Conference Session

New Trends in Graduate Education

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Denny Davis

or mismatched understandingscan lead to inappropriate career decisions, ineffective curriculum, and poor performanceevaluations. This paper describes a process and defines the profile of an engineer performingwell in professional practice. Developed with input from both academic and non-academicengineers, the profile presents technical, interpersonal, and professional skills or behaviors thatalign with key roles performed by the engineer. The profile is a valuable resource for educatorsand for students aspiring to become high performing professionals in the field of engineering.IntroductionSociety holds high expectations of people in professions entrusted with the well-being of peopleand society as a whole. The engineering profession, for

Conference Session

Advice for Dual-Career Couples

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Patricia Hyer; Catherine Eckel; Margaret Layne; Elizabeth Creamer

19 recipients of a $3.5 million, five yearADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant. Areas of emphasis for Virginia Tech’s Advanceprogram include preparing graduate students for faculty careers, providing support to searchcommittees to identify highly qualified female faculty candidates, developing women facultyinto leadership roles in the university, and ensuring that university policies and procedures createan environment in which all faculty members can achieve their career goals.Development of guidelines for dual career hires at Virginia TechOne of the areas of focus for Virginia Tech’s Advance program is university policies. A workgroup of faculty and administrators was established in late 2003 to review existing policies andtheir

Conference Session

Innovative Graduate Programs & Methods

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Suzanne Brainard; Sheila Edwards Lange; Elizabeth Litzler

Experience Survey was developed at theUniversity of Washington (UW) and builds upon an Undergraduate Student Experience Surveywhich was originally designed at the UW. The Undergraduate Survey was expanded by theWomen in Engineering Program Advocates Network and administered to 29 institutions[27].The web-based Graduate Survey explores the extent to which graduate students feel comfortableand supported in their department. It asks questions about classroom experiences, laboratoryexperiences, department climate, professional development, relationships with faculty andmentors, academic program status and work/family balance. Additionally there is a questionabout career aspirations, and multiple demographic questions including marital status, children

Conference Session

Undergraduate Retention Activities

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Laura Kramer

pedagogical revision to their established workload. Most faculty did not see improvingstudent retention as an individual obligation nor a clear departmental objective. A departmentalleader at Tech (himself an older faculty member) said, “a lot of our older faculty can't seem toaccept [the shift in admissions away from white, U.S. born students from strong high schools].”He accepted the changing admissions profile, but felt the institution should providecompensatory training. At every institution, some of the senior people expressed the view that anadministrative decision to change the incoming students was fundamentally mistaken, andtherefore held that faculty have no duty to participate in finding a way to make it work. Ironically, few faculty

Conference Session

IE Enrollment/Curriculum Development

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

David Hartmann

capabilities in communication, inter-personal relationships, management, and“…other duties as required.” Indeed, there may be a universe of needs the stakeholders wouldseek in an engineering program’s graduate-level graduate given the program had access tounlimited resources. However, a systematic process to explicitly define a hierarchy of needswith dependencies and priorities spanning the technical and non-technical components of anengineering program may not be well understood by a program’s stakeholders.Research is needed for a better understanding of and a methodological process for assessing thejudgments of stakeholders in the interdependent system of educational institutions, students, andconsumers of graduates, if a graduate-level industrial

Conference Session

Communication Skills in Aerospace Engineering

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

William Crossley; Melanie Thom; James Thom

traditionally educated engineers butwere required to have been out of school and in career a minimum of five years. They had to becurrently involved in design activities, managers who had performed engineering designactivities in the past, or individuals currently leading design teams. Participants were selectedbased on input from academic and professional experts, chain sampling during the interviewsand personal experience. A total of eleven practitioners participated in the survey. Each surveywas a minimum of 60 minutes long.Each of the participants was questioned on their own perceptions of what skills an individualparticipating in design activities needed to possess to be successful. The participants were notpermitted to stop at broad or vague

Conference Session

Crossing the Discipline Divide!

