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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Ronald E. Musiak; Richard A. Grabiec; Eric W. Haffner; Steve Schreiner; Alan K. Karplus; Mary Vollaro

example, assuming the materialpresented in Freshman English Composition courses will be used proficiently for a majorengineering report in the senior year three years later. Unless the knowledge gained in thecomposition class is incorporated explicitly into the engineering classes throughout theireducation, the students will have difficulty retaining and using the knowledge at discretemilestones (e.g. the capstone design final report).In order to reduce compartmentalization of information and promote the routine exercising ofimportant skills over time, the School of Engineering at Western New England College isredesigning its traditional common core curriculum to provide Freshman engineering studentswith a more integrated and challenging

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Jendrucko; Jack Wasserman

Session 1309 A New BME Curriculum for the 21st Century Richard Jendrucko, Jack Wasserman The University of Tennessee, KnoxvilleAbstractThis paper describes the design and content of a new undergraduate degree program inbiomedical engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Program enhancement withthe use of advanced teaching tools and the Internet is discussed.I. IntroductionThe field of biomedical engineering (BME), defined as a new engineering discipline in the mid-twentieth century has been the focus for the development of new degree programs at

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Amir Karimi

Session 1566 Implementing a New Mechanical Engineering Curriculum to Improve Student Retention Amir Karimi The University of Texas at San AntonioAbstractThe mechanical engineering curriculum at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) wasrecently revised. The new curriculum is being implemented in the 2000-01 academic year. Themain motivations for curriculum revision were enhancement of engineering education quality,increased student retention, and reduced total degree requirement semester hours.This paper provides tracking data on student

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Macy Reynolds; Joseph Untener

technical reports in a few courses simply did not meetthe expectations of employers. This led to a new approach to integrate writing exercises andevaluation throughout the curriculum. One basic premise from the outset was that writing cannotbe limited to a few courses, but requires a thoughtful integration over a student’s entire educationin Engineering Technology. Blending writing formats with each course was achieved by aconstructing a matrix with courses on one axis and forms of writing on the other. The matrixensures that students will develop the writing abilities desired by the base of employers duringtheir tenure in the department.BackgroundIn 1998 the University of Dayton Department of Engineering Technology was re-evaluating andre

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Joseph Walsh; David Kelso; John Troy; Barbara Shwom; Penny Hirsch

communicators5.A new paradigm: the integrated approach used in one freshman courseIn the 1990s, a new and more promising approach to engineering communicationpedagogy—one of genuine collaboration--has been emerging. In this paradigm, engineering andcommunication experts work together to develop a curriculum that blends engineering andcommunication instruction and leverages the synergies between the two fields to help studentslearn more about each than if they studied each separately. The emergence of collaborativeprograms reflects a number of changes in academia over the last decade: an increased emphasison creative problem-solving in engineering; conceptual advances in other fields about howpeople learn; and institutional advances, such as greater

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Ron Eglash; Larry Kagan; Gary Gabriele; Frances Bronet; David Hess

Product Design and Innovation: A New Curriculum Combining the Humanities and Engineering Gary A. Gabriele, Larry Kagan, Frances Bronet, David Hess, Ron Eglash, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY 12180ABSTRACTSuccessful competition in the global economy is increasingly dependent on a stream of newproducts and services that will open up new business possibilities. At the same time it isincreasingly evident that new products and services must be regarded not only as commodities ina marketplace, but also as social actors which can constrain or enable the quality of our life. Inrecognition of these two perspectives, Product Design and

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Sanjay Joshi; Richard Wysk; D.J. Medeiros; Amine Lehtihet; Timothy Simpson

Session 3266 IME, Inc. – A New Course for Integrating Design, Manufacturing, and Production into the Engineering Curriculum Timothy W. Simpson, D. J. Medeiros, Sanjay Joshi, Amine Lehtihet, Richard A. Wysk The Pennsylvania State UniversityAbstractIME, Inc. is a new two-semester undergraduate course in which multidisciplinary student teamsfirst design and prototype new products, and then produce them in volume. The objective in thecourse is to provide students with manufacturing and production experiences analogous to thoseobtained by an English student

