Conference Session

High School Students Thinking and Performance

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kristin L. Brudigam, Lake Travis High School; Richard H. Crawford, University of Texas, Austin

Tagged Divisions

K-12 & Pre-College Engineering

AC 2012-3987: SPATIAL ABILITY IN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSMs. Kristin L. Brudigam, Lake Travis High School Kristin Brudigam is a mathematics and engineering teacher at Lake Travis High School in Austin, Texas. She earned her undergraduate degree in mathematics education from Wayne State College and her mas- ter’s degree in science education with an emphasis in engineering education from the University of Texas, Austin. Additionally, Brudigam is certified to teach civil engineering/architecture and Introduction to En- gineering Design as part of the Project Lead the Way curriculum at Lake Travis High School. Brudigam developed a curriculum entitled ”Careers Involving Mathematics” as an undergraduate in the John G

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

William Peterson

Michigan University, 1998-2000 Graduate Catalog, The Graduate College, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 19982. Webster’s New World Dictionary of American English, Third College Edition, Victoria Neufeldt (Editor in Chief), Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, 1988WILLIAM R. PETERSONWilliam R. Peterson is an associate professor of Industrial Engineering at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Dr.Peterson received his BIE from Auburn University, his MBA from Kearney State College, and his Ph.D. inIndustrial and Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University. Dr. Peterson had a 20-year career inengineering between his first and last degrees

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert Montgomery

Introduction to Engineeringcourse, a planned activity, and a Technical Communication course, an unplanned activity.Outside of teaching, my contributions to my Departmental hosts included performing a numberof small studies I was asked, and able, to lend my talents to. I even did a small amount ofinformal career counseling for students who saw my open, approachable style as a comfortablealternative to some of the more formalized advising taking place within the system. At the endof it all, I was welcomed home with open arms by my Department Head and my Dean.Introduction – Everything’s Planned, Right? In a 1999 paper on sabbatical leaves in higher education1, it was noted that such programsin U.S. higher education began at Harvard University in

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Penelope Peterson; Frank Fisher

Session 2793 A Tool to Measure Adaptive Expertise in Biomedical Engineering Students Frank T. Fisher, Penelope L. Peterson Department of Mechanical Engineering / School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208AbstractWhile engineering programs must continue to cover the maximum breadth and depth of contentinformation possible, these programs can also take an active role in encouraging and fosteringadditional dispositions to help their graduates adapt to their professional career. We define anadaptive expert as an

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

William Stanley; John Hackworth

textbooks. For the last part of his career he held the special designation of Eminent Professor. Page 6.190.8 "Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2001, American Society for Engineering Education"

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Vislocky; Cecil Beeson

use of it. We also expect to get ample publicity through cooperation of the College Marketing and Public Relations department. Page 6.685.5XV. Let the World Know At some point this monster that has been created will be ready for the world to discover. We are planning a Technology Awareness Day at the school. We will also participate in the college wide Career Awareness Day. Several student projects and services will be profiled. The emphasis should be on student achievements, not faculty work. Peer attraction is many orders of magnitude higher than faculty attraction. Membership applications will, of course

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Glenn Blackwell

faculty member and if the work will generally take place away from the campuslocation. Sabbatical leaves involving other criteria have been approved but most commonlythese criteria are followed. The requirement for an industrial position recognizes the Schools’mission of preparing students for successful careers in industry. The “away” requirement is totry to maximize the probability the faculty member will not be tempted to partake in “normal”on-campus activities such as faculty meetings!The author’s first sabbatical leave proposal, for the 1992-1993 academic year, was to spend ayear working as a Senior Project Engineer at Delco Electronics Corp. The involvement by theElectronics Manufacturing Development group at Delco was easy to solicit and

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Vincent Scotto; Peter Schuyler; Howard A. Canistraro

curriculum objectives, industry can serveas a valuable partner in this process.As a requirement for EC 2000 a program must present evaluators with evidence that indicatestheir graduates are achieving professional growth and development. Programs must also showthat students are effectively advised and monitored throughout their academic careers. Industrycan work hand in hand with programs to demonstrate these criteria. As employers, industry canadvise programs regarding the strengths and professional development of active students andgraduates.Through the development of industrial advisory boards, many programs are able to monitor theeffectiveness of their curriculum and performance of past graduates. Industrial advisory boardscan not only provide

