forty hours a week across two summermonths conducting both field and laboratory research at the university with a focus on environmental sciencesand engineering. Paired with graduate students and professors, the freshman-level interns have practicedgraduate-level research including on-site research at several local wetlands. Various projects have beenundertaken, ranging from ecological studies on topics including potentially harmful vectors like mosquitoes andecologically critical and valuable pollinators like bees, vertebrate presence and habitat selection, andenvironmental water quality and its impact on both aquatic invertebrate and plant community dynamics.Through our summer bridge program, we have created a pyramid-like synergistic effect
engineers who had contributed most heavily to the new technology of use tothe Department, the employment stability of these individuals stood out as a most significantfactor. Moreover, it was found that the most effective engineer ─ in terms of the probability thathe or she will come up with something that will be profitable to the organization is one who hasbeen in the company for a number of years. The modal point on the distribution curve displayinglength of employment against probability of making a useful contribution occurs at betweenseven and nine years of employment. Clearly, if the professional turn-over rate exceeds 10% to15% per year, it will be most unlikely that the peak performance of the laboratory will ever beachieved [Cetron].” 15
engineering programs. First started in the 1980’s itis now offered in 45 states.In 1998, the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation announced a10-year research agenda that includes focus on girls and young women’s educational preparationfor an increasingly technological, information-driven economy.At the University of Michigan a new program that is partly supported by NSF gives money towomen scientists to hire graduate students and postdoctoral fellows for their laboratories.85Michigan and other major research institutions are trying to minimize the negative effects raisingsmall children can have on a female scientist’s career.86 The irony is that the oldest and mostgenerous program to help female professors facing work
in-depth project provided by the industrial mentor or communitypartner. The experience was enhanced through field trips to the industrial mentors’ sites, guestspeakers, laboratory experiences and tours, technical writing seminars, as well as history andethics of engineering innovation sessions. Additionally, the participants were guided through awell-structured curriculum writing experience modeled after that used for a highly successfulregional STEM teacher professional development program. Through this experience, the teamsmade use of a curriculum template that was developed to ensure that the resulting lessonsprovided high quality inquiry based STEM experiences for the students that included concepts ofengineering innovation and design
change biodiversity loss, energy poverty, water scarcity, foodscarcity, waste storage, health, or critical infrastructure, provides fresh and sustainable solutions.Concepts and characteristics of nature The world of biomimicry offers a new universe of discovery and one that opens the doorto a new world of innovation. Nature provides the largest laboratory ever created and provides Page 23.401.6the greatest knowledge base and opportunity for finding novel solutions to complex globalproblems. Unfortunately, scientists and engineers have, for the most part, only used conceptsand characteristics of nature to solve specific, single-focused
at MSU, including Pro- cess Control, Transport Phenomena, Reactor Design, Engineering Materials, Thermodynamics, both Unit Operations Laboratories and graduate courses in Advanced Thermodynamics, Transport Phenomena and Chemical Kinetics. He performs research in the areas of catalysis, fuel cells and nanocomposite materials.Dr. Larry Everett Pearson, Mississippi State University Page 23.468.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2013 Efficient and Effective Instruction in Process Simulation across the Chemical Engineering CurriculumAbstractOne
inquiry learning approach in an introductoryphysics class resulted in higher student performance on concept inventory tests.9 In this study,students were asked to make predictions or define hypothesis, then they were able to view ormanipulate a laboratory demonstration. These research studies are only a few of the possibleevidence-based research that could be presented to new TAs. Other research describing thebenefits of active learning on retention, performance, and attitudes have also been considered for Page 23.136.4this overview. 4,13,23During the active learning presentation, the participants also watch a short video clip of a GSI orTA
design class using open-ended questions and identified aspects of theirexperiences that could lead to improved student retention in engineering13. Using multiple surveyinstruments, Demetry and Groccia evaluated and compared mechanical engineering students’experiences in two introductory materials science classes with one implementing active learningand cooperative learning strategies14. Torres et al. presented students’ experiences of learningrobotics within a virtual environment and remote laboratory, where students knowledge wasassessed via automatic correction tests and students opinions were collected using self-evaluationquestionnaires15. Grimes et al. evaluated civil engineering students’ experiences in a visualclassroom named VisClass
AC 2012-3291: FROM DEMONSTRATION TO OPEN-ENDED LABS: RE-VITALIZING A MEASUREMENTS AND ANALYSIS COURSEDr. Bridget M. Smyser, Northeastern University Bridget M. Smyser is an Assistant Academic Specialist and Director of Laboratories, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering .Kevin McCue, Northeastern University Page 25.655.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012 From Demonstration to Open Ended: Revitalizing a Measurements and Analysis CourseAbstractThe course entitled Measurements and Analysis with Thermal Science Application is a requiredcourse
