Conference Session

Curriculum Development and Applications

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jana Whittington, Purdue University-Calumet; Kim Nankivell, Purdue University-Calumet; Joy Colwell, Purdue University-Calumet; James Higley, Purdue University-Calumet

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Design Graphics

2006-1724: BUILDING SOFT SKILLS INTO A CGT PROGRAM: PLANNING FORACCREDITATION AND JOB SUCCESSJana Whittington, Purdue University-CalumetKim Nankivell, Purdue University-CalumetJoy Colwell, Purdue University-CalumetJames Higley, Purdue University-Calumet Page 11.298.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2006Building Soft Skills into a CGT Program: Planning for Accreditation and Job SuccessAbstractPurdue University Calumet has long supported engineering technology, with some programsfinding their roots in World War II industrial training programs. Only recently, however, has theuniversity added a program in Computer Graphics

Conference Session

TC2K Methods and Models

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mohan Ketkar, Prairie View A&M University

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Technology

2006-1817: CASE STUDY REVEALS SEVERAL BENEFITS INCLUDINGDEVELOPMENT OF SOFT SKILLS FOR ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGYSTUDENTS AND ASSESSMENT OF KEY TAC-ABET PROGRAM OUTCOMESMohan Ketkar, Prairie View A&M University Dr. Ketkar is an Assistant Professor and coordinator of the Electrical Engineering Technology program at the PVAMU, TX. He received MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research areas include communication electronics, instrumentation, and numerical methods. He has been the instructor for senior project courses at University of Houston, TX and PVAMU. He is a member of the College Committee for ABET at the PVAMU. He has participated in several workshops

Conference Session

Teaching Strategies in Graphics

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jana Whittington, Purdue University-Calumet; Kim Nankivell, Purdue University-Calumet; Joy Colwell, Purdue University-Calumet; James Higley, Purdue University-Calumet

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Design Graphics

University Calumet, we useassessment measures which include faculty evaluation, class critiques and written peerevaluations that individually addresses each level of technical, aesthetic and creative aspects ofeach project or assignment. Discussions or critiques first address the success of technical aspects,then move to the aesthetic aspects, and then the overall creative attributes of the students’ work.This type of evaluation is not only valuable for the students to comprehend each level and puttheir soft skills to work, but also provides valuable assessment feedback to the faculty.The CGT program is relatively new, having been started in the year 2000 with 18 students, andhaving grown to its present size of about 200 majors. The program has

Conference Session

Computer ET Curriculum

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James Hurny, Rochester Institute of Technology; Gina Hurny, Pennsylvania State University

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Technology

Pilot ProgramAbstractStudent attrition and student learning are of major interest to colleges and universities.Collaborative learning or more specifically learning communities with its associated pedagogy isoffered as an approach to enhance both. This paper describes a pilot approach at RochesterInstitute of Technology (RIT). The purpose of this program was to integrate learning communityconcepts and methodologies into the instruction protocol of Computer Engineering Technology(CpET) first-year students. The creation of an interdisciplinary collaboration would be used toenable the continual integration of liberal arts course work and “soft skill” training into technicalcourse instruction over a three quarter academic year. The organizational

Conference Session

Tools and Support for Software Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Barbara Gannod, Arizona State University; Kevin Gary, Arizona State University; Harry Koehnemann, Arizona State University

Tagged Divisions

Software Engineering Constituent Committee

through two projects instead of one during the Enterprise sequence. This allows students to get exposed to process phases in the proper order, and also not get too “honed in” on one particular project, thereby shortchanging process-related activities. • “Real-world” – Students are exposed to the full spectrum of forces affecting software development projects. Teams are asked to cope not only with technical issues but also with social or soft-skill issues. For example, changing requirements, changing business models, changes in team membership, changes in project direction, and so on. • Collaborative – Students work in teams, and also work across course and academic year boundaries. Students role-play, with participants responsible

Conference Session

TC2K Methods and Models

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Timothy Skvarenina, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Technology

outcomes weredivided into sub-outcomes that were more readily assessable.Assessment of the Program OutcomesOnce the outcomes were defined, we had to determine how to assess the student achievement ofthe outcomes. Of particular concern were the so-called “soft skills,” such as teamwork,communications skills, global perspectives, ethics, life-long learning, and contemporary issues.Assessment of these can be difficult at best, particularly when it comes to triangulating results;i.e., providing more than one method of assessing the outcomes. While some members of thefaculty desired to leave the soft skills to the students’ humanities and social science courses, thatwas not a practical solution for our program because there is a wide variety of

