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ENHANCING ENGINEERING EDUCATION THROUGH GLOBAL CO-OPS LTC Robert A. Powell, Ph.D., LTC Michael J. Kwinn, Jr., Ph.D. Department of Systems Engineering, United States Military Academy

Abstract – Each summer, most academic departments at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York develop intern-like opportunities for their students, or cadets as they are referred to at the Academy. These opportunities are reserved for emerging junior and senior cadets who are otherwise not conducting military training during the summer. In the Department of Systems Engineering, we coordinate various opportunities with government and non-government affiliated organizations for cadets to work on engineering problems related to their disciplines. This program, known as “Academic Individual Advanced Development” or AIAD, is vital to the educational development of cadets and provides them with an opportunity to participate in activities beyond baseline requirements. The AIAD opportunity is designed to facilitate interaction among cadets and military and/or civilian organizations for a three-to-four week period and discover the “real world” applicability of their academic endeavors here at West Point.

These experiences broaden student perspectives and provide them with practical advanced education related to their professional responsibilities as student leaders and future commissioned officers. Participating organizations gain by having additional personnel to work on engineering projects, and by having the opportunity to expose future Army leaders to the vital functions performed by their organization.

This paper explores the uniqueness and nature of our work-based education program, its purpose, our process for matching cadets with a participating agency and follow-up feedback from students. The feedback is used to assess the viability of the program for future students and participating organizations. Additionally, this paper provides practical guidelines for implementing such a program in any engineering curriculum to enhance a student’s engineering education and learning.

Introduction

In the early 1980s, reformers became increasingly preoccupied with the effects of inadequate education of U.S. workers on the nation’s economy. This development coincided with increasingly competitive economic challenges from Japan, Germany, and other European countries. The indicators were that high schools and colleges were failing to prepare the nation’s workforce. What was discovered was that schools were not doing their job because they 1) provided no incentive for students to work hard; 2) did little to help students find good jobs; 3) did not teach the attitudes and maturity needed on the job; 4) isolated young people from adults who could act as models and mentors; 5) did a poor job of teaching the so-called advanced

“Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Powell, R., & Kwinn, M. (2005, June), Enhancing Engineering Education Through Global Co Ops Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15115