September 2007
Providing interesting and useful information for engineering faculty. To subscribe click here.

Spotlight On Our Sponsors:

• Graphical and Textual Programming with NI LabVIEW 8.5
  www.ni.com/labview85/
  
  
• Join the Autodesk Faculty Lounge
  www.students.autodesk.com
  
  
• Baker Hughes - Careers for Students
  www.bakerhughes.com
  
  
• Explore Agilent's 7 New USB DAQ Modules
  www.get.agilent.com/
  
  
• You Get Free Software, Your Students Get a Good Deal
  www.ptc.com/
  
  
• eCYBERMISSION
  Volunteer to help K-12 Engineering Contest!
  www.ecybermission.com

 

Combine Graphical and Textual Programming with NI LabVIEW 8.5

Use National Instruments LabVIEW 8.5 software to apply algorithm engineering and reduce design time. With LabVIEW, you can combine different design methods and computation models for a hybrid approach to dynamic control systems. Design, prototype, and deploy systems with parallel computation processes automatically using LabVIEW and multicore technology.

View demos and try LabVIEW 8.5 online at ni.com/labview85

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

Explore Agilent's 7 New USB DAQ Modules

The NEW U2300A Series USB DAQ family consists of 7 modules - ideal for design validation and manufacturing engineers who conduct data logging, measurement or monitoring in a broad range of industries.  Click for more info or to view the online demo.

You Get Free Software, Your Students Get a Good Deal 

Get your free copy of the NEW Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 Student Edition by clicking the link below and completing the PTC form. 

Don’t forget! Tell your students to take advantage of PTC’s time limited offer on the NEW Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 Student Edition- now for only $149.99!   

Click HERE for your free software.

Help build America's next generation of scientists and engineers!  VOLUNTEER TODAY to support eCYBERMISSION, a free, web-based science, math and technology competition for students in grades six through nine. 

 Visit www.ecybermission.com to learn more and register using code ASEE.

ASEE Would Like to Thank The Following Organizations for Participating in Our Recent Online Survey:

AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships http://fellowships.aaas.org/

American Nuclear Society
www.ans.org/

ANSYS Inc.
www.ansys.com/

Bose Corporation
ElectroForce Systems Group
www.bose-electroforce.com/

CleveMed
www.clevemed.com/

In this Issue:

I. Databytes

• Number of Teaching Personnel by Engineering Discipline (total 26,699)
• Number of Engineering Teaching Personnel by Rank

II. Congressional Hotline

• APPROPRIATIONS: HERE COMES THE OMNIBUS
• CONGRESS PUTS FINAL TOUCHES ON STUDENT LOAN OVERHAUL BILL
• ‘NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND’ REAUTHORIZATION FACES HURDLES
• DEMOCRATS PROMISE MORE EDUCATION LEGISLATION, HIGHER EDUCATION ACT REAUTHORIZATION
• HOUSE PASSES PATENT LAW OVERHAUL; SENATE HURDLES REMAIN

III. Teaching Toolbox

• Circle of Support — As engineering programs strive to attract and retain female students, supportive communities and service components are no longer the exception – they’re becoming the rule.

IV. Fellowship Programs

• The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
• The Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP)
• The Office of Naval Research (ONR) Summer Faculty Research and Sabbatical Leave Program
• Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for Service Program
• The National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program
• The National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program (NDSEG)
• The Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP)
• The Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program (NREIP)
  
   

I. Databytes

Number of U.S. Teaching Personnel by Engineering Discipline (total 26,699)

- Electrical/Computer = 6,533
- Mechanical = 4,619
- Civil = 3,243
- Computer Science (inside engineering) = 2,417
- Chemical = 1,936
- Other = 1,807
- Industrial/Manufacturing = 1,238
- Biomedical = 1,005
- Metallurgical & Materials = 749
- Aerospace = 722
- Agricultural = 439
- Engineering (General) = 396
- Eng. Science & Eng. Physics = 331
- Civil/Environmental = 295
- Environmental = 268
- Engineering Management = 207
- Nuclear = 171
- Petroleum = 138
- Architectural = 107
- Mining = 77

Note: These numbers were determined by adding tenured/tenure-track faculty, full-time nontenure-track teaching personnel and the full-time equivalent of part-time teaching personnel.

Number of Engineering Teaching Personnel by Rank

- Full Professor = 11,562
- Associate Professor = 6,252
- Assistant Professor = 5,501
- Nontenure-Track Personnel =2,142
- Full-time Equivalent of All Part-Time Personnel = 1,242

Back to the index.

