What's in the Soup? Auto-ethnograhies from an Engineer, a Physicist, and an English Professor Regarding a Successful Multidisciplinary Grand Challenge Program
- Conference
- Location
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Indianapolis, Indiana
- Publication Date
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June 15, 2014
- Start Date
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June 15, 2014
- End Date
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June 18, 2014
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
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Integration of Engineering and Other Disciplines (Including Liberal Arts)
- Tagged Divisions
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Multidisciplinary Engineering and Liberal Education/Engineering & Society
- Page Count
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11
- Page Numbers
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24.1370.1 - 24.1370.11
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--23303
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/23303
- Download Count
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390
Paper Authors
Anneliese Watt Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Anneliese Watt is Professor of English at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She teaches and researches technical and professional communication, rhetoric and composition, medicine in literature, and other humanities elective courses to engineering and science students. Her graduate work in rhetoric and literature was completed at Penn State, and her recent research often focuses on engineering and workplace communication as well as medical humanities.
Scott Kirkpatrick Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Scott Kirkpatrick is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Optical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He teaches physics, semiconductor processes, and micro electrical and mechanical systems (MEMS). His research interests include heat engines, magnetron sputtering, and nanomaterial self assembly. His masters thesis work at the University of Nebraska Lincoln focused on reactive sputtering process control. His doctoral dissertation at the University of Nebraska Lincoln investigated High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering.
Ashley Bernal Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Ashley Bernal is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She received her PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2011. She was an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) teaching fellow and Student Teaching Enhancement Partnership (STEP) Fellow. Prior to receiving her PhD, she worked as a subsystems engineer at Boeing on the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (JUCAS) program. Her research areas of interest include piezoelectrics, nanomanufacturing, optical measuring techniques, and intercultural design.
Abstract
The authors (professors of mechanical engineering, physics, and professional communication)collaboratively designed and taught an intensive 10-week summer multidisciplinary design program inwhich undergraduate engineering and science students earned credit for three courses by tackling theNational Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenge to produce solar energy economically.Working in teams students designed, built, tested, and communicated an inexpensive and locallymanufacturable system that utilized solar energy for individuals in Kenya. The program has attractedpositive media coverage from both general audience and engineering education forums: localnewspaper and television stories, U.S. News and World Report, and ASEE First Bell. Due to the successof this pilot program, we seek to extract the elements that led to the fruitful collaboration for both thestudents and the faculty. Using as a framework Borrego and Newswander’s “Characteristics ofSuccessful Cross-disciplinary Engineering Education Collaborations,” we will provide parallelethnographies to reflect on our own multidisciplinary experiences regarding course development, teamteaching, student outcome evaluation, and professional development. The reflections will focus on theprocess and motivation for the collaboration, methods for selecting problem and course theme,workload distribution, and our own perceptions of the quality and value from the learning experience aswell as rewards. We will then analyze the conclusions from each of our disciplinary perspectives andshare with the community of engineering educators our ideas regarding why the program was a success.
Watt, A., & Kirkpatrick, S., & Bernal, A. (2014, June), What's in the Soup? Auto-ethnograhies from an Engineer, a Physicist, and an English Professor Regarding a Successful Multidisciplinary Grand Challenge Program Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--23303
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