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Steven Krumholz; Robert Martello; Jonathan Stolk

course, and we elucidate the importantrole the course plays in our engineering curriculum.IntroductionIn the fall of 2003, two faculty members at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering beganteaching a new course offering, titled Paul Revere: Tough as Nails. Referred to as a “courseblock” due to the fact that it was twice the size of a typical undergraduate course, Paul Revere:Tough as Nails attempted to accomplish several key learning objectives:• Teach students to pose questions and solve materials science and historical problems in an interdisciplinary manner, using the content, methods, and perspectives of both fields to achieve a greater contextual and qualitative understanding of common topics.• Encourage students to control

Conference Session

Women Faculty & the NSF ADVANCE Program

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Lisa Frehill

less likely than men to negotiate on important issues such as start-up packages2,which means that they may be subsequently less likely to have the resources and supportsnecessary as a new faculty member to establish the research agenda required for promotion andtenure. As graduate students and early career faculty members, women are less likely to receivethe kind of mentoring that is essential to provide a firm foundation on which to base a facultycareer12. Finally, lifecourse issues (i.e., marriage and childbearing) pose constraints uponwomen faculty while simultaneously conveying advantages to their male peers4.The NMSU ADVANCE Program, funded by the National Science Foundation in 2002, hasinitiated a number of steps to increase the

Conference Session

ChE Department and Faculty Issues

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Gerri Burke; William Krantz; Joel Fried

Session 1313freshman and sophomore students can benefit tremendously and also contribute to an REUprogram. It is also important to strive for gender parity and participation by underrepresentedminorities. Prior to the formal REU program it is important that a dialogue be facilitated betweenthe REU student and his/her faculty advisor and graduate mentor. It is also important to insurethat the faculty advisor order in advance any equipment and supplies necessary for the student’sresearch. An additional measure of hospitality in the form of picking up the students at theairport and being at the dormitories to help them move into their accommodations provides anice ‘personal touch’ to get the REU program off to a positive start. A blend of technical

Conference Session

Measuring Perceptions of Engineering

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

John Ochs

Education, Family and Consumer Sciences, andTechnology Education. Modeled after Lehigh University’s Integrated ProductDevelopment program, it is designed to help students plan for careers and opportunitiesthat await them in the world of work, and take steps to meet personal post-secondaryeducational and career goals. Students learn the basics for managing many aspects ofadult life including making deliberate decisions and setting goals; managing time,finances, housing and other resources; skills needed to acquire, maintain and advance incareers; communication skills for team work and positive conflict resolution; maintaininghealthy life styles; balancing family and work responsibilities; and exploring the impactof technology on individuals in their

Conference Session

Undergraduate Retention Activities

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Karan Watson; John Weese

increase is higher forwomen than for men. A linear regression analysis of the data for 1998 to 2003 yieldsretention rate equations of: %RMen = 67.6 + 0.65(Year – 1998), %RWomen = 62.4 + 1.29(Year – 1998).These equations predict that the retention rate for women will match that for men in2006 and that the retention rate for women will surpass the rate for men in 2007.Cohort six-year graduation rates for FTIC students in the College of Engineering for theyears 1996-2002, 1997-2003, and 1998-2004 reveal an average 50.1% for women and48.6% for men.As reported in [9], Texas A&M has taken decisive action to address diversity throughvigorous recruitment of students and the addition of faculty from

Conference Session

Assessing Where We Stand

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert Pangborn; Renata Engel

the exploration and development of knowledge domains and skills that are consistentwith, and complementary to, the learning outcomes associated with the students’ major programsof study. A diverse team was assembled to evaluate three crucial aspects of general education,namely, its design, delivery and reception. The collaboration began with examination of course-taking patterns and framing of the University Faculty Senate’s expressed objectives for generaleducation in the context of the program goals and learning outcomes for selected technical andnon-technical majors. Focused interviews with students and information solicited from courseinstructors were then used to gain an understanding for how these stakeholders actually viewtheir

