Entrepreneurship in a Graduate Engineering Program*

The paper will describe three courses that emphasize the entrepreneurship of new, joint projects between engineering and business students. The courses were co‐taught among engineering, business and applied psychology. The graduate student teams developed a marketing plan, conceived a design, built a prototype, and wrote a business plan. The teams were formed into companies with roles and responsibilities, had a budget, and were given the ability to fire “free‐loaders.” The teams were expected to develop innovative, high risk, high reward products. The students learned to take risks, accept failure, be creative, and work in a self‐directed team. A stress‐free classroom environment fostered creativity.     

Graduate Engineering Education of Underrepresented Populations

Of all segments of science and engineering graduate education, the disparity between minority groups is the greatest, and the participation of nonresident aliens is the highest, in engineering. This paper examines the graduate degrees awarded in engineering from the perspective of representation within the US population, the US engineering schools that grant significant numbers of graduate degrees to underrepresented minorities, and the measures implemented by some of these schools that are particularly effective at granting graduate degrees to underrepresented minorities. In addition, we recommend initial steps that an engineering school might make to increase underrepresented minorities' graduate student participation. Although the specifics can vary from institution to institution, the net result should be the same: a sincere commitment to bring underrepresented minority students into the mainstream of the academic enterprise.     

Assessing Quality Issues in Interactive Video Teleconferencing-based Graduate Level Engineering Courses

The continuing education of engineering professionals has been an important objective of the University of Pittsburgh's Manufacturing Systems Engineering Program (MSEP) since its inception in 1987. Making relevant graduate-level programs accessible to the population of engineering professionals separated from traditional university communities has been the object of much effort for more than three decades. The distance education tool of interactive video teleconferencing over the public telephone network has recently become a viable method for extending the university environment to these remote students. This paper considers the context and analysis of student reactions and attitudes toward MSEP graduate-level courses delivered to the University's regional campus at Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Since the fall of 1994, MSEP has offered these courses using off-the-shelf interactive video teleconferencing systems over the public switched digital network. Issues that may affect the perceived quality of these programs (e.g., in the areas of audio communication quality, instructional strategies, course materials distribution, and course offerings) are identified and discussed.     

Integrating Ethics & Engineering: A Graduate Option in Systems Engineering,Ethics, and Technology Studies

This paper describes an engineering graduate option in Systems Engineering designed to overcome some of the effects of specialization and compartmentalization by building a link between technical and ethical training. Students in this option produce case studies that emphasize ethical issues in the design process. The goal of the program is to turn out ethical professionals who are able to reflect on the moral implications of technology. The proposed approach uses realistic or real‐hypothetical hybrid case studies as a type of vicarious mentoring, and, when supplemented with readings in ethical theory and codes, may serve as a starting point for a deeper understanding of behavioral dilemmas. The developers of this approach are a multi‐disciplinary team from the Engineering School and the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. The paper describes how the graduate option is structured and provides data on student outcomes.     

Barriers to Increased Engineering Graduate Enrollments: Counterforces and Their Implementation

This paper highlights the role of the faculty member in recruiting students currently enrolled in B.S. programs in engineering and the sciences into full-time pursuit of a graduate-level engineering degree. The faculty member is demonstrated to be in a unique position to influence such students, providing strong counterforces to a confluence of attitudes and pressures experienced during the B.S. experience which effectively create a barrier to full-time engineering graduate study. We analyze this barrier via the method of force field analysis, and demonstrate that effective recruitment into full-time graduate study must be based on a four-fold strategy of education, expectations, improved B.S. experience and better control of the B.S. environment. Approaches to implement these strategies are discussed.     

包装工程学科建设与研究生培养的学理分析

包装工程学科是应用型交叉学科,既有自身独特的发展轨迹、学理框架、研究方法和路径,也从其所属一级学科和相关支撑学科吸纳养分。本文在梳理包装教育发展历程和研究生培养现状的基础上,从学理上分析了包装学科的基本架构和主要研究方向。其基本架构和研究方向与研究生培养相结合,反映在不同的学校里,必然形成自身的培养模式和特色。     

Effectiveness of an Internet‐Based Graduate Engineering Management Course

This research provides engineering educators analytical evidence as to the effectiveness of Internet‐based course instruction. The research examined the University of Missouri‐Rolla's Internet‐based Advanced Production and Operations Management course, with a focus on determining the effectiveness of the Internet‐based education tools used. Over 100 students in five Internet‐based classes and one traditional, in‐class control group were given three sets of surveys, learning style assessments, a course pre‐test, and a course final examination. Multiple conclusions were drawn from this study based on analyses of the data collected. First, the Internet‐based students performed equally as well as the control group as measured by the difference between pre‐test and post‐test scores. Second, the Internet‐based students were found to have had exaggerated time requirement expectations for taking a course in the Internet environment. Third, the students rated the effectiveness and satisfaction positively for the Internet classroom format. Initially, the Internet‐based students were skeptical of electronic lectures but their experiences were positive.     

