during the academic year.The program not only focuses on math and science, but includes classes in English, foreignlanguage, literature, and computers. The primary focus is math and science and is reinforcedthrough faculty involvement with group and individual research projects. The projects examinedin recent years in the civil engineering portion includes evaluating a field asphalt permeabilitydevice, concrete permeability device, and a new innovative testing device to determine the

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Nathaniel Scott; Carl Greco; Todd T. Schlegel

forcardiovascular disease risk stratification 2 . The T-wave represents the electrical repolarization ofthe ventricles.. The process of examining the heterogeneity of ventricular repolarization, knownas T-wave morphology analysis, promises to yield much clinically relevant information3 . The T-wave Residuum (TWR) is a new form of T-wave morphology analysis, and examines therepolarization heterogeneity of the individual dipoles in the heart muscles relative to each other 4 .This project implemented a computerized, real-time, beat-by-beat TWR calculator.MethodsThe TWR program designed in this project was coupled to a commercially available softwarepackage called CardioSoft®. CardioSoft® provides the computer interface for a high frequencyECG recorder, as