The Harvey Mudd Engineering Clinic Past,Present, Future

“Am I describing an impossible dream? Can one structure an engineering education about practice-oriented team experiences without depriving students of needed analytical skills and knowledge of the engineering sciences?” Nearly thirty-five years ago, Harvey Mudd College began to practice this “impossible dream.” That was when the Engineering Clinic was first launched. This paper describes how the Clinic program came into existence, including how faculty and administration were convinced to accept it. In addition, the response of the industrial community, both initially and over the years, is related. The current Clinic operation is described. Assessment of the Clinic program includes a discussion of both its impact on student preparation for engineering practice and the value of the program to industry.     

Defining “Engineer:” How To Do It and Why It Matters

Controversy concerning whether “software engineers” are, or should be, engineers provides an opportunity to think about how to define “engineer” and what effect different definitions may have on our understanding of engineering. The standard definitions of engineering are shown to generate more confusion than insight. Engineering should be defined historically, as an occupation, and ethically, as a profession. An engineer is a member of the engineering profession, that is, a member both of an occupation that is engineering by “birth,” “adoption,” or “marriage” and of the profession committed to engineering's code of ethics. Today, few “software engineers” satisfy either of these conditions. It is an open question whether they should.     

Exploring Engineering Graduate Student Research Proficiency with Student Surveys

Background Research is considered the essence of graduate engineering education, but knowledge about the engineering graduate student research experience is scarce in literature. Some studies that examine graduate engineering education suggest that students are experiencing educational deficiencies that can affect the research experience. Thus, exploring engineering graduate student research proficiency is warranted. Purpose (Hypothesis ) This work begins to earnestly answer the research questions “How proficient are engineering graduate students in research?” and “What factors affect the research proficiency of these students?” Design /Method In order to answer the two research questions specifically for the Georgia Institute of Technology Environmental Engineering graduate program, current students in the program participated in two surveys. Survey questions were designed to measure students' perceptions of their research proficiency and to aid in determining student academic motivations tied to proficiency. Results Many students indicated that they lacked research preparation upon beginning graduate study and during the first year of study, lacked development in important research skills like statistics and communicating in writing, and were somewhat hindered in research organization and progress. Regarding academic motivations, students generally valued personal advancement and enrichment over paper publication. Doctoral students overall indicated more preparation with respect to several aspects of research and more value placed on paper publication than did master's students. Conclusions The surveys provided important findings regarding student research proficiency for the engineering graduate program in question. These findings encourage the exploration of engineering graduate student research proficiency on a broader scale in future studies.     

Formative and Summative Assessment of the IGERT Program in Optical Molecular Bio‐Engineering at UT Austin

Recent studies of graduate education in science and engineering recommend a new pathway for graduate education, emphasizing interdisciplinary interactions, to prepare a versatile workforce that will be able to contribute in a global environment. The National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program (NSF IGERT) has funded over 100 projects addressing this need. As these projects progress it is important to assess their successes, best practices and common difficulties. This paper describes one NSF IGERT project, “Graduate Training in Optical Molecular Bio‐Engineering,” at the University of Texas at Austin, the integrated approach used to carry out its assessment, and how results of the assessment have been used to help achieve the goals of the program. We find that the total number of interdisciplinary scholarly activities (presentations, publications, funded research proposals and patent applications) reported by IGERT faculty and students rose steadily throughout the period of the IGERT award.     

Essential Non‐Technical Skills for Teaming

The world of engineering is once again changing. Engineering education is changing from the narrow engineering science curriculum of the 1950s to a broader industry‐driven curriculum. Today's employers are seeking engineering graduates with advanced communication skills and the ability to work effectively in team‐based environments. Unfortunately, a large number of undergraduate engineering programs are not sufficiently providing students the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace of the future. In this paper 20 non‐technical skills, 10 curricular changes, and seven post‐graduate training methods were presented to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale College of Engineering graduates to evaluate. These graduates functioned both in team‐based and traditional work environments. Results indicated listening as the most important non‐technical skill; inclusion of real‐world applications as the most important curricular addition, and mentoring as the preferred post‐graduate method of learning nontechnical skills. The findings support further research for implementing changes in undergraduate engineering education to integrate and support development of non‐technical skills throughout undergraduate studies. These changes will in turn increase the production of well‐rounded and flexible graduates that are “workforce‐ready.“     

Becoming a Professional Engineering Educator: A New Role for a New Era

Engineering education faces significant challenges as it seeks to meet the demands on the engineering profession in the twenty‐first century. Engineering faculty will need to continue to learn new approaches to teaching and learning, which in turn will require effective professional development for both new and experienced instructors alike. This article explores approaches to effective professional development and provides a conceptual framework for responding to the challenge of becoming a professional engineering educator. The “cycle of professional practice” is introduced as a prelude for identifying what individual professors and their institutions can do to generate more powerful forms of engineering education. The article concludes with two case studies that illustrate the possibilities when faculty and academic leaders join together in addressing calls for change.     