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James Conrad, University of North Carolina-Charlotte

EngineersAbstractProject management is becoming a crucial skill in today’s work environment. Practicingengineers learned technical concepts in their university studies, but few actually learned projectmanagement concepts. These “soft skills” are often overlooked because they are not mandatedby accreditation boards – yet. This paper proposes several options for including projectmanagement concepts in a university curriculum without sacrificing the time spent on technicalconcepts.IntroductionIn today’s competitive business environment, engineers cannot afford to be pure engineers. Inthe last decade, many companies have reduced the numbers and levels of management positionsand given more decision-making authority to teams at lower levels. Many engineers are

Conference Session

ChE: Departmental Issues and Integrating Freshmen into the ChE Program

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Pedro Arce, Tennessee Technological University; Donald Visco, Tennessee Technological University

Tagged Divisions

Chemical Engineering

wereprovided.Class 5: Soft-Skills DayTennessee Tech has a Freshman Experience course with a few faculty who teach this course. 7 Wedecided to use their expertise on the generic topic of soft skills to facilitate this session.Highlights were provided on time management skills and locus of control. Based on the contentcovered, future offerings of this section can be performed by chemical engineering faculty.Class 6: Hands-on Experiment #2: Ice Cream!Colligative properties are something that most people are familiar with and, of course, areimportant for chemical engineers. In this session, we decided to explore boiling point elevationand freezing point depression of water. For the former, we filled two, one-liter, beakers ofdistilled water and placed them on a

Conference Session

Capstone Design II

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Juri Filatovs, North Carolina A&T State University; Devdas Pai, North Carolina A&T State University

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

criteria to an outcomes-based model is now complete. The onus for defining curricular content has shifted from ABET(‘one size fits all’) to the program’s faculty (‘stakeholder-driven continuous improvement’). Thisnew-found autonomy in determining curricular content has created varied ‘localized’interpretations and implementations. It comes with its own set of challenges. Heightenedemphasis has been placed on development and documentation of professional skills (aka ‘soft’skills) such as oral and written communication, team work, lifelong learning, and global andsocietal issues. Teaching, assessing and documenting soft skills necessitates a new synthesis oftopics. In this paper, we describe our experiences in a capstone design course for

Conference Session

Mentoring Graduate Students

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Shekhar Bhansali, University of South Florida; Ashanti Pyrtle, University of South Florida; Louis Martin-Vega, University of South Florida; Peter Betzer, University of South Florida

Tagged Divisions

Graduate Studies

techniques for college-level science andengineering instruction; with development of professional and “soft-skills” including technicalwriting (research manuscripts and proposals), conference presentation preparation (oral andposter), professional etiquette, time management, strategic career planning and interviewingskills. The courses were cross listed in both Colleges of Engineering and Marine Science.These courses were designed as half-day biweekly sessions that started with a working lunch.This enabled the students to interact and share their concerns, challenges, successes and failureswith the group. The courses were offered separately in Fall and Spring, ensuring studentinteraction for two semesters.C. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Minority PhD

Conference Session

Mentoring Graduate Students

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Shashi Marikunte, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale; Frances Harackiewicz, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale; John Nicklow, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale; Lizette Chevalier, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale

Tagged Divisions

Graduate Studies

teaching assistanttraining more specific and relevant than what is typically done at the university level.Two is the need for a forum where students can interact with others at the sameprofessional level although in different research areas. Three is the need for the graduatestudents who come from many different undergraduate institutions to have a unifyingprofessional development experience. The topics were split into two broad categories:those for teaching training and those for professional development and soft skills. Tomaintain student interest, number of seminars in a semester was limited to six. Theseminar was open to all graduate students in the College of Engineering. Thus studentswho were not teaching assistants also benefited. Invited

Conference Session

Program Delivery Methods and Real World Concepts

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Keith Plemmons

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Management

the United States are considering changes to the curricula to ensure that their graduates are employable. Their ideas include adding courses that emphasize teamwork, including so-called soft skills such as management and leadership, and teaching technical skills that cannot be easily compartmentalized and outsourced.”The drivers motivating market changes within the engineering industry emphasize the need formore formalized project management related education and training, which is bolstered by thefact that for years engineering firms have been looking to hire “industry-ready” graduates7.Competency in Project ManagementTo use an example, the BOK in delineating the minimum competency required for each outcomedirectly