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

James Haberly; Iskandar Hack

family of devices that are usedin final product designs. This technology is especially important for small production runproducts and initial product designs. Therefore it is more important that students areexposed to these devices early in their academic career. In the migration of the course tothe second semester it was necessary to remove the portion of the course that dealt with themigration of the design from CPLD to a custom device. Thus a new course has beendeveloped that concentrates on that technology, along with advanced VHDL designtechniques.The prototyping board we’ve developed can be used in a variety of courses that rely ondigital logic. We are currently using the board in two courses. The first course we teachusing the board is

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Stephen Stace; Janice Margle

Session 2793 ME and COMP SC (Music, Engineering, and Computer Science) Janice M. Margle and Stephen Stace Engineering/Music & Integrative Arts Penn State Abington College Abington, Pennsylvania 19001Abstract Indications are that more scientists, mathematicians, and engineers will be needed tocompete in the world markets1, 2. However, the majority of young people entering the workforcewill be women and minorities, who traditionally have not pursued careers in

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Kenneth Roberts; Eric A. Cheek; Joseph Monroe; Samuel Owusu-Ofori; Ajit Kelkar

GeorgiaInstitute of Technology and North Carolina State University. The NASA-SURE programis currently schedule to continue through 2003.Reasons for the SURE ProgramThere is an increasing demand for a highly-skilled technical workforce in the UnitedStates for the 21st Century. Because of the changing demographics of the United States,there is also a need for increased gender and racial diversity in the advanced science,mathematics, engineering and technology career paths for the next century. For manymathematics, engineering, science, and technology (MSET) academic programs engagedin NASA-supported research there are limited mechanisms for the integration of cutting

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Stephen Maybar; Jerome Zornesky

Session 3547 A New Paradigm for Teaching Circuit Analysis Stephen H. Maybar, Jerome Zornesky Department of Electrical Engineering Technology Technical Career Institutes, New York City NY 10001AbstractTraditionally, circuit analysis has been taught as a two-term sequence with DC circuit analysis inthe first term and AC circuit analysis in the second. The normal two-term sequence may beshortened to a single term if DC and AC analysis are taught concurrently rather thanconsecutively. In the modified sequence, DC circuit analysis is considered as a special case ofAC

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Marie Plumb; Jerry Fong; Arnold Peskin

-served segment of research laboratories’traditional educational outreach programs. It gives students from mainstream ruralschools opportunities for research careers while it familiarizes them with modernequipment and techniques in research. Its aim is to enrich this vital, yet historicallyneglected segment of the science and technology education spectrum. Secondly, itinvolves faculty and students working and learning together. Third, it goes beyondcurrent education paradigms to a networked based collaborative approach that enables“hands on” at a distance. Fourth, it guarantees an echo effect which will involve amyriad of students at each home school as well as the local high school students who willbe introduced to the technology and to the

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Don Zeller

) graduates enter the research anddevelopment workforce. Eighty five per cent of the graduates enter the manufacturing industryworkforce where they are required to apply and maintain designed and developed pieces ofequipment and devices for production processes. As such, in order to prepare these eighty fiveper cent, it is important to present a course which is more real world and application orientated,such as a course in PLC systems. The author’s own experience is a perfect example of betterpreparing engineering (technology) students for an engineering career in one of themanufacturing industries. One of his first assignments after graduation was working with anelectrical schematic with many -| |- symbols in it. He kept asking, “What are all those

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Frederick Meyers; John Demel; Frank Croft

and career?National Graphics TestsMost recently, graphics educators have concentrated on testing students’ abilities to visualizethrough a number of instruments ranging from spatial visualization through mental rotations.One of the most popular visualization tests is the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotation.With this test, students are given an object and are shown a rotation of that object. They thenmust view a second object and determine its view if it were rotated in the same way as the firstobject. The test is composed of 30 questions and students are given 20 minutes to answer all 30questions. Although some researchers have reported this test as a significant predictor of successin an engineering graphics course6, it is limited to