生物医学工程研究生培养新模式探索

生物医学工程是一门整合物理、数学、工程技术、生物医学科技与临床应用的跨领域工程科学,培养能够适应生物医学工程发展需要、熟悉国际规则和惯例、对生物医学产业发展具有影响力的国际化研究型、具有实践能力和创新精神的高素质复合型人才不仅符合生物医学工程专业的特点,对于满足就业市场的需求也具有十分重要的意义。研究以东北大学生物医学工程专业为例,通过生物医学工程专业研究生培养新模式的探索,找出优化的研究生培养规律和教育教学模式,在此过程中,揭示创新型人才培养的机制、方法,从而提高研究生教育的理论水平,提高教学质量和人才培养质量。     

美国包装专业研究生教育

介绍了密歇根州立大学、威斯康星-斯陶特大学、罗切斯特理工学院和克莱姆森大学等美国4所大学包装专业的研究生教育情况.包括培养目标、课程设置、研究方向等.表明在有关部门支持下,开展我国包装工程专业的研究生教育已势在必行.     

组织工程支架材料的研究进展

自19世纪以来,移植手术一直致力于修复由于创伤﹑感染﹑肿瘤所造成的大范围组织缺损,以恢复器官功能。自体移植是目前最常采用的疗法,但供体的有限性限制了其应用,而且会给患者带来很大的痛苦。组织工程的目标是通过种子细胞在三维支架材料上的黏附﹑生长进而修复受损的组织。三维支架是种子细胞形成组织之前赖以生存和依附的载体,能够正确引导新组织的生长。因此支架材料的选择就成了关键,本综述主要介绍目前应用于组织工程的生物支架材料的性能要求﹑发展现状以及发展前景。     

“Engineering Graduate Teaching Assistant Instructional Programs: Training Tomorrow's Faculty Members”

Although there has been increased interest in graduate teaching assistant (GTA) training programs recently, few examples of programs specifically for engineering GTA's are found in the technical literature. A survey of engineering schools in Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest region of the United States has been conducted to determine the extent of instructional programs. The results of this survey and the literature indicate that there are large differences in the amount of training that GTA's in different engineering schools receive. While some are involved in extensive training programs, many receive little or no instruction in teaching, and/or inadequate feedback to help improve their teaching skills. These findings are discussed, along with details of innovative instructional programs found in the literature, and suggestions for improving the state of engineering GTA instruction.     

A Study on Engineering History Base

During engineering processes, many kinds and amounts of information are used and produced. Such information is useful in successive cases, and thus its reuse is desired. In this paper, information on attributes of the products is referred to as ‘product information’, and information on the reasons for and/or history of a designer’s thought process is referred to as ‘process information’. According to this classification, process information can be used for obtaining an explanation of product information. The purpose of this work is to build a database, called an ‘engineering history base’, from which engineers can retrieve explanations to enable the reuse of product information. In this paper, explanation from the ‘process’ viewpoint is thought to be important in promoting the reuse of product information. There are two types of explanation for the process: teleological and causal. However, until now, little attention has been paid to the causal explanation for the process. Thus, in this paper, an information model which focuses on both types of explanation is proposed. The model is adopted for the engineering history base and a prototype system is developed. The appropriateness of this model is discussed by analyzing the actual data in the development of a color video printer.     

多目标决策分析在暖通空调方案决策中的应用研究

将现代决策理论中的多目标分析应用于暖通空调工程的决策尤其是方案决策。介绍了多目标决策的方法,讨论了暖通空调决策问题的多目标特征,针对我国北京地区供热方案的选择这一多目标问题,采用线性加权法进行求解,获得了与工程实际相符的优化方案结果。     

A Case Study in Creative Problem Solving in Engineering Design

The senior design sequence at Louisiana State University is a two semester, design, build and test experience. Groups of two, three or four students work together in a team setting to produce a functioning prototype which meets predetermined design goals. One particular project, which had as its goal the requirement to extend the reach of an occupant confined to a standard sized wheelchair, was used as a mechanism to integrate the development of critical and creative thinking skills necessary to solve technical problems into the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum. Special attention was paid to the nature of creativity and exercises were introduced in order to facilitate this historically neglected aspect of engineering education. The result of this effort was a unique wheelchair, which provides the occupant access to shelves located over their head or objects on the floor via an adjustable height seat.     

建筑工程并行设计研究

介绍了并行工程的定义和特点；针对并行工程对建筑产品开发过程的要求，构建了建筑工程并行设计实施的集成框架，包括并行设计集成的内容、集成的功能及以三域划分的总体结构；论述了建筑工程并行设计实施的特点；构建了基于共享数据库的各专业设计层次的关系。     

我国泡沫混凝土的研究进展及工程应用

泡沫凝土凭借混轻质高强、保温隔热、隔音环保等优良性能,广泛应用于屋面、楼板地暖、非承重墙及热力管道等的保温层以及路桥空洞填充工程.主要综述了泡沫混凝土的发展历程、性能影响因素及应用领域,并展望了其未来的发展方向,以推动泡沫混凝土的进一步研究与应用.