Engineering and Philosophy of Engineering

Philosophy of engineering lays the philosophical foundation of recognition, understanding and management of engineering. Being the kernel of philosophy of engineering, engineering ontology becomes the master key to understanding of engineering. The paper proposes and interprets the principal theses of engineering ontology, which differs from understanding of engineering in separate elements. Engineering ontology believes that engineering is the direct, realistic productivity that runs dynamically and feasibly and creates values. Engineering involves the relationship between human beings and the nature as well as the relationship between human beings and the society, and it has been a basic motive force and a basic way of promoting the social development, so that engineering gains the ontological status and fundamental value in social existence and social development. From the historical point of view, the engineering appears before the emergence of technology and science. Engineering has its own basis for existence, its own structure and its own laws for movement and evolution. Engineering should not be simply regarded as the ramification and derivative from science or technology. Engineering ontology is the theoretical basis of the triism of “science, technology, and engineering”. To understand and handle the mutual relationship among engineering, technology and science, by the evaluation criteria of engineering as the direct productivity, the process and effect of engineering-centered selection, integration and construction must be emphasized and the characteristic and mechanism of selection, integration and construction must be paid high attention. Under no circumstance may the engineering be deemed as an unchanged matter, which is constantly evolving and developing, so the studies on engineering ontology are closely and internally related with the theory of engineering evolution.     

Equipping Undergraduates for the Graduate School Process

The objective of this paper is to document a successful seminar series developed and used at Purdue University which educates undergraduates about graduate school and equips them to successfully move through the application and financial aid processes. The seminars are designed for all engineering disciplines. The series consists of four seminars given during a two-week period every fall and spring semester. The four seminars are “Graduate Study in Engineering: To Go or Not to Go, That is the Question,” “Helping Engineers Prepare for the General Graduate Record Exam (GRE),” “Approach and Helpful Hints on the GRE Engineering Exam,” and “Strategies for Applying to National Fellowship Programs.” The semester attendance for the four seminars collectively ranges from 150 to 250 students per semester. Data from student evaluations indicate that student knowledge about the graduate school process increases between 66%-164% for the four seminars. An alternative format for a single seminar highlighting all four topics has also been implemented.     

Mapping the Cultural Landscape in Engineering Education

Background Calls for culture change as key to systemic reform in engineering education implicitly assume the existence of common elements of a distinctive culture. The landscape for engineering education studies that invoke the concept of culture is complex and multi‐faceted, yet still ill‐defined and incomplete. Purpose (Hypothesis ) The aim of this study is to develop a conceptual framework of cultural dimensions that has the potential to guide the understanding of culture in the context of engineering education to demonstrate “where we are” and “how to get where we want to go.” Design /Method Ethnographic methods within an overarching interpretivist research paradigm were used to investigate the culture of engineering education as manifested in one institution. Adapting Schein's cultural framework, the data were collected and analyzed to distil from observable behaviors and practices the essence of the culture in the form of tacitly known cultural norms, shared assumptions, and understandings that underpinned the lived experience of staff and students. Results The findings are discussed within six cultural dimensions which emerged from the data as: An Engineering Way of Thinking, An Engineering Way of Doing, Being an Engineer, Acceptance of Difference, Relationships, and Relationship to the Environment. Conclusions The detailed findings from this study, combined with evidence from other studies, support the view that the proposed six dimensions have the potential to be transferred to other institutions as a practical tool for evaluating and positioning the culture of engineering education.     

The Relationships between Students' Conceptions of Learning Engineering and their Preferences for Classroom and Laboratory Learning Environments

This study developed a survey entitled Conceptions of Learning Engineering (CLE), to elicit undergraduate engineering students' conceptions of learning engineering. The reliability and validity of the CLE survey were confirmed through a factor analysis of 321 responses of undergraduate students majoring in electrical engineering. A series of ANOVA analyses revealed that students who preferred a classroom setting tended to conceptualize learning engineering as “testing” and “calculating and practicing,” whereas students who preferred a laboratory setting expressed conceptions of learning engineering as “increasing one's knowledge,” “applying,” “understanding,” and “seeing in a new way.” A further analysis of student essays suggested that learning environments which are student‐centered, peer‐interactive, and teacher‐facilitated help engineering students develop more fruitful conceptions of learning engineering.     

A Teaching Workshop for Engineering Faculty

A quality engineering education is of utmost importance to undergraduate students seeking an engineering degree. Providing a quality education to these students is the responsibility of engineering faculty. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Utah State University (USU), in cooperation with the officers of the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), has developed a series of six lessons focusing on teaching skills and faculty performance in the classroom. This series of lessons, known as the “Undergraduate Teaching Workshop”, is an effort to improve the teaching of the department faculty, and thereby the undergraduate education of its students. The lessons that make up this workshop range from student concerns to the use of learning resources and equipment. This paper discusses the workshop format and the experience we had with the workshop as it was conducted within our department.     

