April 2007

Welcome to the February issue of Connections, the American Society for Engineering Education's free e-newsletter.

Spotlight On Our Sponsors:

• Electronics Education Platform - NI
  www.ni.com/academic/circuits
  
  

• Join the Autodesk Faculty Lounge
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• Help Students Explore Great Career Opportunities
  at Baker Hughes
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• Introducing the all new ZPrinter® 450
  www.zcorp.com

Electronics Education Platform
 
National Instruments tools help students experience the complete process of designing, prototyping, and testing circuits. NI LabVIEW software is now tightly integrated with the National Instruments Multisim industry-standard circuit simulation SPICE environment.

Learn More at www.ni.com/academic/circuits

Join the Autodesk Faculty Lounge and get free design software, teaching tools, and more. www.students.autodesk.com

Introducing the all new
ZPrinter® 450

Color 3D printing just got easier and more cost affective. The NEW color ZPrinter® 450 gives students the power to vividly display their CAD designs in brilliant 3D color, faster, easier and with 40% less touch time than ever before! Output vivid color models at 450 dpi right in the classroom! URL: http://www.zcorp.com

Welcome to the World of K–12 Engineering!

Introducing engineering into the K–12 classroom connects science and math concepts to the everyday engineering that surrounds us. TeachEngineering.com helps teachers enhance learning, excite students and stimulate interest in science and math through the use of hands–on engineering. With a fully searchable, digital library of standards–based lesson plans, and a myriad of “Living Laboratories” that bring real–world engineering principles into the classroom, TeachEngineering's comprehensive curricula are hands–on, inexpensive, and relevant to children's daily lives.

TeachEngineering.com is a joint effort of the University of Colorado, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Colorado School of Mines, Duke University, Oregon State University, and the American Society for Engineering Education, and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Bring the world of engineering into the K–12 classroom with TeachEngineering.com. You don’t need knowledge of engineering to use these curricula!

Search TeachEngineering.com’s digital library at
www.teachengineering.com.

New and Improved Journal of Engineering Education!

The Journal of Engineering Education is a peer-reviewed international journal published quarterly by the American Society for Engineering Education. It serves as an archival record of the leading scholarly research in engineering education.

Visit www.asee.org/jee/ to read it online.

It's Time Again to Go For It!

In this Issue:

I. Databytes

• Percentage of African American T/T-Track Teaching Faculty by Discipline
• Percentage of Hispanic T/T-Track Teaching Faculty by Discipline

• Percentage of Asian American T/T-Track Teaching Faculty by Discipline

• Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral Degrees by Gender, 1999-2005

II. Congressional Hotline

• Congresswoman Matsui Introduces the Scientific Communications Act
• Education Leaders Summit in Washington
• Duke University Study on the State of U.S. Engineering Education Competitiveness

III. Teaching Toolbox

• Piecing It All Together — The Learning Factory Provides Engineering Students With A More Hands-On Learning Experience.

IV. Fellowship Programs

• The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

V. Professional Opportunities and Development

• Dean of Engineering Position Opening - Lawrence Technological University

• Leadership Skills for Engineering and Science Faculty Workshop - MIT
  
   

I. Databytes

Percentage of African American T/T-Track Teaching Faculty by Discipline

- Petroleum = 5.7%
- Architectural = 4.5%
- Agricultural =3.9%
- Electrical = 3.8%
- Engineering (general) = 3.6%
- Industrial/Manufacturing = 3.5%
- Mechanical = 2.7%
- Aerospace = 2.4%
- Chemical = 2.4%
- Civil = 2.4%
- Environmental = 2.1%
- Metallurgical & Materials = 2.0%
- Electrical/Computer = 1.9%
- Engineering Management = 1.9%
- Other Engineering = 1.7%
- Computer = 1.6%
- Computer Science (inside engineering) = 1.5%
- Eng. Science & Eng. Physics = 1.4%
- Biomedical = 1.2%
- Civil/Environmental = 1.1%
- Mining = 1.0%
- Nuclear = 0.6%
-Overall average: 2.4%