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Judson Singer

American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2001, American Society for Engineering Education “ Mr. Jonathan Bailey Kettering University 1700 W. Third Avenue Flint, Michigan 48504-4898 Hi Jonathan, I am really looking forward to our term together. I hope you're eager to learn new ideas and develop new skills which will serve you well in your professional career Jonathan. It's not unusual for me to have learned more from you that you learned from me. Kettering is a relatively small school so you'll have ample opportunity to get to know your professors personally as well as they you. That's one reason I love teaching so much. I want to invite you to drop by often to see me

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert Kimball

/Resources) (SCANS: Secretary’s Commission forAchieving the Necessary Skills), provided guiding principles for career-oriented curricula.SCANS calls for all courses to strengthen the skills the student will need as a graduate--in theworkplace. In addition to the basic skills the student will need, SCANS calls for students toacquire Thinking Skills and positive Personal Qualities. The three-part foundation is measuredby five competencies: (1) ability to use resources, (2) ability to work with others, (3) ability toacquire and use information, (4) ability to understand complex interrelationships, and (5) abilityto work with a variety of technologies.As a result of SCANS, we began to include more complex projects in mathematics courses. Theprojects

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Gerard N. Foster

technology curriculum,often with increased complexity. As a student progresses through the curriculum, the binarynumbers they encounter increase in size and the binary formats (signed, unsigned, fractional,integer, etc.) vary according to the application. At the lower levels, the students are not ready forexamples and laboratory applications that illustrate and cement into memory the concepts ofbinary operations and formats required throughout their academic career. Thus, as educators, wemust revisit and extend the coverage of binary numbers, often with time constraints imposed bythe need to cover technical applications and circuits of the moment. The list below is a summaryof number concepts that can be generally illustrated at that level. Higher

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Ronald A. Cox; Richard Grieve; Jeffrey Mohr

students that are working at CIRAS; others hear throughdepartmental e-mails or through the Engineering Career Services office. About ten students areemployed by CIRAS at a time and eighty percent of these are engineers. Often one or two ofthese will be CIRAS co-ops. Most are from Mechanical Engineering, Industrial andManufacturing Systems Engineering, or Industrial Education and Technology.Students work for CIRAS for anywhere from three months to two years, with an average nearone year. The students work schedules are fit around their classes, with most working 15-20hours per week throughout the school year. About one-third of the students go home or toindustrial co-op jobs during the summer, a third will continue to work part time, and a third

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Ayyagari Janaki Rao

in the Indian curriculum.Apart from the differences in structures, two important factors differentiating the U.S.curriculum from Indian curriculum are in the nature of the flexibility offered and theinnovativeness inherent in project type laboratories. The flexibility enables to cater to theneeds of different categories of students those who will base their professional careers asengineers on the Bachelor’s degree with no further formal study; those who will proceedfurther for post graduate studies in engineering or an allied field, and those for whom theunder-graduate programme provides a broad base for further professional study in fields likemanagement.The use of open-ended project type laboratories instead of set laboratory experiments

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Bernard Hoop; Thomas E. Hulbert; Robert B. Angus; Eric W. Hansberry

with the various architectural, mechanical, andelectrical/electronic languages and symbols. Well-structured assignments also encourage growthand self-confidence in the creative thinking process. In addition to providing this essentialfoundation of knowledge, employing the industrial format greatly assists students in their careerdevelopment. Given multi-step projects, they become keenly aware of the importance ofcommunication among specialists and the need for a general understanding of all engineeringdisciplines. This exposure to multiple disciplines through real-life projects affords them theopportunity to evaluate their strengths and interests to make informed decisions about theirfuture careers. Introducing the industrial format during

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter J. Shull

a significant distinction between a simple traditional reportand a formal report. The formal group report can be used as a positive and effective tool todevelop writing and learning skills of the engineering student.PETER J. SHULLPeter J. Shull is an Assistant Professor of Engineering at Penn State University, Altoona. Dr. Shull received hisundergraduate degree from Bucknell University and his graduate degrees from The Johns Hopkins University.Prior to his teaching career, he worked as a research scientist at the National Institute of Standards andTechnology (NIST) in Boulder, CO. Dr. Shull’s primary interests are undergraduate education, increasingrepresentation of women in engineering, and improving communication skills of engineering