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.     

An Introduction to Engineering Through an Integrated Reverse Engineering and Design Graphics Project

This paper discusses a new freshman course that merges previous topics in the “Introduction to Mechanical Engineering” and “Engineering Design Graphics” courses into a single integrated teaching effort. The main objective of the new course is to introduce students to mechanical engineering education and practice through lectures and laboratory experiences. A major effort in the course is devoted to a reverse engineering team project. The students are divided into four‐member teams and are instructed to select a simple mechanical assembly for dissection. They study and disassemble their object into basic constituent components, documenting this process with freehand sketches and notes. They use these sketches and other measured dimensions to construct 3‐D solid computer models of each major component. The teams then obtain .STL files of the solid models, which are used to make rapid physical prototypes of their parts. The teams conclude their project activities by generating engineering drawings directly from the 3‐D geometric data base. All of these efforts are integrated, documented, and submitted to the instructor as a final team project report.     

Educating Generation Net—Can U.S. Engineering Woo and Win the Competition for Talent?

U.S. engineering education needs to evolve if the country is to maintain its preeminence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. This paper, building on both national engineering student data and findings from the Academic Pathways Study, conjectures and reports on analyses of what matters to future generations of engineers. The paper compares the current generation of college students, Generation Net, with previous generations, explores motivations and choices along the engineering pathway (pre‐college to the workforce), examines students' knowledge and skills relative to faculty practices, and concludes with three scenarios of engineering education and the workforce, including the consequences of stasis or change.     

Towards an ontology of design: lessons from C–K design theory and Forcing

In this paper we present new propositions about the ontology of design and a clarification of its position in the general context of rationality and knowledge. We derive such ontology from a comparison between formal design theories developed in two different scientific fields: Engineering and Set theory. We first build on the evolution of design theories in engineering, where the quest for domain independence and “generativity” has led to formal approaches, likewise C–K theory, that are independent of what has to be designed. Then we interpret Forcing, a technique in Set theory developed for the controlled invention of new sets, as a general design theory. Studying similarities and differences between C–K theory and Forcing, we find a series of common notions like “d-ontologies”, “generic expansion”, “object revision”, “preservation of meaning” and “K-reordering”. They form altogether an “ontology of design” which is consistent with unique aspects of design.     

Educating Engineering Professors in Education

Engineering graduates with Ph.D. degrees need to know how to teach for both academic and industrial careers. Ideally, education in pedagogy will occur during graduate school. Research has an appropriate role in universities, but we need to ensure that all engineering professors are “good enough” teachers. Students can learn how to teach through TA training, a course in educational methods in engineering, supervised internships, and a combination of these methods. An action plan to improve teaching is presented.     

Virtual Reality and Learning by Design: Tools for Integrating Mechanical Engineering Concepts*

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at San Diego State University recently began to redesign its introductory courses in mechanical engineering. The objectives of these newly designed courses are to incorporate the “learner as designer” strategy and engage students in real‐world applications in order to positively impact student motivation and conceptual understanding of mechanical engineering concepts. To achieve these objectives, the courses are designed to use virtual reality as a tool that integrates the fundamental concepts of design, analysis, and manufacturing. The first implementation of one of these courses afforded an opportunity to study a particular type of “learner as designer” strategy‐the “learner as instructional designer strategy.” This paper describes the four courses and the impact of the “learner as instructional designer strategy” on students' conceptual understanding of and attitude towards mechanical engineering concepts.     

Basic Engineering Software for Teaching (“BEST”) Dynamics

Engineering dynamics is the study of motion, but textbooks and chalkboards, the traditional classroom teaching tools, cannot show that motion. Mechanical models are helpful, but relatively inflexible; they are qualitative, not quantitative. Since July 1992, personnel from the University of Missouri-Rolla have been developing and classroom testing “BEST”* (Basic Engineering Software for Teaching) Dynamics with the goal of improving the teaching and learning of engineering dynamics. About forty-five different problem simulations, representing a selection of typical kinematics and kinetics problems for both particles and rigid bodies, have been completed. These problems enable the user to vary inputs to view a wide variety of configurations and behavior. Students using “BEST” Dynamics have reported improved ability to visualize motion, and somewhat improved problem solving ability. Recent work has focused on adding, to some of the problems, “Solutions” which give detailed support in writing and solving equations. This paper will introduce the reader to “BEST” Dynamics and its classroom use. It will also provide some philosophical commentary on the applicability of instructional software to the problem-solving-oriented engineering classroom.