Percentage of Hispanic T/T-Track Teaching Faculty by Discipline

- Engineering Management = 9.2%
- Civil = 3.6%
- Chemical = 3.6%
- Computer = 3.2%
- Environmental = 3.0%
- Industrial/Manufacturing = 2.9%
- Civil/Environmental = 2.7%
- Metallurgical & Materials = 2.4%
- Mechanical = 2.2%
- Eng. Science & Eng. Physics = 2.1%
- Petroleum = 1.9%
- Aerospace = 1.8%
- Engineering (general) = 1.8%
- Electrical/Computer = 1.7%
- Other Engineering= 1.7%
- Electrical = 1.6%
- Agricultural = 1.5%
- Biomedical = 1.5%
- Computer Science (inside engineering) = 1.5%
- Nuclear = 1.2%
- Mining = 1.0%
- Architectural = 0.9%
-Overall average: 2.3%

Percentage of Asian American T/T-Track Teaching Faculty by Discipline

- Mining = 29.7%
- Electrical = 26.3%
- Computer Science (inside engineering) = 26.1%
- Electrical/Computer = 25.5%
- Computer = 25.0%
- Mechanical = 23.3%
- Industrial/Manufacturing = 22.1%
- Metallurgical & Materials = 21.5%
- Petroleum = 20.8%
- Biomedical = 18.9%
- Civil = 17.9%
- Chemical = 17.4%
- Aerospace = 14.7%
- Agricultural =14.5%
- Civil/Environmental = 13.6%
- Engineering (general) = 13.6%
- Other Engineering = 12.0%
- Nuclear =11.6%
- Eng. Science & Eng. Physics = 9.6%
- Engineering Management = 9.2%
- Architectural = 8.0%
- Environmental = 7.6%
-Overall average: 21.1%

 

 Back to the index.

II. Congressional Hotline

Congresswoman Matsui Introduces the
Scientific Communications Act

On March 21, Representative Doris Matsui (D­ CA) introduced the Scientific Communications Act of 2007, which will provide resources at the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help scientists communicate the importance and relevance of their scientific focus and research to non­scientist policy makers. It will achieve
this end by providing communications skills development opportunities to students at the
graduate level.

"I am proud to introduce this legislation with Mr. Gordon to increase t he voice of scientists in public policy. Science and technology play an increasingly large role in policy debates, as demonstrated by recent national discussions on
such topics as stem cell research, alternative energy sources, and nanotechnology. Scientists are a critical voice in these debates. Communications training provided
through this legislation will better equip our scientists to articulate t heir expertise t o help inform the American people and the decision making process." The legislation (H.R. 1453) is co­sponsored by Representative Bart Gordon (D­TN), the Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology.

Education Leaders Summit in Washington

On Thursday, March 22, education leaders from industry, academia, and civil society gathered in Washington to discuss the implementation of the U.S. secretary of education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The meeting, entitled “A Test of Leadership” produced a list of actionable t asks but generated
no plan for executing them. "I feel like I'm sitting powerless [sic], and there
is a train wreck coming. We've got to stop that train wreck from occurring. This is the time for all Americans to have access to higher education. This is the generation we can't afford to lose," said Sara Martinez Tucker, the under
secretary of education.

The meeting was the effort of the Department to motivate education stakeholders to take
ownership of the implementation of the recommendations made by the Commission of
the Future of Higher Education last fall.

Duke University Study on the State of U.S. Engineering Education Competitiveness

Researchers at Duke University have released a comparative study on the state of engineering education in the U.S. vis a vis that of India and China. Responding to anxiety about lapses in U.S. competitiveness, and concern about the economic impact of industrial outsourcing, the report has concluded that engineering education
in the U.S. is not falling behind these emerging superpowers. There are a number of actions, however, that the study recommends the U.S. takes to ensure its “competitive edge” in the face of such challenges.

The report, entitled Where Engineers Are, was a follow­up to a 2005 Duke University study which concluded t hat the staggering number of graduated Indian engineers was in fact quite inflated. The recent study, published in the spring issue of Issues in Science and Technology, continues the tone of the first, making arguments that India and China, not the U.S., are the countries wit h engineering shortages. While India and China continue to produce many more engineers than the U.S., the report finds that “there are serious deficiencies” in the engineering education they receive. Vivek Wadhwa, Gary Gereffi, Ben Rissing, and Ryan Ong are credited as authors of the report.

Back to the index.

III. Teaching Toolbox

Piecing It All Together

By Lynne Shallcross

Most weekends, you can hear NPR’s Car Talk on the radio in John Lamancusa’s woodworking shop. The hosts offer insights on technology and cars and have a knack for making complex technical concepts understandable, Lamancusa says. But a 2001 Car Talk broadcast sticks in his mind for a different reason. “Engineers don’t know squat about how to do anything,” one of the hosts said. That really got Lamancusa, a professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, thinking.

