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Session 1148

Strategies for Embedding Scholarship in the Educational Experiences of Engineering Technology Undergraduate Students Abi Aghayere College of Applied Science and Technology (CAST) Rochester Institute of Technology

Abstract

The hallmark of Engineering Technology (ET) programs is its student-centered curriculum and hands-on approach to teaching. Many institutions with ET programs now require scholarship of their ET faculty in addition to their teaching duties. In many institutions that have always emphasized scholarship and research, undergraduate student education has often times taken a back seat to research. The question that arises for ET programs as we begin to engage in scholarly activities is: how do we insure that ET scholarship is student-centered similar to ET teaching and curriculum?

The benefits of scholarship to ET students include enhancement of their critical thinking, innovative, lifelong learning skills, skills that many ET employers today are looking for in our students. In this paper, the author examines issues relating to the importance of scholarship to ET undergraduate students, barriers to ET student scholarship, mechanisms for embedding scholarship in the ET curriculum, resources required to facilitate ET student scholarship, and feedback from ET student scholars who recently worked on a scholarly project with the author. The author concludes that embedding scholarship in the ET curriculum is very desirable and suggests some ways and means to facilitate and nurture student scholarship in ET.

Introduction

Several institutions with Engineering and Engineering Technology (ET) programs now require scholarship of their faculty,1, 2, 3 including those institutions for which teaching has always been their primary focus. Since many of these institutions have mostly undergraduate programs, they also now require that faculty scholarship involve undergraduate students and be integrated into the student learning experiences in order for the scholarship to be meaningful. An example of this trend appears in the 2004 Rochester Business Journal publication marking the 175th anniversary of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) where the RIT Provost states,

“My hope for RIT’s academic future is that we have more focus on scholarship and research while sustaining our primary focus on student learning. I would like RIT to have the reputation of being the best university in the country in integrating faculty scholarship into the student learning experience, not only by faculty incorporating the results of their scholarship in their classroom teaching but, even more importantly, through incorporating students into their scholarship.”

The RIT president in the same publication states, “so we’re going to make a specific point of giving every undergraduate an opportunity to do research.” It is clear that there has been a Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

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Aghayere, A. (2005, June), Strategies For Embedding Scholarship In The Educational Experiences Of Engineering Technology Undergraduate Students Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15306