for prototyping and debugging.Educational platforms currently available are in the form of microcontroller populated boards(hard core processors) or programmable logic device boards. In the later, students can instantiatea configurable, soft core processor comparable to the one provided in the former. This leaveseducators with two distinct options for teaching embedded systems and low level programmingcourses (Note: there can be hard core processors within a programmable logic device, howeverthis paper is referring to a hard core processor as a stand-alone component).This paper is a dialogue between two faculty members, one defending design using hardcomponents, assembly and laboratory testing, and the other using soft components
first science laboratory course. Typical general chemistry labmanuals devote an introductory section or an appendix to graphing procedures, including explicitdirections for layout, format, and data presentation, and newer manuals support technology toolsand encourage students to use them to prepare graphs of their experimental data. However, moststudents have not internalized the principles of scientific graphic, but rather resort to the defaultoptions of the “chart” tools of Excel, a program designed for marketing and advertising, not forscience. Page 25.744.5The goals of the assignment were not only to test the upload feature, but also to
attack.Field Trip to Mississippi State UniversityThe Mississippi Governor’s School is held at the Mississippi University for Women, a primarilyliberal arts institution located in Columbus, MS. As part of the course, all of the students weretaken on a one-day field trip to Mississippi State University, located approximately 20 milesaway in Starkville, MS. The students were given guided tours of three research facilities. Thefirst was the Aerospace Engineering wind tunnel laboratory. The tour included both a subsonicand supersonic wind tunnel. The students were shown a demonstration of drag in the subsonictunnel, including a demonstration of the effects of dimples on the drag for a sphere, a topic thatwas later discussed in more detail during the
butwere interspersed with hands-on-learning activities to build on lessons taught by more traditionallectures. Guest lectures, laboratory experiments and fun exercises were also included to helpstimulate creativity and build team esprit de corps. A pre-class questionnaire was created andadministered to ascertain the self-perceived creativity quotient of the students and to alsodetermine the various levels of experience and discipline expertise. This was used to pre-determine teams and, thus, ensure diversity as well as to equally distribute key skills necessary toaddress the course problem/challenge. The faculty team decided on an “ice breaker” that wasrelated to the actual problem. The students were introduced to each other during
projects are appropriate to run as full-fledged interdepartmental multi-discipline efforts,the course coordinators must use their judgment, and be somewhat selective.Collaborations with Non-Engineering Departments Over the years, a number of Senior Design projects at our College have also involvedcollaborations with departments outside of the engineering school, thereby further extending themultidisciplinary reach and scope of our program. For example, for the last three years, two of our departments (ECE and ME) haveengaged in a partnership with Florida State’s department of Earth, Ocean & AtmosphericSciences department, and two of its associated research laboratories, to have teams of ourengineering students develop various new
Cairo Institute of Technology. Dr. Orabi has received a number of research awards from the state of Connecticut, Untied Technologies, and NSF. In 2010, he was awarded an NSF-grant proposal in collaboration with eight colleges to Improved Learning for Undergraduate Engineering Programs for $600,000. He has established two laboratories: the Materials Testing Laboratory sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and the Engineering Multimedia Laboratory funded by AT&T. Dr. Orabi was awarded the ASEE Instrumentation Division Best Paper Award in 2000. He was a visiting professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) from 1996 to 1998. He is a member of ASME and ASEE.Dr. Firas Akasheh, Tuskegee
coherent fashion in accordance with the specified guidelines.These are the ILOs for the project, and to demonstrate the achievement of these ILOs studentsundertake the following set of low stakes assessment tasks (along with their phasing during theUK academic year): • Submission of a Risk Assessment and Project Specification (November). • Maintenance of a laboratory/project log book (weekly review) • An interim Oral Presentation (early January) • Submission of an interim report (half way through the project timescale at the end of January) • Demonstration (May) • Final Oral Presentation and Q&A session (May) • Final Written Report (end of April)Custom and practice within the
active classroom learning, we have also developed out-of-classwork/questions for the exercises that offer individual reflective components to compliment andstrengthen the in-class learning experience. Along with a review of the exercises that highlightsthe learning objective and student response to each activity, the paper offers notes on deliverylogistics that have been successful in our classrooms and an account of the expenses associatedwith each exercise. The worksheets that we have created for these activities are provided as anappendix to the paper for reader use, and solution keys to the worksheets are available from theauthors upon request.Introduction In the past, experiential learning was often reserved for formal laboratory
”developing ethics workshops for nanotech students as well as mid-career industry professionals.The goals of the workshops are to introduce the AIR (awareness, investigation and response)model18 of ethical inquiry to participants. This model will be presented both as a proven tool toassist them in processing the ethical issues that may arise during their own laboratory research,and as a teaching tool for use with the students, graduate assistants, technicians under theirsupervision.CHN-affiliated faculty at the University of Massachusetts Lowell are designing curricula that usenanotechnology as a framework for examining the entire range of societal issues associated withemerging technologies. For example: faculty in the Department of Work Environment
