Mentoring Engineering Students: Turning Pebbles into Diamonds*

Mentoring differs from advising in that a personal relationship is established between the student and the professor, and this relationship may last for many years after the student's graduation. Very often it is difficult to define both what mentoring is and how a professor can become a good mentor to students. This paper describes some attributes of mentoring and suggests how one might become a good mentor to students.     

ABET Program Criteria: Review and Assessment for a Civil Engineering Program

Recently, the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) sponsored programs to recommend changes for the engineering curriculum. In addition, various other studies, such as that conducted by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), investigated methods to strengthen undergraduate education. The present investigation is based on a study of Lamar University civil engineering undergraduate and graduate students as well as practicing alumni. The findings suggest that all three groups, practicing engineers as well as undergraduate and graduate students, perceive that some subject areas are more important than others. For example, greater than 40% of each group identified four subject areas that presently receive or should receive a high level of coverage in the civil engineering curriculum. They include: mathematics through calculus and differential equations; structural and geotechnical engineering; and major design experience or course. In addition, more than 40% of the undergraduates and practicing engineers also perceive that hydraulics/hydrology/water resources presently receive or should receive a high level of coverage. In contrast, graduate students and practitioners also believe that construction management/surveying, and structural/materials and hydraulics laboratories receive or should receive a high level of coverage. These results suggest strong support for the traditional technical aspect of engineering. In addition, they may be interpreted as positive reinforcement for the Engineering Criteria 2000 program requirements. Nevertheless, all three groups rate professional practice issues at a relatively lower percentage. The foregoing are among the various subjects that have been included in the Civil and Similarly Named Engineering Program Criteria that have been adopted by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) as criteria that must be considered in order to satisfy the requirements of an accredited civil engineering degree.     

Designing and Teaching Courses to Satisfy the ABET Engineering Criteria

Since the new ABET accreditation system was first introduced to American engineering education in the middle 1990s as Engineering Criteria 2000, most discussion in the literature has focused on how to assess Outcomes 3a‐3k and relatively little has concerned how to equip students with the skills and attitudes specified in those outcomes. This paper seeks to fill this gap. Its goals are to (1) overview the accreditation process and clarify the confusing array of terms associated with it (objectives, outcomes, outcome indicators, etc.); (2) provide guidance on the formulation of course learning objectives and assessment methods that address Outcomes 3a‐3k; (3) identify and describe instructional techniques that should effectively prepare students to achieve those outcomes by the time they graduate; and (4) propose a strategy for integrating program‐level and course‐level activities when designing an instructional program to meet the requirements of the ABET engineering criteria.     

Preparing for Program Accreditation Review Under ABET Engineering Criteria 2000: Choosing Outcome Indicators

This paper examines a variety of outcome indicators that might be used by an engineering program in meeting the assessment requirements of ABET Engineering Criteria 2000. Several categories of indicator are identified and key characteristics of these means of assessment are discussed. Also noted are some of the engineering applications of outcome indicators documented on the World Wide Web. Finally, the results of a recent telephone/fax survey on the use of outcome indicators in engineering program assessment are summarized.     

Preparing for Program Accreditation Review Under ABET Engineering Criteria 2000: Creating a Database of Outcomes and Outcome Indicators for a Variety of Engineering Programs

ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 require a selection of outcomes and outcome indicators for each educational objective adopted by an engineering program. This paper describes a database created using Microsoft Access 97 © linking choices of program outcomes and choices of program outcome indicators for all of the accredited engineering programs in an academic institution. With this database, benchmarking searches can be conducted by type of engineering program, by choice of outcome, or by choice of outcome indicator. Several example searches are presented using data describing the engineering programs at Clemson University. A web-site address is given where copies of the Clemson database can be downloaded.     

A Paradigm for Assessing Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge in Engineering Students

Conceptual and procedural knowledge are two mutually‐supportive factors associated with the development of engineering skill. The present study extends previous work on undergraduate learning in engineering to provide further validation for an assessment paradigm capable of quantifying engineering students' conceptual and problem‐solving knowledge. Eight students who were enrolled in an introductory thermodynamics course and four who were enrolled in the course sequel provided verbal protocol data as they used instructional software. They were compared to existing data from a cohort of eleven science and engineering majors who had not taken thermodynamics. The results replicated earlier findings showing more cognitive activity on computer screens requiring overt user interaction compared to text‐based screens. The data also indicated that higher‐ versus lower‐performing students, based on course grades, engaged in more higher‐order cognitive processing. There was no evidence that students gained deeper cognitive processing as they advanced through the engineering curriculum.     

Approaches for Discrete Alternative Multiple Criteria Problems for Different Types of Criteria

In this paper we address two classes of sdiscrete alternative multiple criteria decision making problems: problems in which ordinal and cardinal criteria are simultaneously involved and problems in which only cardinal criteria are involved. We suggest variations of our previously developed ordinal criteria approach [5] and we test the approaches on randomly generated problems. Our evaluation criteria are: the capability of the approach to find a highly preferred alternative and the amount of information required of a decision maker.     

Excellence in Engineering Education: Views of Undergraduate Engineering Students

The purpose of this study was to understand the views and perceptions of engineering undergraduate students on engineering education. The method of content analysis was used to analyze the language used by engineering undergraduate students, and to extract the underlying common factors or perceived characteristics of “Excellence in Engineering Education.” These common factors were then used to identify and compare the similarities and differences in views between engineering students and perspectives from three types of stakeholders in the field. Forty‐seven undergraduate engineering students (17 females and 30 males) participated voluntarily in this study to answer four individual questions and ten group questions. The results showed that students strongly emphasized the importance of their own roles in the educational system and the value of instructional technology and real work examples in enhancing the quality of engineering education. The implications of the research results on excellence in engineering education are discussed.     