II. Congressional Hotline

APPROPRIATIONS: HERE COMES THE OMNIBUS
With veto threats issued by President Bush on all but the Defense bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appear to be considering rolling the various appropriations bills into a large omnibus measure, forcing the Mr. Bush’s hand. In such a scenario, a government shutdown would be a real possibility. That it has come to this is a sign of the deep divisions that exist between the parties, amplified by the jockeying of party leaders and presidential candidates in the midst of a sharply accelerating election cycle.

Of the five appropriations bills tracked in these pages, the only action taken since the return of Congress after Labor Day was passage of the Defense spending bill (HR 3222) by the Senate’s Appropriations Committee.

CONGRESS PUTS FINAL TOUCHES ON STUDENT LOAN OVERHAUL BILL
The House and Senate approved a student loan overhaul bill (HR 2669) that would cut $18 billion from lender subsidies and direct the savings to increased aid for college students, including raising the maximum Pell grant by nearly $1,100, instituting a forgiveness provision for public service, and limiting monthly payments of borrowers to 15% of discretionary income.

‘NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND’ REAUTHORIZATION FACES HURDLES
Strongly disparate views were expressed at a recent House Education and Labor Committee hearing on reauthorization of the 2002 No Child Left Behind education law (PL 107-110). The current law instituted, among other things, new testing requirements to find out whether the nation’s public schools are making adequate yearly progress in reading, math and science.

DEMOCRATS PROMISE MORE EDUCATION LEGISLATION, HIGHER EDUCATION ACT REAUTHORIZATION
Following passage of a student aid bill that promises to remake the landscape of federal student aid programs, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have promised action this year on bills to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (PL 105-44), expand tax benefits for higher education and tighter regulation of private student loan providers.

HOUSE PASSES PATENT LAW OVERHAUL; SENATE HURDLES REMAIN
The House passed, by a vote of 220 to 175, a bill (HR 1908) that would make patents harder to obtain and easier to challenge. Intended to curtail litigation by limiting where patent owners can file suit and how much they can collect in damages, the bill has been criticized by IEEE, labor groups, universities, the Bush administration and drug makers, who worry that weakening patent rights might hurt investment in new technologies and cost American jobs.

Back to the index.

III. Teaching Toolbox

Circle of Support
By Margaret Loftus

Although she excelled at both math and science in high school, Jenny Moerschbacher never gave much thought to becoming an engineer. “I could also write and talk to people,” she explains, which had her leaning toward a major in business or economics. It wasn’t until she learned about Lafayette College’s interdisciplinary bachelor of arts degree in engineering that she realized the field might actually suit her skills perfectly—a decision that was reinforced in her junior year when she traveled to a Central American country with a team from Lafayette’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders to work on a project bringing clean water to two villages. “I liked that I could have an effect on people’s lives,” Moerschbacher says. “That was really cool to me.”

Such enthusiasm for interdisciplinary studies and service projects hasn’t been lost on engineering programs as they scramble to find new ways to engage and retain more young women like Moerschbacher. Indeed, some schools have seen their numbers of women graduates inch up beyond the national average of 20 percent by shedding rigid curricula and culture in favor of more programs like these. As the United States struggles with a dearth of engineers and increasingly complex problems for them to solve, putting out the welcome mat for women is more important than ever, explains Gary Gabriele, director of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Engineering Education and Centers. “Problems that engineers will face in the future are so complex and multidimensional that it doesn’t make sense to solve them with a group of people who essentially have one common background and perspective.”

Step one is building a strong community for undergraduate women to help alleviate that all-too-familiar sense of isolation common among female engineers. “Every day you get subtle messages that you don’t belong, and after a while you start to question yourself because it’s not something blatant,” says Betty Shanahan, president of the Society of Women Engineers. “One of the things that helps to counter that is just being with other women and realizing what you’re experiencing is normal. It’s a humongous relief.”

At Pennsylvania State University, the foundation for that community is laid even before school starts. The university’s Women in Engineering Program’s three-day orientation matches freshmen with a mentor and a group of peers in the same major. Computer engineering major Lanlan Wang remembers feeling nervous at first, but she says, “The moment I walked into the program, my mentor knew my face.” By the time classes roll around, the girls know each other and many have become pals. “I made a lot of good friends that I still keep in touch with now,” Wang says.

Penn State and others further strengthen those bonds by giving their female students the option of living in all-engineering residence halls. About 20 years ago, Cinda-Sue Davis, the director of the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program at the University of Michigan—which boasts a 27 percent graduation rate for women engineers—got the idea for the school’s WISE residence program after hearing a male colleague reminisce about living in an engineering fraternity house in college. “Forty guys lived in the house—that meant if someone failed out, they’d be stuck with splitting their share of rent, so they helped each other out with homework and advice on which professors to take,” Davis explains. While there’s no threat of eviction if one of these students drops out, the 150 women who live on Michigan’s WISE residence floor have a positive influence on each other nonetheless. “If they want to study calculus on a Friday night, they can do that and no one will put them down,” Davis says. “And if they want to party, they just have to go down a floor.”

