Columbus, Ohio
June 24, 2017
June 24, 2017
June 28, 2017
Multidisciplinary Engineering
9
10.18260/1-2--27427
https://peer.asee.org/27427
436
Dr. Carlson worked as a water resources engineer for 10 years prior to earning her doctorate, contributing to improved water management in communities within the United States, Middle East, and Singapore. She has been a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) since 2002. Dr. Carlson’s research interests are broadly characterized as ‘how civil engineering impacts public health’, and include storm water management, modeling environment/engineering/social interfaces, combined sewer overflows, and improved communication and education of engineering concepts.
I taught for 10 years as an elementary teacher in Alaska. I won the Presidential Award for Science Teaching and was an Einstein Fellow in Senator Lieberman's office where I worked on the teacher quality portion of the Higher Education Reauthorization. I have been the co-director of the STEM Education program here at Merrimack College for Early Childhood and Elementary Majors for 5 years.
Engineering students in upper level courses are often isolated from students in other majors. Project Based Learning (PBL) is a great tool for upper level students, where they can practice the various skills they will need to successfully address workforce projects after academia. However, PBL does not readily allow students to interact with the wide variety of people and fields that engineers regularly do during a post-academic ‘real world’ project, including environmental scientists, policy makers, technicians, interns, and managers.
To address these issues, we adapted Project Based Learning to include collaboration between different courses. “Environmental Design,” a Civil Engineering course with 25 seniors enrolled, “hired” other courses of students to conduct specific tasks of interest to our projects. An Ecology course was hired to conduct macroinvertebrate sampling. An Electrical Engineering course was hired to design and develop a water quality monitoring device. A STEM Education course was hired to complete some water quality measurements. Finally, the students of Environmental Design were hired by an Environmental Studies course to develop a water quality monitoring plan, and conduct additional water quality measurements.
Students in the involved courses encountered situations that they would not have otherwise encountered. Instructors enjoyed working together, but also faced many difficulties related to managing not just their own course. Deadlines not met in one course had rippling effects, requiring other courses to be flexible with their own deliverable contents and/or due dates. Although the endeavor was challenging for instructor and student alike, with some small adjustments we recommend the model and will try it again.
Carlson, C. H., & Gatling, A. P., & Adams, J. G., & Fraga Muller, J. (2017, June), "Hiring Other Classes": Working across Departmental Boundaries in Interdisciplinary Projects for Senior Engineers Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27427
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