Conference Session

New Program/Course Success Stories

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Brian Sauser

collaboration, communication, decision-making, and self-management. Rutgers Universityrecognized this course in 2000 with its award for Excellence in Academic Creativity andInnovation.IntroductionIn business, one of the keys to success is customer satisfaction. In academia, students arecustomers of the institution for which they are attending. Common in academia is the use ofcourse evaluations to assess the value of a course and its impact on the student, the customer.Unfortunately, these do not equate the value of personal growth to the student and do not trulyassociate the full impact of a course. This paper will discuss an innovative industry simulationcourse taught at Rutgers University using cross-functional teams and how a self-assessment tool

Conference Session

Capstone/Design Projects: Electr-Mech ET

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Andrew Vavreck; Rebecca Strzelec

Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering EducationAlong with a classroom session in Laser/Fiber Optics, an electronics technology showcase, and apanel discussion about personal and career development information, students participate in ahands-on interactive classroom session in engineering design. The engineering design session isfacilitated by Dr. Andrew Vavreck, Associate Professor of Engineering, and Rebecca Strzelec,Assistant Professor of Visual Arts (authors of this paper). The goal of this particular session is togive the students an opportunity to explore the design process and see an interdisciplinaryapplication of industry standard three dimensional modeling and rapid prototyping

Conference Session

Engineering in High School

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Malinda Zarske, University of Colorado at Boulder; Daria Kotys-Schwartz, University of Colorado at Boulder; Janet Yowell, University of Colorado at Boulder; Jacquelyn Sullivan, University of Colorado at Boulder

knowledge of engineeringas a career through an understanding of the pervasiveness of engineering in our world; and toprovide an appreciation of engineering as the creation of things for the benefit of society. In thispaper, we examine the planning, implementation and assessment results associated withdeveloping a 12-week, hands-on, engineering design-focused ninth-grade elective course.Additionally, we discuss how a partnership between a newly developed urban public highschool, engineering graduate students and faculty, and enthusiastic high school students andparents can make a significant impact on the knowledge of and interest in engineering amonghigh school students

Conference Session

K-12 Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Nathan Dees; Megan Perkey; Karen Davis; Nicholas Harth

way of taking in information and making some personal judgments from the material provided. Authentic learning? You betcha! (N. Harth) ***** A typical senior design project involves developing or inventing an idea and undertaking the challenge of actually creating it. There is a struggle and a series of complications and the learning comes from working through these issues. The main struggle of a STEP Fellow is the coordination of minds. There are numerous customers that must be pleased in the senior advisor, the program coordinators, the high school teachers, and the seventy students. At the same time a new profession is explored – teaching

Conference Session

Experiential Learning

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Sara Tracy; Jason Immekus; Susan Maller; William Oakes

self-report measures to assess program outcomes.1. Introduction Service-learning is the focus of considerable research and is a feature within manyengineering programs. Within engineering education, design courses embedded in service-learning provide a way to promote students’ development of technical and professional skills forsolving applied problems. The ability to create learning environments for engineering students toapply mathematical and scientific principles when solving applied problems is critical forpreparing students for careers in engineering2. The need for engineering programs to producestudents proficient in these skills upon graduation is reflected in ABET EC 2000. Service-learning courses may provide engineering

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary Engineering Courses II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Katie Sullivan

needs of the community and meet instructional objectives using action andcritical reflection to prepare students for careers and to become meaning members of a justand democratic society”. 2 The interdisciplinary aspect of the course is carefully planned out. There are 12college students in the course. Six of these students are from Chemical engineering, andthe others are from multiple disciplines such as biology, communication, geology andgeophysics. The multi-leveled nature of the course is due to the partnership of theAcademy of Math, science and Engineering (AMES) and the 12 high school students whoattend the class for college credit. AMES draws students from grades 9-12 from two different school districts. It isaligned with