“That seems to be a popular perception these days,” Lamancusa says. Engineers know plenty, that’s hardly debatable. But while today’s computer-educated engineering students come out of school armed with plenty of theory, they don’t have as much hands-on experience as engineering students a half-century ago. For more than 10 years, Lamancusa’s been hard at work adding the practical side back into engineering education. Lamancusa is director of Penn State’s Learning Factory, a place where students get a taste of the real world of engineering—one that can’t be found in a textbook, one that offers real projects from real companies. It’s a place where students “learn about engineering by doing,” he says. And since 1995, from maximizing the efficiency of frosting Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts to designing a neonatal chest movement sensor, the students have been doing just that.

The Learning Factory program began as a collaboration among faculty at Penn State, the University of Washington (UW) and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez (UPRM), along with researchers from Sandia National Labs and 36 industry partners. The goal was to give undergraduate engineering students a first-hand experience in design, manufacturing and business. The idea has come a long way, now with successful Learning Factories at each of the three institutions and a concept that’s reached 10,000 students and 200 companies in the United States and Latin America.

The National Academy of Engineering honored Lamancusa and the four other Learning Factory founders with the 2006 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, a $500,000 award established in 2001 to “recognize new modalities and experiments in education that develop effective engineering leaders.” Half of the award money went to Penn State, and half was divided between the five team members, who donated their shares back to their home institutions. The cross-institutional team that created the Learning Factory included Lamancusa; Jens Jorgensen, who directed the Learning Factory at UW and is now retired; Lueny Morell, former UPRM professor, now director of Hewlett-Packard University Relations for Latin America; Allen Soyster, former industrial and manufacturing engineering department head at Penn State, now dean of engineering at Northeastern; and José Zayas-Castro, former professor at UPRM, now professor and chair of industrial and management systems engineering at the University of South Florida.

The concept of the Learning Factory had its roots in something called the Ben Franklin Partnership—a program that began in the 1980s and was designed to keep manufacturing jobs in Pennsylvania through universities and industry working together. Penn State engineering graduate students racked up about 70 projects with companies from the 1980s to the early ’90s. Shortly thereafter came a Clinton administration initiative through the National Science Foundation (NSF) called the Technology Investment Program, aimed at encouraging schools to focus on manufacturing-related education. Soyster says Penn State’s participation in the Ben Franklin Partnership gave the College of Engineering a base of experience to deserve a grant. “We’d already been in the business,” he says. NSF agreed. In 1993, the team won a grant for $2.75 million, which allowed for the establishment of Learning Factories at each of the three schools under the banner of the Manufacturing Engineering Education Partnership.

The team members say they jumped on board the Learning Factory project because all felt that hands-on, real-world training was sorely lacking in engineering education. Fifty or more years ago, people studied engineering because they liked tinkering with things and had experience building or working on the farm, Lamancusa says. “Nowadays students don’t really understand the applications. So we’re trying to teach them the underlying science for things they don’t even understand on a physical basis. If you don’t have a practical use for knowledge or cannot see how it applies to reality, it gets forgotten.”
Each school took a different slant in creating its own Learning Factory, and each also created its own minor, such as Penn State’s product realization minor. UW based its Learning Factory out of the mechanical engineering department and offers students an injection molding cell, engineering prototype lab, product dissection lab and design lab. At UPRM, students gain experience in the engineering needs of the local industry, which is strongly based in electronics and pharmaceuticals. In 2002, Hewlett-Packard donated a $2.4 million production line for the UPRM students to work on.

At Penn State, most students find their way into the Learning Factory through something called the Industry Project Clinic. For months before the start of a semester, Lamancusa works with companies to bring real-life projects into the Learning Factory for students to work on as their senior capstone design projects. At the Project Kickoff event, companies pitch the projects to students, who then bid on them and are assigned to the projects in teams. For the entire semester, students work on everything from defining the problem to constructing a solution to coming up with a business plan for it. Each company pays a $2,500 fee—and the only guarantee is that the students will give it their best shot. Over the past 12 years, more than 3,000 Penn State engineering students have created more than 600 projects with 140 companies, including Kellogg, Wal-Mart, FedEx and Boeing.

Bill Grauer, senior manager of Boeing V/STOL Wind Tunnel and vice president of the Learning Factory’s Industry Advisory Board, says students who come out of the Learning Factory are clearly better equipped for an engineering career. “One thing we’ve found with engineering graduates from any university is a lack of hands-on ability and training,” Grauer says. “Whether you’re building a space shuttle or a Pop-Tart machine, you need engineers with practical, hands-on experience. The Learning Factory provides that opportunity to those students, and it’s really one of the best programs we’ve found anywhere.”

