Asee peer logo

Impact of Computation in Undergraduate Curriculum : Alumni Perspective

Download Paper |

Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Materials Division (MATS) Technical Session 1

Tagged Division

Materials Division (MATS)

Page Count

17

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43471

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43471

Download Count

206

Paper Authors

biography

B. Ruşen Argun University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

visit author page

Ruşen is a Ph.D. student in the department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the computational teaching assistant of the Materials Science and Engineering department for academic year 2022-2023, and participated in the teaching activities about computations in several undergraduate courses. His research is about coarse-grained simulations of soft materials. He enjoys sailing when the weather is nice.

visit author page

biography

Andre Schleife

visit author page

André Schleife is a Blue Waters Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He obtained his Diploma and Ph.D. at Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany for his theo

visit author page

biography

Cecilia Leal

visit author page

Cecília Leal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign since 2012. She graduated in Industrial Chemistry from Coi

visit author page

biography

Dallas R. Trinkle University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

visit author page

Dallas R. Trinkle is an associate professor in Materials Science and Engineering at Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Ohio State University in 2003. Following his time as a National Research Council postdoctoral resea

visit author page

biography

Nicola H. Perry University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

visit author page

Nicola Perry has been an assistant professor in Materials Science and Engineering at UIUC since 2018. She received her PhD degree in the same field from Northwestern University (NU) in 2009 and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at NU, Kyushu University (Japan), and MIT. Prior to joining the faculty at UIUC she was a World Premier Initiative assistant professor in the International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research at Kyushu University and a research affiliate at MIT. Her research focuses on design and discovery of point-defect mediated active behavior in solid-state ionic materials for high- and low-temperature energy conversion and storage applications. Her teaching encompasses functional ceramics (senior-level class), solid-state ionics (graduate-level class), and phases and phase relations (sophomore-level class). She continues to support the incorporation of diverse computational modules in her courses. She is also active in educational outreach to middle-school and high-school students as well as the broader community on the topics of materials for sustainability, electrochemistry, and energy conversion, developing and leading interactive lessons and hands-on demos.

visit author page

biography

Jessica Krogstad University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-0628-0501

visit author page

Jessica A. Krogstad is an associate professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her PhD in Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012. Between 2012 and 2014, she held a postdoctoral appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Her current research explores the interplay between phase or morphological evolution and material functionality in structural materials under extreme conditions. She also maintains interest in engineering education, specifically in outreach and design thinking.

visit author page

biography

Matthew D. Goodman University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

visit author page

Dr. Goodman received degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Iowa State (B.S. & M.S.) and the University of Illinois (Ph.D.). He is a lecturer in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at University of Illinois since 2014 with curr

visit author page

author page

Antonia Statt

author page

Marie Agathe Charpagne

Download Paper |

Abstract

Computational methods have gained importance and popularity in both academic research and industrial applications in recent years. Since 2014, our team has consistently worked on reforming our Materials Science and Engineering curriculum by incorporating computational modules into all mandatory undergraduate courses. Our previous research revealed positive results of this reform, as students show increased confidence levels and satisfaction with computational tools and their application to materials science problems. We believe that the time is ripe to enlarge the scope of our research beyond our current students. Here we seek to investigate the impact of computational modules on our alumni. We surveyed the alumni that graduated in the last 10 years and asked them about the benefits of computational materials on their career. We were specifically interested in whether the alumni think that the computational materials have created extra opportunities for them in the job market and whether they were helpful in performing better at their job. We have also investigated how often and which computational tools they were using for their job. With the results of our survey, we hope to get a better understanding of the current needs of materials science graduates in industry regarding computational skills. We think that the perspective provided by the alumni can serve as a guide on reshaping the computational modules and their weight in our undergraduate curriculum.

Argun, B. R., & Schleife, A., & Leal, C., & Trinkle, D. R., & Perry, N. H., & Krogstad, J., & Goodman, M. D., & Statt, A., & Charpagne, M. A. (2023, June), Impact of Computation in Undergraduate Curriculum : Alumni Perspective Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43471

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015