Conference Session

Issues of Building Diversity

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Isadore Davis; Eugene DeLoatch; Sherra Kerns; Carla Purdy; Lueny Morell

the battlegrounds in America for the AffirmativeAction and Diversity Doctrines. In most cases, higher education has taken the lead to diversifythe student body, and, to a lesser extent, its faculty and staff. Still it is clear and evident that moreneeds to be done to change our demographics and achieve full representation for all Americans.This point will be discussed later in the paper.The intent of this paper is to explore new paradigms in higher education that will start a nationaldebate and dialogue about implementing a holistic diversity model that progressive corporations,colleges and universities will deploy to recruit, retain and promote people of all ethnic groups,achieve gender balance and provide opportunities to persons with

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert Taylor; Robert Green

the high school students and the faculty members. The evolution of the programis described and the reasons for why changes were made are discussed.IntroductionA challenge which faces most colleges of engineering is how to attract and recruit highlyqualified students. Those students who are most qualified to pursue an engineering careerare often the most difficult to attract for a variety of reasons. These students are recruitedby the best colleges and universities in the nation and it can often be difficult to keep thelocal students in a nearby university. Given their drive and ambition, the prospect toexplore schools out of state or even out of the region can be difficult to overcome. Thesestudents are also well-qualified to pursue most any

Conference Session

Research On Student Teams

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Janet Schmidt; Jeannie Brown Leonard; Linda Schmidt; Paige Smith

experiences for undergraduate students that simulate professional “real world”problems creates a natural tension with the obligation to teach course content and skills. Thepressure by employers to produce graduates who are better prepared to work on multidisciplinaryteams is one reason faculty incorporate student project teams into their courses. Yet, mimickingthe professional world may produce performance measures that value product quality overindividual learning in the classroom. Professional settings, which value efficiency and highquality, expect employees to be specialists (depth at the expense of breadth). Educators valuecontent and conceptual mastery with an appropriate balance of depth and breath. Anotherdifficulty with adopting the

Conference Session

Tricks of the Trade for Research

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Terry Wildman; Kumar Mallikarjunan; Mark Sanders; Jeffrey Connor; Vinod Lohani

development of appropriate assessment tools. Currently, a number ofactivities are underway, which are expected to develop scientific assessment tools/databases forassessing changes in the GE program. A brief description follows.Use of Electronic Portfolio (e-Portfolio)The beginning of BEEVT project coincided with a university-wide pilot study exploring the useof an electronic portfolio system. A sub-committee of BEEVT investigators, representingfaculty members in engineering and education psychology, developed plans for the participationof engineering students, ranging from freshman to graduate levels, in the university-wide Page 10.649.5Virginia

Conference Session

Non-Technical Skills for ET Students

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Linda Hjorth; Barb Eichler; John Morello; Ahmed Khan

theirinterdisciplinary backgrounds in engineering, psychology, history, anthropology and sociology,to develop brain-based and constructivist learning/teaching approaches that promote critical,analytical, and expert thinking in students. This STS course introduces students to the influencesof technologies on society and explores the relationships between societies and technologies.There are essentially four objectives to this course: (1) developing a strong understanding oflocal and global forces and issues which affect people and societies, (2) guiding local/globalsocieties to appropriate use of technology, (3) alerting societies to technological risks andfailures, and (4) developing informed and encompassing personal decision-making andleadership and providing

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Catherine Mavriplis

ways and with differing levels of ability; and create an environment ineach class that both challenges and supports.B. Be familiar with and use the results of professional scholarship on learning andteaching.C. Build into every course inquiry, the processes of science (or mathematics orengineering), a knowledge of what SME&T practitioners do, and the excitement ofcutting-edge research.D. Devise and use pedagogy that develops skills for communication, teamwork, criticalthinking, and lifelong learning in each student.”Reforms in undergraduate engineering pedagogy have been set in motion in the last fewyears by innovative faculty members and recommendations such as the one mentionedabove. The reforms have been mandated by students in some