OPEN-DOOR POLICY
Although the Industry Project Clinic brings in most of the students, all students in Penn State’s College of Engineering can walk through the door and use the Learning Factory facilities, provided they take the training classes first. In the 3,500 square-foot facility, which includes a design studio and machining and welding areas, the students can work on a project for class or an invention they’ve dreamed up—any project is welcome, as long as it’s course- or education-related, Lamancusa says.

Open access to the Learning Factory is very important to Lamancusa. He refers to the factory as an “engineer’s sandbox,” a place where students “can come in and make a mess and learn from it.” Allowing all students of any engineering discipline to work in the Learning Factory gets students accustomed to cross-disciplinary work. What Lamancusa says he sees are civil engineering students interested in what electrical engineering students are doing, offering suggestions to one another and learning from one another. “The amount of learning that happens that way is not to be discounted,” he says.

In fact, that kind of learning is encouraged. Simply finding the solution for a real-life industry project isn’t the only thing that’s emphasized in the Learning Factory. “Soft skills,” like communication and teamwork among students of different disciplines, get the spotlight, too. For an example of how that works, the students need to look no farther than their professors, the founders of the Learning Factory, who overcame cultural differences among the individual schools as well between academia and industry. That’s something Morell is very proud of. “In order for us to be examples in teamwork for our students, we needed to experience that—we needed to be a good team,” she says. And indeed they were. Their ability to work well together is what the Learning Factory creators point to as the reason for its success. “We had a great team of people as part of this development, and we knew what we wanted to accomplish,” Lamancusa says. “And we were persistent in trying to make it happen.” Soyster agrees. “When you get good people together with a good project, it doesn’t take any amount of leadership to make it happen.”

Gordon Award winners or not, this group is not content to sit back and relax. For more than five years, team members have been conducting workshops and sharing the Learning Factory concept and curriculum throughout the United States and Latin America. An initiative called Engineering for the Americas spawned from one of these workshops in Brazil in 1998 and is now supported by the Organization of American States, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and Hewlett-Packard, among others. Under that banner, Morell and Lamancusa are sharing the Learning Factory model as well as best practices for engineering education in this hemisphere and around the world.
Over the phone from Panama, where she’s giving yet another workshop, Morell reflects on how what began as a relatively small collaboration between three schools and industry could end up affecting the way engineering is taught across the globe. “The lasting legacy would be practice learning—give it an importance in engineering education,” she says. “Theory is not enough.”
Lynne Shallcross is associate editor of Prism.

 Back to the index.

 

IV. Fellowship Programs

Postdoctoral

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.  This program is open to U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents and offers a competitive stipend as well as insurance, relocation, and travel allowances.  The program offers one to three-year postdoctoral fellowships designed to increase the involvement of scientists and engineers from academia and industry to scientific and technical areas of interest and relevance to the Navy.  The program has a rolling admission.  Go to: http://www.asee.org/resources/nrl/ .

 Back to the index.

V. Professional Opportunities

DEAN OF ENGINEERING

The Dean is the senior administrator providing leadership and support to Lawrence Technological University's College of Engineering. The successful candidate demonstrates accomplishments in academic or professional pursuits that support appointment as a professor in a department of the College.
 
Essential are creativity, leadership skills, the ability to foster new approaches to and work effectively with the corporate community, and demonstrated leadership in industry and/or academia. Some 1,400 undergrad and 400 graduate students are enrolled in four departments: civil; electrical, bio-medical & computer; mechanical; and engineering technology.
 
Over a third are evening students. For more, visit www.ltu.edu/human_resources/administrative_jobs.asp

Leadership Skills for Engineering and Science Faculty

2-day faculty workshops sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s
Professional Institute

Intended Audience: junior faculty, senior faculty, department heads, and deans

Focus: Human-centered strategies for leading effective teams in academic, engineering
environments. Through a series of interactive role-playing activities, self-assessment
instruments, and group discussions, you and your colleagues will develop a repertoire of
techniques for addressing issues that commonly arise within engineering research groups and among teaching staff.

Instructor: Professor Charles E. Leiserson, MIT
Dates: June 18–19, July 16–17
Location: MIT Campus
Tuition: $1,600 (group discounts available)

For additional information visit:
http://professionalinstitute.mit.edu/lead

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