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Jess Everett; Joseph Orlins; Beena Sukumaran; Kauser Jahan; Linda Head

motivational team-oriented fieldwork in freshman through senior year classes. Much ofthe fieldwork activities involve multidisciplinary, and in some cases multilevel, teams. A surveyof the National Society of Professional Engineers indicates that 80% of employers feel that theability to work in teams is an important attribute in new graduates. The importance of cross-disciplinary interactions between scientists and engineers has been addressed extensively inrecent years (Zander et al. 1994). Multidisciplinary approaches, total quality management (TQM)and team dynamics have been cited among recent innovations in undergraduate civil engineeringeducation (Pauschke and Ingraffea 1996) along with increasing emphasis on communicationskills and hands-on

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Beatrice Isaacs; Donald Leone; Mohammad Saleh Keshawarz; David Pines

Session 2793 Integration of GIS in Civil Engineering Curriculum M. Saleh Keshawarz, Donald Leone, David Pines, Beatrice Isaacs Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of HartfordAbstractGeographical Information System (GIS) has traditionally been used in geography and naturalresources curricula in the United States. The University of Hartford is among a few institutionsthat early on recognized the impact of the new GIS technology on Civil Engineering programs.GIS technology is rapidly expanding into most areas of Civil Engineering. As part of a

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Daniel Davis; Elizabeth Petry; James Fuller

Session 1606 An Integrative Curriculum in Architectural Engineering Technology Daniel Davis, James Fuller, Elizabeth Petry University of HartfordAbstractIn an effort to improve the Architectural Engineering Technology curriculum at the University ofHartford, educators and practitioners are working in collaboration. As design professionals, weare approaching the challenges of an integrative curriculum as we would an architectural designproject. The goals of the ‘new’ design curriculum are to improve student learning througheffective implementation of practice. The curriculum promotes

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Jose Roesset; James Yao

Session 2315 Suggested Topics for a Civil Engineering Curriculum Jose M. Roësset, James T. P. Yao Texas A&M University at College StationAbstractAs continued developments in computer hardware and software provide us with moreefficient means to carry out cumbersome computations and with enhanced means ofcommunication and information transfer, the role of civil engineers must change. Thecurrent civil engineering curricula at most universities are no longer appropriate to produceleaders of our society in the 21st century. If engineers want to maintain a prominentposition in society a new

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

James Newell; Kathryn Hollar; Mariano Savelski; Stephanie Farrell; Dianne Dorland; Robert Hesketh; C. Stewart Slater; Kevin Dahm

, tubular heaters, silicone tubing. The housing of mostcoffee machines, and other appliances, is molded polypropylene. Students are then asked toconduct a life cycle assessment of these materials. Extensive use is made of the Kirk-Othmerand McKetta references volumes.Other freshman engineering programs, such as the one at New Jersey Institute of Technology Page 6.200.5presented by Golub et al.20, use a case study approach in which students have to site and design amanufacturing facility that either uses or generates hazardous materials. In this example,students are asked to consider pollution prevention strategies in their process plant design

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Daniel Waldorf

in fracture at a specified location in the part material. Unfortunately, a simplemodeling approach could not be found that yielded reasonable convergence and clear results.Therefore, this exercise, too, was deemed beyond the current level of the Tool Engineeringcourse.III. ImplementationThe new curriculum design with FEM lecture and exercise material was integrated into theSpring 2000 offering of Tool Engineering at Cal Poly. 10 students were enrolled in the class andall participated in the new material. Approximately 3 hours of lecture time were used to presentthe FEM material described above. Only one of the computer exercises was assigned (#1 above)because the others were not in a completed state at the time of the offering. About an hour

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Brett Gunnink; Kristen Sanford Bernhardt

students a great deal of specialization. This latter approach ismore wide open at larger institutions where more courses are offered, and less so at others, wherethe number of courses available in any one area prevents students from concentrating tooheavily. Page 6.94.6 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Education Table 1. AAU Institutions and their Curriculum Web Sites Institution Primary Web Site UsedUniversity of Arizona

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Larry Shuman; Graciela Perez; Mary E. Besterfield-Sacre; Harvey Wolfe