Conference Session

Tricks of the Trade for Teaching II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Jessica Yellin; Jennifer Turns

graduate students in the pilot offering of the “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education”ETPP voluntarily participated in the program. The majority of the graduate students and post-docs were strongly motivated to continue participating in the program because they wereinterested in applying for engineering faculty positions within the next 2-24 months and theywanted to create as strong an application package as possible.The motivations for the undergraduates participating in the ETPP program were very differentfrom those of the graduate students. Unlike the graduate students, the undergraduates

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Susanne Green; Michele Auzenne; Chris Burnham; Ricardo Jacquez

the instructional team, these meetings were a positive aspect of the project. However, it isclear that the students did not necessarily share this perspective and felt that integration of thecourse content must be improved if it is to enhance their freshmen experience in engineering atthe university. Future work in this study will address this issue.Finally, it is evident that all students who participated in this study regardless of continuing orwithdrawing from engineering are making their choice as an informed decision. They not onlybegin to understand the culture of the engineering profession, which allows them to make adecision as to the appeal of such a career, but they also come to understand the demand and theacademic rigor of

Conference Session

Program Level Assessment

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Lawrence Feick; Larry Shuman; Katherine Thomes; Bopaya Bidanda

addition, Georgia Tech’s bold initiative to ensure that 50% of itsgraduates (the large majority of which are engineers) have an international experience shouldspur its competitor schools to action.In addition, engineering faculty are anecdotally reporting that students who have participated instudy abroad programs are better problem solvers, have strong communication and cross-culturalcommunication skills, and are able to work well in groups of diverse populations and understanddiverse perspectives. Living overseas creates graduates who are more adaptable to newenvironments and have a greater understanding of contemporary issues as well as engineering

Conference Session

Undergraduate-Industry-Research Linkages

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Mark Maughmer

workplaces of the future, one expects tosee a continual improvement in the ease with which people work together without having to fitinto any particular “culture”, so that they can each perform at their very best. Students must beeducated carefully in this respect.The Debate Over Systems EngineeringIn the late 90s and early 2000s, industry emphasized the need for systems thinking, and thedemand for systems engineers. This led to an examination by university faculty of how torespond to this demand. Several ideas are advanced. One holds that students graduating withaerospace engineering degrees from modern programs, are already equipped very well with the“desired attributes of the engineer”. After all, these are integral to the accreditation criteria

Conference Session

Philosophical Foundations, Frameworks, and Testing in K-12 Engineering

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Sonia Sanchez; S. Khalid Latif; Elias Faraclas; Catherine Koehler; Kazem Kazerounian

, American Society for Engineering Education”CATHERINE KOEHLER is a Ph.D. candidate in the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. Herfield of study is curriculum and instruction concentrating in science education under the direction of David M.Moss. Her dissertation work explores a pedagogical model of teaching the nature of science to secondary scienceteachers. She has taught Earth Science, Physics and Forensic Chemistry in public high school for 7 years prior toher graduate school training. Currently, she is a full time science education faculty member at Central ConnecticutState University in the Department of Physics/Earth Science.ELIAS FARACLAS is a doctoral student and research assistant in the University of Connecticut

Conference Session

Attracting Young MINDs

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Michele Auzenne; Jeanne Garland; J. Phillip King; Ricardo Jacquez

research theyhave conducted in the URA program. As a result, several of the students obtained summerinternships with the New Mexico Department of Transportation. The students’ responses tothese experiences were positive and developed their awareness of what is expected in an actualworld-of-work interview. Each of the post internship reports that the interns wrote reveal thatthe internship experience directed them to a specific civil engineering specialization for theirfuture career.Not only students benefited, however. For faculty, new pedagogical methodology wasdeveloped, especially for the community college instructors who had the opportunity to partnerwith university faculty. New curricular connections have begun as one of the faculty for