创建知识系统工程学科

介绍了如何在钱学森的系统科学与思维科学思想的启发和指引下，创建知识系统工程学科，知识系统工程的任务与内涵，知识系统的组成要素和功能；提出了知识系统的组织、人员、技术、经营和文化的体系结构；分析了知识系统的运作过程；特别对创新过程中知识的集成、转化与新知识的生成提出了一些新的观点。     

Characteristics of Freshman Engineering Students: Models for Determining Student Attrition in Engineering

Nationwide, less than half the freshman who start in engineering graduate in engineering, and at least half of this attrition occurs during the freshman year. Clearly, the freshman year is critical for both academic success and retention of engineering students. Such success depends not only on the knowledge and skills learned during this first year, but also on the attitudes individual students bring with them to college. Hence, if these attitudes can be measured before beginning college, we can develop more targeted programs for reducing attrition and improving academic success. Further, by measuring changes in student attitude over the course of the freshman year, we can develop better methods to evaluate engineering education programs. To learn more about these attitudes and how they impact upon retention, we undertook a three-year research effort. First we identified attitudes incoming students have about the field of engineering, their perceptions about the upcoming educational experience, and their confidence in their ability to succeed in engineering. These attitudes were then related to performance and retention in the freshman engineering program. To accomplish this, a closedform survey was developed, tested and administered to the 1993–94 and 1994–95 freshman engineering classes. This study demonstrated that student attitudes can provide an effective means for evaluating aspects of our freshman engineering program, particularly those relating to issues of attrition. Specifically, students who left the freshman engineering program in “good academic standing” had significantly different attitudes about engineering and themselves than those possessed by other comparison groups: students who stayed in engineering and students who left engineering in “poor academic standing.” We developed regression models to predict attrition and performance in our freshman engineering program using quantified measures of student attitudes. Implementation of the models has allowed freshman advisors to better inform students of opportunities that engineering offers, to devise better programs of study that take advantage of students' varied interests, and to set retention goals that are more realistic.     

基于感性工学与知识工程的用户需求认知研究

目的提出基于感性工学与知识工程的用户需求认知模型以促进产品设计领域更好地满足用户需求。方法首先从基本理论、流程、相关技术等角度出发介绍感性工学与知识工程;然后依据其在产品设计领域具有相似性及互补性,将两者结合并提出基于感性工学与知识工程的用户需求认知模型;最后通过自行车设计案例进行模型应用的简单介绍。结果在基于感性工学与知识工程的用户需求认知模型中,知识工程模块能确保设计方案在物理层面满足用户功能需求,感性工学模块则能确保设计方案在心理层面满足用户感性需求,因此该模型生成的设计方案能够在物理层面和心理层面同时满足用户需求。结论在产品设计领域,感性工学与知识工程的结合能更高效、更合理地满足用户需求。     

Engineering Design Processes: A Comparison of Students and Expert Practitioners

In this paper we report on an in‐depth study of engineering design processes. Specifically, we extend our previous research on engineering student design processes to compare the design behavior of students and expert engineers. Nineteen experts from a variety of engineering disciplines and industries each designed a playground in a lab setting, and gave verbal reports of their thoughts during the design task. Measures of their design processes and solution quality were compared to pre‐existing data from 26 freshmen and 24 seniors. The experts spent significantly more time on the task overall and in each stage of engineering design, including significantly more time problem scoping. The experts also gathered significantly more information covering more categories. Results support the argument that problem scoping and information gathering are major differences between advanced engineers and students, and important competencies for engineering students to develop. Timeline representations of the expert designers' processes illustrate characteristic distinctions we found and may help students gain insights into their own design processes.     

Engineering Design in Industry: Teaching Students and Faculty to Apply Engineering Science in Design

In a typical engineering curriculum students and faculty rarely have the opportunity to take a real problem, extract its essence, apply an analysis, and then make design decisions based on this analysis. This extractive link between fundamentals and design is particularly critical to a smooth transition from engineering study at the university to engineering practice in industry. Historically, universities have taken the responsibility for rigorous theoretical and technical training in subjects that include the basic sciences and fundamentals of engineering, while industry has been responsible for making engineering graduates contributors to specific tasks important to the company and its core competency. In this division of training, however, no one teaches students how to apply fundamental engineering principles to practical problems. To make matters worse, faculty often ignore engineering relevance of basic theory and the students then reject these fundamentals; in both cases engineering performance suffers. One solution to this missing bridge is being developed in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in the form of the “Engineering Design in Industry” program.     

Women and Men Engineering Students: Anticipation of Family and Work Roles

The underrepresentation of women in engineering typically is explained by gender differences in occupational interests, attitudes, or abilities. This paper examines the gender differences hypothesis as well as anticipated role conflicts of women and men students. We explore the academic, career, and family attitudes and expectations of women and men majoring in engineering. Men and women are remarkably similar in their abilities, academic experiences, and career influences. Women, however, are more likely to anticipate that lack of confidence in their own abilities and conflicts between work and family responsibilities will be barriers to success in their careers. These differences, along with several differences in orientations toward family roles, suggest that a role conflict argument better accounts for the disparity in the career development of men and women engineers. Suggestions for addressing these role conflicts before women begin working as engineers are provided.     

包装工程学科核心知识和知识体系探讨

提出包装工程学科的核心知识是包装防护学和包装艺术学.二者分别从科学和艺术的角度研究实现包装的自然功能和社会功能的理论,并有机结合到一起,构成包装设计的理论和思想.作者按照包装的整个实现过程将包装工程学科体系划分为4个层次,明确了该学科今后的发展重点和方向.