Part of the mix in most programs is formal mentoring. Besides helping with schoolwork and advice, upperclassman mentors serve as role models to freshmen who may feel overwhelmed by the engineering workload. Even though she was at the top of her class in high school, recent Penn State bioengineering grad Erica Zerfoss says she still had her doubts about succeeding academically. “Having a mentor was great because the fact that she had made it made me feel I could do it, too.”

Not surprisingly, a few open faculty office doors can make a huge difference in whether a student sticks around or not. At Lafayette, where women make up more than 25 percent of engineering graduates, an open-door policy is de rigueur. “We expect faculty to be mentors, and that means that the doors are open and students can come and talk to us about not just academia but anything in their extracurricular lives,” says Director of Engineering Jim Schaffer. “When I came to Lafayette, I was shocked at how much time I spent talking to students and how much learning occurred in that setting.”

In the electrical/computer engineering department of Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, faculty members host potluck dinners every month. It’s important for students to see that professors, particularly women, are human, says Duke’s engineering dean, Kristina Johnson. “When times get tough in any institution, having that personal understanding of other people really pays off dividends.”

More Than Mentoring

But support programs alone can’t do it all. Research shows that women have different learning styles from men. Women tend to thrive in project-based learning rather than lecture courses, especially when there’s teamwork involved. As a result, schools are introducing design courses as early as the freshman year to give students a taste of what engineering is really like. At the University of Michigan, for example, students in marine engineering professor Lorelle Meadows’ Engineering 100 section build a greenhouse for nonprofit groups. “The class seems to attract far more women and minority students,” WISE’s director, Davis, says.

Whether it’s in a design class or a research project, an element of altruism has always been a big draw for women. “Engineering has to make explicit the societal value of engineering work, and that has had a disproportionate impact for populations that have been traditionally a minority,” says Norman Fortenberry, director of the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education at the National Academy of Engineering. “It translates to ‘How is this going to help my community more than being a doctor or a lawyer?’ We have those answers; we just need to provide them.”

Some, like Tufts University electrical engineering professor Karen Panetta, have had no problem getting the word out. In its fourth year, her “Nerd Girls” senior capstone project has brought together a team of undergraduate women from different engineering disciplines to develop solarization for a lighthouse on Thacher Island off the coast of Massachusetts. The project incorporates much of what attracts women to engineering, including a positive social impact and interdisciplinary teamwork. The results have surprised even Panetta. Besides being a big confidence booster, she says, “I really see a massive increase in their academic performance because they know how to attack problems.”

But Panetta is still a relative rarity in the world of engineering academia. Nationally only about 10 percent of tenure-track engineering faculty members are women. “Without women faculty, you aren’t going to attract women to the field,” says Duke’s Johnson. While Pratt has tripled the number of women on its tenure-track faculty since 1999, Johnson is working to expand an innovative pilot recruitment program with the goal of having women make up 30 percent of tenure-track faculty. Working with Duke women’s basketball coach Gail Goestenkors, Pratt has developed a recruiting style much like a college athletics department by identifying women as undergrads and cultivating them as they move on. “It’s moving away from a very passive approach to a very interactive approach,” explains Assistant Dean for New Inititiatives Marianne Risley.

While women have come a long way in engineering from the 1970s when they made up about 3 percent of undergrads, there’s plenty of room for improvement, says Susan Metz, co-founder of Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network (WEPAN) and senior adviser at the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology. For the next step, Metz suggests schools consider offering new disciplines within engineering. “We really need to broaden the opportunities. Think in terms of pathways instead of pipelines.”

 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/nrl/ .

Summer Faculty Fellowship Programs

The Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP).  This program is intended for U.S. citizens or permanent residents who have an earned doctorate in science or engineering and who hold full-time science or engineering faculty positions at U.S. colleges, community colleges and universities.  The duration of this summer fellowship is from 8 to 12 continuous weeks and research is performed on-site at Air Force laboratories.  There is a competitive weekly stipend, and relocation and daily expense allowances are available for those who qualify.  The application opens on August 1^st, 2007.  To apply online, go to : www.asee.org/sffp

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) Summer Faculty Research and Sabbatical Leave Program. This program is intended for U.S. citizens who hold teaching or research appointments relating to science and/or engineering at U.S. academic institutions. A competitive stipend, relocation and travel allowances, and a pre-program site visit are offered. Application deadline is December 4, 2007. Go to: http://www.asee.org/summer.