Session 3530 Measuring Continuous Improvement In Engineering Education Programs: A Graphical Approach* Graciela de L. Perez, Larry Shuman, Harvey Wolfe and Mary Besterfield-Sacre University of PittsburghAbstractThis paper presents a method for developing assessment metrics that can be used to efficientlyreduce survey data to a format that facilitates quick and accurate faculty feedback as part of anEC 2000 continuous improvement process. Our methodology, the Pitt-SW Analysis, is anadaptation of the competitive strategy principle of SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Mohamed. E. Brihoum; Ahmad Ibrahim

now referredto as; communication skills, team work, critical thinking, ethics, applied research, and provenskills. Such attributes are still considered important as demonstrated by more recent studies [3]and are taken into account in assessing quality of education [4]. These attributes are fundamentalto the “new” rules of the accreditation board for engineering and technology [5].The extent of these attributes is usually assessed through a successful completion of a technicalproject before graduation. The way is paved for the technical aspects of such project by the workdone in numerous laboratory courses where students perform experiments with progressivelevels of sophistication in both design and analysis. Instructors can form cross

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Gilbert; Mark Maughmer; Bonnie Osif; Marilyn Barger, Hillsborough Community College; Renata Engel, Pennsylvania State University

AC 2001-885: The Role of the Lecturer in the New Learning StrategiesBonnie Osif,Marilyn Barger, Hillsborough Community CollegeMark Maughmer,Renata Engel, Pennsylvania State UniversityRichard Gilbert, Page 6.1035.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2001 Session 2457 The Role of the Lecturer in the New Learning Strategies Marilyn Barger, Renata Engel, Richard Gilbert, Mark Maughmer and Bonnie Osif University of South Florida/ Penn State/ University of South Florida

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Norman Asper; Bijan Sepahpour

the past fiveyears at the College of New Jersey. The success rate of this approach is measured by theperformance and creativity level of the two generations of students/graduates who experiencedthe new environment with both the students/graduates of prior years and students/graduates ofother institutions. The foundation of the proposed model is laid in the first semester of thefreshman year by introduction of a formal course in fundamentals of engineering design andreinforced in the second semester by a course that brings the elements of liberal arts andhumanities into perspective. In the remaining three years of the curriculum, design projects andexercises are strategically incorporated all through the engineering courses - targeting the

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Mary Cardenas; Patrick Little

Session 2425Use of “Studio” Methods in the Introductory Engineering Design Curriculum Patrick Little, Mary Cardenas Harvey Mudd College Claremont, CaliforniaAbstractA number of themes, including interest in first year design courses, commitment to activelearning approaches, and desires for changes in course structures and costs have come togetherin a variety of teaching approaches. Some of these approaches have been referred to as using“studio” methods, although the particular pedagogy appears to vary greatly. In this paper, someof these

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Andrew Scanlon; Andrea Schokker

design. Studentsusually see analysis as being theoretical while design is seen as dealing with practical issues,whereas in fact analysis and design are closely intertwined.At Penn State we are attempting to integrate various parts of the curriculum by developingproject design examples that cover analysis and design of structural components within thecontext of a complete structural system. This approach has already been implemented in ourcourse on design of concrete structures and we are currently developing the modules for ourstructural analysis course.As part of the assessment process, a baseline test has been developed to assess the student'sunderstanding of structural engineering concepts at various stages of their development.II. Structural

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Ilya Grinberg

Session 1433 Power Systems Curriculum and Course Structure in Electrical Engineering Technology Program Ilya Grinberg State University of New York, College at Buffalo1. IntroductionRecent years have witnessed an extraordinary increase in the fields of microelectronics,computers, telecommunications, and other so-called hi-tech disciplines.Because of this significant shift to new technologies, the shortage of electrical engineers,engineering technologists, and technicians with adequate knowledge of power systems theoryand practice has now reached a critical point

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Pamela Mack; Yacob Astatke

Session 2793 A Web-based Foundations of Mathematics Course : A new approach to prepare freshmen students for the Math Placement Exams Yacob Astatke, Pamela Leigh Mack Electrical & Computer Engineering Department Morgan State UniversityAbstractDuring the summer of 2000, a five-week web-based math course was implementedusing the BlackBoard CourseInfoTM software. The course was created to improve themath skills of freshmen engineering students, and to prepare them for the mathplacement exams. The goal of the online