Conference Session

ChE: Innovation in Existing Courses

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Paul Golter, Washington State University; Bernard Van Wie, Washington State University; Jonathan Windsor, Washington State University; Gary Held, Washington State University

Tagged Divisions

Chemical Engineering

, non-electronic flow meters, manometers, pressure transducers and temperature probes withsmall-scale readouts.IntroductionThere is a well known need to re-visit the way in which engineers are trained to better preparethe next generation of engineers for the challenges of our changing society. [1] This can be doneeither by adding more courses, and thus more years, to engineering curricula or by utilizingalternate pedagogical techniques that can simultaneously enhance learning of core concepts anddevelop traditionally neglected ‘soft’ skills such as good communication practices.Alternate pedagogies include cooperative, hands-on, active and problem-based learning. Usually these pedagogies are applied

Conference Session

Capstone Design Projects in Mechanical Engineering

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kelley Racicot, Washington State University; Charles Pezeshki, Washington State University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

Page 11.237.3the social and “soft skills” necessary to be successful on the job. While the clinicprovided real opportunities for students to learn social skills during their practicum, theyhad few opportunities to share their experiences with each other, future participants, orthe public. A course website was difficult to maintain, chronically out-of-date andultimately abandoned.The wiki is intended to give the Industrial Design Clinic an archival memory of socialinformation that is independent of the instructor. Such a contribution is extremelyvaluable in the Capstone Design context, as students that take the class one semestertypically graduate at the end and the sum of their personal experiences is lost. Studentparticipants craft narratives

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Chetan Sankar, Auburn University; P.K. Raju, Auburn University

Tagged Divisions

Division Experimentation & Lab-Oriented Studies

2006-1159: NATIONAL DISSEMINATION OF MULTI-MEDIA CASE STUDIESTHAT BRING REAL-WORLD ISSUES INTO ENGINEERING CLASSROOMS:PILOT STUDYChetan Sankar, Auburn UniversityP.K. Raju, Auburn University Page 11.950.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2006 National Dissemination of Multi-Media Case Studies That Bring Real-World Issues into Engineering Classrooms: Pilot Study Engineering students are increasingly being asked by potential employers to demonstrate“soft” skills (such as problem solving and business skills) in addition to their “hard” technicalskills. Reflecting these expectations, the Accreditation Board for Engineering Education(ABET) has

Conference Session

FPD1 -- Implementing a First-Year Engineering Course

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Susanne Wolf, Technische Universitaet Darmstadt; Manfred Hampe, Technische Universitaet Darmstadt

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

, Germany, in 2001. From 2002 until now she works at the Didactic Center of Technische Universität Darmstadt. She is currently working on her doctorate which is part of a broad-based research project of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Her interests involve the development, introduction and evaluation of innovative teaching and learning methods as well as quality assurance. She is particularly interested in project-based courses that support the acquirement of soft skills. Page 11.701.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2006 How to provide first-year students with a really good

Conference Session

Manufacturing Education Innovation and Assessment

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

David Wells, North Dakota State University

Tagged Divisions

Manufacturing

others.4,5,6 Following a landmark SME publications in 1985 and 1988,1,7 each of the historicaldocuments has offered guidance for developing curricula and specific course content in anincremental evolution. These recommendations maintained a constant focus on manufacturingengineering as a dominantly process-oriented discipline, enhanced with soft-skills. This papersuggests a more comprehensive framework for the manufacturing engineering disciplineencompassing the full spectrum of product realization.The Essence of Manufacturing: The essential nature of manufacturing is the creation ofproducts. Indeed, no products (outside of raw vegetables, perhaps) exist that are notmanufactured. Although global information exchange and market competitiveness

Conference Session

Achieving the Civil Engineering Body of Knowlegde

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jennifer Karlin, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology; Andrea Surovek, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

Tagged Divisions

Civil Engineering

demographics and the politicaland social impacts of technology.ABET 2000 criteria also highlighted the need to quantitatively measure the development ofnontechnical (or “soft”) skills. For many programs, this created a need to develop course contentspecific to these outcomes. As Felder and Brent4 state, “the work of equipping students with theattributes specified in [ABET] program outcomes must be done at the individual course level.”It also created a necessity to develop assessment tools to measure non-quantitative studentlearning outcomes, a difficult challenge for engineering faculty far more comfortable in therealm of the technical and quantitative than in the assessment of more qualitative outcomes.In addition to the logistical challenges related