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Hisham Alnajjar

to requirestudents to integrate creatively both the content knowledge and the skills developed in allof the courses in the particular ILB. For example, one of the ILBs of the pilot FIG was[Communicate technical information, in written and oral form, in a professionalmanner].How does it work?During their “normal class time” in engineering, students are learning how to interpretgraphs, how to apply the principles of engineering problem solving to technical problems,how to use computer tools to solve engineering problems, in addition to learning aboutvarious engineering disciplines and career paths. In their writing course students learn toread critically and to analyze in writing personal and social conflicts, as these aregrounded in

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Hamid Y. Eydgahi; Saeid Y. Eidgahy

1000today10. Perhaps more interesting, is the effort of the Engineers’ and Managers’Association (EMA) union in the United Kingdom which has recently launched an MBAprogram for its members to enhance their career prospects11. Furthermore, in the global Page 5.319.2 2and Just-in-Time environment where work schedules, personal and family obligationsand even distances make frequent trips to school difficult, alternative delivery systemsare becoming a possible and cost-effective mode for achieving higher education not onlyfor traditional students but more importantly for mature working professionals.While many of us

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Howard A. Canistraro

introducedover their entire academic careers.. Additionally, the idea of the course being “open ended” andwithout “exact” answers leads to confusion over the distinction between the textbook and theindustrial world. In an attempt to unify and clarify this broad array of subject matter andprovide some insight into the actual practices utilized in industry, our Machine Design Coursenow centers itself around mechanically complex commercial devices. These devices serve as aninstrument to demonstrate much of the subject matter found in most texts. Computer software isalso extensively used to ease in the calculation and aid in modelling the dynamic nature ofmathematical relationships. The revised course has been taught for 5 semesters and in each casea gear

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Wallace S. Venable

isimpossible to predict exactly which skills learned in a sophomore course an individual studentwill be called on to use during his career. But it is also impossible to predict whether anindividual sport utility vehicle will ever be run at speeds in excess of 80 mph, be used off-road,or ever run on ice. Similarly we can not predict with any accuracy which features of an “officesuite” software package will be used by a particular buyer. The variety of end use of a productmeans that we must be more thorough in developing design specifications, rather than morecasual.What is the product of an educational design? This is a subtle, but important issue. Manyeducators in the 60’s yelled “Students are not widgets which can be banged out without regardto their

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Donald N. Merino

ofengineering graduates who work for companies that hire engineers, who started their careers asengineers and who have supervised engineers. The survey asked the respondents to rank the selectedeconomics topics using a 1 - strongly disagree to 5 - strongly agree Likert scale.Even though a broad set of subjects was chosen, all subjects had above average scores of more than3.0/5.0, indicating that none of the major subjects were clearly eliminated. This result indicates thatengineers need to know a broad set of subjects to achieve economic literacy.Risk Analysis Fundamentals and Simulation Models were rated high, 4.0 and 3.7 respectively,although they are usually taught in more advanced engineering economics courses. The surveyaverages for more

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Willie Ofosu

exposure given to activities such as sporting eventsand entertainment, it stands to reason that many people will be attracted to these.Coupling the media exposure with the high salaries reported in association with theseprofessions makes them very difficult to resist. No glamour is linked to the field ofeducation in the media, and the return on investment in pursuing academic achievementsis modest for the majority of people. This makes education rather unattractive comparedto other professions as those referred to above, and engineering even less attractive whenfaced with the mathematics involved. The security in having a good education can neverbe downplayed. A strategy for presenting education as a viable option that will result in agood career

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Sharyn L. Switzer; Chris S Ray

Session _____ Improving Written Communication Skills in University Engineering / Technology Programs: The Grading Nightmare Christopher S. Ray, Sharyn L. Switzer Purdue UniversityIntroductionThe necessity of communicating in engineering and technology careers is of the utmostimportance. Companies’ and employees’ success, in many instances, depends on their ability tocommunicate in a clear, complete, concise, and accurate manner. A significant number ofuniversity programs require various language skills ranging from basic English to

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert Gray; Robert Weissbach

8 xezi xi ze Equatorial Plane BG102098.8 Figure 2. Geographic Frame Page 5.381.5Employment Opportunities for EET StudentsElectrical engineering technologists with an understanding and background in Satcom andGPS systems have excellent career opportunities. Test & Evaluation, repair, integration,service and maintenance of these systems, along with product design, are among the majorareas where EET graduates can contribute