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Fred Lee; Connie Dillon; Arthur Breipohl

material for the two new key courses and asimulator that will be made available to other universities on the web. The paper consists of: abrief description of the changes that are taking place in the electrical energy industry; their effecton the demand for graduates; the curriculum that we are developing; and a description of the twocourses and the simulator that we are developing. We also briefly describe our experiments withdelivery methods in anticipation of placing material on the web.I. The Changing Electrical Energy IndustryThe introduction of competition is the most significant change that is affecting the sale andproduction of electric energy. On the sales side, energy companies will eventually compete in anation-wide market for

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

David Miller

Session 1475 Group homework: A new faculty member’s experiences in an introductory engineering course D. C. Miller Department of Chemical Engineering Michigan Technological UniversityIntroduction As described recently1, most new engineering educators teach in the manner they weretaught. Many recognize that more effective methods of instruction must exist; however, theyoften become overwhelmed with literature that is written in “a language that is foreign to them”and, lacking the time to decipher the jargon

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Stephen Maybar; Jerome Zornesky

analysis in which the frequency of the sinusoid approaches zero. This results in a unifiedview of circuit analysis without the artificial separation of AC and DC analysis topics. Inaddition, the new unified approach results in a considerable savings of valuable curriculum timeand, more importantly, an increase in comprehension. The new unified approach has been usedat TCI where it has been taught for several years with great success. A textbook that uses thisapproach has been written by the authors of this paper and published by Prentice Hall.I. IntroductionThe rapid growth of new topics in electronics and computers has placed a stress on the ElectricalEngineering Technology curriculum. A requirement to introduce important new subject materialand

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Rudisill

Session 3547 Electronics Engineering Technology Curriculum at a Thinkpad University Michael D. Rudisill Northern Michigan UniversityAbstractNorthern Michigan University became the largest public university to be an IBM ThinkpadUniversity in the Fall of 2000. Each student was issued a laptop (only freshmen andsophomores were mandatory for the first year) during registration complete with a “standard”software package. The challenge is to fully utilize the laptops - not necessarily in Web-basedcourses, on-line courses or distance

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Suzanne Weiner; Honora Nerz

SearchDegree of Library HighInvolvementSkills/Competencies Synthesizing and evaluating informationDetails of the Assignment For classes with design projects: students can look at how new technologies have been applied by searching for patents that use a particular technology to support their design.The student turns in A listing of relevant U.S. and foreign patents.The instructor provides Guidance on the approach to take.The library provides Instruction on patent searching.Integration of these competencies into any curriculum will take considerable work and planning.The first step is to have

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Seagrave; R. Vigil; Debra Hawker-Schreiner; Charles Glatz

problem, in this case the problem being how to satisfy EC2000. Part of the Page 6.113.1 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Educationbeauty of the new criteria is that each program has some leeway with regard to how to satisfy thecriteria, this also, however, presents the complication in that satisfying EC2000 no longer has asolution or one approach. Here the approach taken by the Chemical Engineering program at ISUto satisfy “Criterion 3. Program Outcomes and Assessment” and “Criterion 8

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Thomas Currin

Page 6.1070.3field makes determination of what is or is not appropriate at the undergraduate level difficult atbest. The old curriculum model used at many colleges and universities provides one ‘overview’course in transportation in which the instructor is expected to generate interest in the field andprovide a synopsis of this vast new body of knowledge known as transportation engineering.This task often falls to an instructor whose specialty area is something other than transportationengineering. Little interest or knowledge other than what is in the chosen text is brought to theclassroom. Students, in turn, receive the message loud and clear whether intentionally orunintentionally that transportation engineering is neither interesting nor a

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Ernest Tollner

resource engineering, as does the expanding field ofknowledge. Attention must be devoted to hiring appropriately trained instructors to actualize thetransition.Background The main thrust of the presentation will be oriented towards presenting an analysis of thearea following an accepted protocol for examining curriculum questions1. Specific problems thatdevelop the above definition of the natural resources engineer will be presented in this context. Page 6.322.1 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2001. American Society of