Conference Session

Customizing Courses for Industry Training Needs

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jody Pierce, Purdue University; Russell Aubrey, Purdue University; John Eddy, Purdue University; Charles Baker, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Continuing Professional Development

Behavior • OLS 274 Applied Leadership • IT 342 Introduction to Statistical Quality • IT 381 Total Productive Maintenance • IT 230* Elements of Industrial DistributionAgain, the selection of courses match the elements found in the company’s philosophyand guiding principles. These selected courses began to merge the “soft-skill” courses(organizational and leadership titles) with those “hard-skill” courses of problems solving,statistics, and productive maintenance. The inclusion of statistics and Englishcomposition at this time, were made because by now, the participating employees feltcomfortable in the educational environment, knew a bit more about what to expect from acollege level course, had experienced success, and were

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Melinda Seevers, Boise State University; Pat Pyke, Boise State University; William Knowlton, Boise State University; Cheryl Schrader, Boise State University; John Gardner, Boise State University

opportunities to partner with the university leading toopen dialogue. It is truly a “Win-Win-Win” relationship in that the students and Collegeultimately benefit due to enhanced learning experiences, increased sources of senior designprojects, possible student employment, and an opportunity for employers to preview potentialfuture professional employees. Page 11.734.6Program FutureThe university Career Center is planning to implement a “soft-skills” seminar during the 2006-07academic year. All lower division students wishing to participate in the engineering internshipprogram will be encouraged to attend. For the academic year 2006-07, a forum is in

Conference Session

International and Sustainability Perspectives and Women in Engineering

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Nina Dahlmann, Technische Universitat Berlin, Inst. f. Mathematik; Sabina Jeschke, Technische Universitat Berlin, Inst. f. Mathematik; Christian Thomsen, Technische Universitat Berlin; Marc Wilke, Technische Universitat Berlin

Tagged Divisions

Women in Engineering

für ihre Notwendigkeit zu konkreten Checklisten, 2002. Skript zum Vortrag, BMBF-Workshop, Berlin.13. Many of the problems attributed to technical education that we are about to describe affect male as well as female students. Actually, the interest of men as well as women in technical/engineering science studies is decreasing, we are facing a global “unattractiveness problem”.8 For years, industrial managers have been increasingly voicing concern about the growing gap between the job specifications and the actual qualifications claimed by the college graduates. Massive deficiencies are especially noticeable among the non-technical, methodical and systematical competencies as well as the soft skills.2

Conference Session

Approaches to Teaching Entrepreneurship

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert Weissbach, Pennsylvania State University-Erie; Jana Goodrich, Pennsylvania State University-Erie

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

course.Engineering and technology curricula often focus on the technical abilities of students,neglecting the “soft skills” that will often determine success or failure for a graduate when (s)heenters the workforce. As an example, project management skills are often neglected in anengineering curriculum, requiring additional training for those engineers who end up inmanagement positions2. Skills such as the ability to lead and work effectively as a member of ateam are frequently identified as critical to the success of an engineer, but typically are lacking innew engineering graduates3. The same is true of business students. While the businesscurriculum uses many team-based projects, students frequently resist building good, effectiveteam-building skills

Collection

2006 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Lawrence E. Whitman P.E., Wichita State University; Don Malzahn, Wichita State University

should be more ready to contribute to their future employers in terms ofboth having the ability to synthesize their learning as well as the ability to performon a team exhibiting the “soft skills” desired by many of today’s employers.Proceedings of the 2006 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education 8References1. Todd, R.H., Magleby, S. P., Sorensen, Carl D., Swan, Bret R., Anthony, D. K., “A survey of capstone engineering courses in North America.” Journal of Engineering Education, 1995. 84(2): p. 165-174.2. Amon, C.H., Finger., S., Siewiorek, D. P., Smailagic, A

Conference Session

Integrating H&SS in Engineering I

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donald Carpenter, Lawrence Technological University; Andrew Gerhart, Lawrence Technological University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

. Page 11.768.21. IntroductionIn recent years, there has been a call to integrate more of the so-called “soft skills” into theengineering curriculum, including written and oral communication, time management,teamwork, and leadership1. To be a successful engineer, these skills have been found necessaryby engineering industry. Introducing core courses to the engineering curriculum (e.g.,humanities, history, social sciences, communication courses) has been effective in alleviating thelack of necessary “soft-skills.” Unfortunately, the classroom is not always the best place to learnand practice these skills. Therefore, innovative techniques and out-of-class learning experiencesare paramount to the engineering curriculum. They allow the student a