rather than facilitate student learning. In short, they “teach the way theywere taught” 5, lecturing, developing assignments and tests, and assigning grades. Students movethrough a standard sequence of self-contained courses taught in isolation where they learn tosolve problems within the narrow context of individual courses6. Laboratory courses are oftentaught using a “cookbook” approach, not affording students sufficient opportunity for criticalthinking and synthesis of knowledge; connecting what they have learned to prior knowledge orexperience and applying what they have learned in new applications and/or novel situations.Upon completion of core coursework, students are often expected to synthesize the knowledgegained in each course
are many. Forinstance, product dissection has been successfully used to help students identify relationshipsbetween engineering fundamentals (e.g., torque and power) and hardware design (e.g., a drill)7.It has also been used to help teach competitive assessment and benchmarking8,9. Productdissection is part of the freshmen Product and Process Engineering Laboratory at North CarolinaState University where users take turns playing the role of user, assembler, and engineer10.Sheppard11 was among the first to develop a formal course in product dissection at StanfordUniversity (http://www-adl.stanford.edu/), and a similar course in product dissection wasdeveloped as part of the Manufacturing Engineering Education Partnership between Penn State
constituents provided the impetus tothe faculty for changing the required laboratory courses. Previously, the required HydraulicsLaboratory and Engineering Materials Lab were comprised of simply observing laboratoryphenomena. After reviewing the alumni data and student evaluation results, the courses werechanged to contain more hands-on experiments for the students. In addition, instructors nowprovide written feedback on student lab reports. Students really appreciated these changes andgave extremely positive responses in subsequent course evaluations. However, these specificchanges would not have been made if the alumni data and student evaluation had not establishedan irrefutable trend.In other situations, course modifications are primarily faculty
adesign specification, 3) prepare a design schematic, schedule, and parts list, 4) order andassemble parts 5) perform functional and specification tests, 6) demonstrate functionality to thecustomer, 7) formally present the project, and 8) prepare a final report suitable for publication.The projects are built in a dedicated Senior Design Laboratory, which has 14 dedicated computerworkstations, parts lockers, and state-of-the-art testing tools. We are also fortunate to have adedicated parts shop, which stocks electrical components for most needs. Additionally, parts thatare not available can be purchased. A mechanism was needed to provide communication
stresses effective group interaction, problemsolving, and synthesis. A capstone project features a high level of interaction with a client Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2001, American Society for Engineering Education Page 6.520.1outside of a university setting, where an undergraduate thesis traditionally has tended to minimizeclient interaction and to take a university laboratory or library as its primary setting. A well-written thesis requires a clear focus, and so does a successful capstone project, but in the formercase the students
Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at UNL. From August 2008 to August 2010 he was a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) where he worked on the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS) program, the Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program, the Advanced Technology Education (ATE) program and the Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program. His research interests are in the areas of error control coding, wireless communications, sensor networks and engineering education. He received his BS de- gree in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia and the MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering
compaction. • Become familiar with: laboratory soil tests and field sampling and improvement techniques. • Improve your communication and group skills by participating in a discourse in knowledge building.Established in 2000, the Picker Program is the first engineering program at a women’s college inthe United States and one of only a small number of engineering programs set within a liberalarts college environment. The 2010 enrollment of the EGR 340 was 12 women (three seniors,five juniors and four sophomores) and included ten engineering and two geology majors. EGR340 introduces students to the engineering behavior of soil within the context of a variety of real-world applications such as constructing dams, roads and buildings
overview of the course and guidelines, they immediately beganto discuss their goals and aspirations for the semester and wrestled with what activities theyshould pursue. For the first learning agreement, they decided to focus first on improving theirdesign skills and using professional engineering design tools. They completed laboratory andsimulation assignments well in advance of their peers, chose to study elective topics that gavethem multiple perspectives on the optimal design of circuits, and choose to complete anambitious design project (The course instructor said, “If they can complete that project, theycertainly don’t need me.”). The team connected well, met regularly, and remained on taskduring their scheduled meeting times
Faculty GTA GTA GTA GTA Page 25.1443.3 GTA GTA Figure 1. Weekly class structure for a typical studio course.to reinforce content from the lecture that was delivered the day before. A few of the activitiesinvolve “virtual laboratories” where students collect data on their computers. Students each fillout an individual worksheet, but are often allowed to work in groups for all or part of the