Minneapolis, MN
August 23, 2022
June 26, 2022
June 29, 2022
12
10.18260/1-2--41026
https://peer.asee.org/41026
236
Dominic Michael Halsmer is Senior Professor of Engineering at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma and a registered Professional Engineer. His education includes Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Purdue University, a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA, and a Master of Arts Degree in Biblical Literature from ORU. He received the Scholar of the Year Award from ORU in 2000 and 2015, as well as outstanding teaching awards in 1997, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2014, 2017, and 2019. He served as a NASA Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center in 1996 and 1997 through the ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program. He served as Dean of the ORU College of Science and Engineering from 2007 to 2012. He also served as Director of the Center for Faith and Learning at ORU from 2013 to 2016.
His current research involves engineering education, reverse engineering, and contributions from the field of engineering to the science and faith conversation. He and his student research team, have produced many publications in these areas. His first book, which combines all three of these areas, came out in 2019: Hacking the Cosmos: How Reverse Engineering Uncovers Organization, Ingenuity, and the Care of a Maker. He and his wife, Kate, delight in their four children – Nicholas, Christina, Mary Kate, and Josie, and six grandchildren – Sydney, Zeke, Taya, Henry, Hudson, and Owen. Dominic and Kate reside in Jenks, Oklahoma, where he enjoys worshiping God through teaching, research, trail racing, disc golf, ultimate Frisbee, sand volleyball, cross-fit, basketball, gardening, salsa-making, chess, reading, OneWheeling, and studying science and faith issues.
In an effort to motivate more youths from the USA to pursue a career in engineering, education accreditation agencies have recently emphasized the need to bring more engineering-related content into the K-12 classroom. The School of Engineering and the College of Education at XYZ University are collaborating on a project to assist in meeting this goal. A general education course (taken by education majors) consisting of applied earth and space science laboratory experiments is being modified to include new experiments on how engineers attempt to make good use of earth and space resources. Engineering students from a course in applied thermodynamics form teams, conduct research and develop the lab experiments to illustrate simple engineering principles that education majors can easily apprehend, and later carry into the K-12 classroom.
The proposed experiments make use of concepts from the applied thermodynamics course (and other engineering courses) involving areas such as hydroelectric power and dam construction, solar power for heating and electrification, wind energy, ocean wave energy, tectonic plate theory and other planetary dynamics, and asteroid and meteor characteristics and impact dynamics. The focus of the novel experiments is to convey engineering principles pertaining to the safe and sustainable conversion of raw resources into usable energy, while simultaneously protecting humanity from the potentially harmful aspects of these resources and processes. The engineering students develop prototype laboratory equipment and procedures, and meet with education majors to discuss feasibility, content, and appropriate level of difficulty. After the designs are finalized, successful modules will be incorporated into a new lab manual for the applied earth and space sciences lab course.
Halsmer, D., & Hullinger, H., & Kesler, J., & Sheehan, C. (2022, August), Design of Engineering-related Lab Experiments to Train Future K-12 Educators in Renewable Energy (Work In Progress) Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41026
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