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Marcia Friesen, University of Manitoba; Myron (Ron) Britton, University of Manitoba

of work term Employer Evaluation below)Employer - Describe immigrant’s technical Open-ended questions on participant’s Middle of work term (in Qualitative: analyzed for First two cohortsevaluation performance, language and soft skills, technical and organizational abilities, person with IEEQ staff); patterns and emerging themes (n=21) cultural integration attitude, communication skills, End of work term (written colleague relations, ability to learn, open-ended questionnaire

Conference Session

Faculty Involvement in International Engineering Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jongwon Kim, Seoul National University; Dong Mok Kim, Seoul National University; Stefano Consiglio, Technical University of Berlin; Semih Severengiz, Technical University of Berlin; Guenther Seliger, Technical University of Berlin; Lalit Patil, University of Michigan; Debasish Dutta, University of Michigan

Tagged Divisions

International

fulfilling these extensive requirements.The faculty collaborates to determine and agree upon the course objectives, philosophy andformat. In GPD, the teaching staff has been careful and deliberate in their efforts to let multipleperspectives co-exist. For example, the TUB staff view the main objective of the course is forthe students to gain personal, methodological and soft skills for working on technical tasks inmultinational teams. The UM and SNU staff view GPD as an environment for students tounderstand the global dimension of product development (global products and globallydistributed development) and the challenges and benefits of cross-cultural team work. Anotherdifference in perspective comes from TUB’s view of GPD as a unique course where

Conference Session

Engineering Without Borders Programs Involving Students

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Eric Johnson, Valparaiso University; Sarah DeMaris, Valparaiso University; Doug Tougaw, Valparaiso University

Tagged Divisions

International

diverse and interconnected world.” The international engineeringexperience named the Valparaiso International Engineering Program (VIEP) described in thispaper responds to that directional theme by integrating the “hard skills” of an engineeringeducation with the “soft skills” of cultural and linguistic fluency that will allow these engineersto work in an interconnected marketplace. It also provides exciting industrial and culturalexperiences that will be attractive to engineering students and is cost-effective because amajority of the program’s components are already in place at the university.This paper will discuss the development of the VIEP from conception to its current form. It willalso include perspectives of students in the program who

Conference Session

Collaborative & New Efforts in Engineering Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Samuel Scheibler, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Stephen Williams, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Joerg Mossbrucker, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Glenn Wrate, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Owe Petersen, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

International

critical thinking,13 and cultural awareness.14 In other words,expanding the apex of the funnel.15While this pedagogical modification is consummately reasonable in theory, the reality in mostengineering programs is counterintuitive to such changes. 16 The equilibrium of most curricula ismaintained on an 80/20 balance between the “hard skills” of technical expertise and associatedemphases and the “soft skills” of communication and social science.17,18 Furthermore, programchairpersons and faculty curriculum committees face the dual pressures of maintaining the 80/20balance while facing the imperative to reduce rather than expand credit requirements from thecompetitive reality of the academic marketplace.19The changes being wrought by globalization at

Conference Session

Evaluation and Assessment of IE Programs

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Shantha Daniel, Iowa State University; Devna Popejoy-Sheriff, Iowa State University; K. Jo Min, Iowa State University; Leslie Potter, Iowa State University

Tagged Divisions

Industrial Engineering

design course, we will show how we demonstrate thatour IE majors attain the ABET outcome items (c) and (h) where (c) is an ability to designa system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such aseconomic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability,and sustainability and (h) is the broad education necessary to understand the impact ofengineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context. Theoutcome item (c) represents a “hard” skill while (h) represents a “soft” skill, both ofwhich are essential for a successful practicing engineer.The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we will explain how thecourse is conducted with the

Conference Session

Improving ME education: Broad Topics

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Renuka Thota, University of Louisiana-Lafayette; Suren Dwivedi, University of Louisiana-Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

; • To develop a learning laboratory at each partner institution, integrated with the curriculum, to provide facilities for hands-on experience in design, manufacturing and product realization; • To understand and experience selected elements of the product realization process; • To develop a complete business plan for the introduction of a new product; • To bring virtual designs into reality; • To prepare students for the shift to industry by boosting their confidence, and by strengthening their engineering and soft skills; and • To develop strong collaboration with industry.Product RealizationA rapid product development approach is intended to encourage students, from the outset, toconsider all elements of