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| August 2008 | Subscribe |
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In This Issue:
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II. Congressional Hotline |
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SUSTAINABILITY GRANT PROGRAM IN NEW HEAThe Higher Education Opportunity Act approved by Congress last month included a program that will create a "University Sustainability Grants Program" at the Department of Education. Additionally, the bill also calls for the Department of Education to organize a national summit in order to identify best practices in sustainability and opportunities for collaboration. SUPPLEMENTAL BUDGET PLAN INCLUDES SCIENCE FUNDSCome September, a second supplemental budget package is set to be introduced into the Senate. The $24 billion package will include an allocation of $1.28 billion for the numerous science agencies, including NASA, NIH, and DOE.
ENERGY CONCERNS DOMINATE LAWMAKERS´ CALENDARAgain the buzz on Capitol Hill has been all about energy. The House voted 414-0 to require the Intelligence Community to study the links between high energy prices and national security. Additionally House panels discussed a measure that would limit the activity of investors in energy markets, and a Strategic Petroleum “swap”. Currently, however, no vote regarding drilling for oil has been scheduled. The Senate Appropriations Committee earlier approved an Energy-Water spending bill, including $6.5 billion for a nuclear weapons programs. While seen as a victory for many in the Senate, the House on the other hand is looking to cut nuclear weapons spending. The House Science and Technology Committee, meanwhile, approved three more energy and water conservation bills. One bill will create a competitive grant program under the Energy Department, and another would create an R&D program on water-use and efficiency under the EPA. Lastly, another debate continues to rage in House regarding offshore drilling. |
III. Teaching Toolbox |
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A More Tempting ScienceBy Corinna Wu Bowing to student demands, Duke revamps physics for a better fit within engineeringSlogans on college students’ T-shirts can be mystifying—inside jokes about beer, sports or naked-co-ed-whatever. But one T-shirt worn at Duke University left no doubt as to its meaning: “Physics Sucks.” It proclaimed for all to see the widespread dissatisfaction among Pratt School of Engineering students with a key course requirement.
If the students had been merely complaining about the rigor of physics, the faculty might have brushed off their protest. But surveys and focus groups conducted during a 2001 curriculum review revealed a legitimate gripe: The gulf between the introductory physics courses and the rest of the engineering curriculum had grown so wide that students’ needs were no longer being met. “One thing we learned from students was that the course wasn´t well enough connected to the other things engineers were doing in the curriculum, either at the time or afterwards,” says Tod Laursen, Pratt´s senior associate dean for education. So the physicists and engineers at Duke got together to hammer out curricular changes that would make physics a better fit in engineering studies, exploring fewer topics but in greater depth. A MIDDLE GROUND SOLUTIONThere was no way physics would be abandoned. Every engineering student is required to take physics because the science is inextricably linked to engineering. Its principles of mechanics, electricity, magnetism, and thermodynamics undergird all technology. Nonetheless, physics and engineering departments have traditionally had separate histories, goals and interests. Physics departments are usually part of a college of arts and sciences, administratively separate from engineering schools. And physicists and engineers often take very different approaches to similar material. Physicists emphasize fundamental principles, while engineers stress the applicability of concepts to real problems.
Duke offers three separate physics sequences, depending on whether students plan to major in physics, engineering or pre-med and life science. Engineering students had been taking two semester-long physics courses, one focusing on mechanics and thermodynamics and a second covering electricity and magnetism with some wave theory thrown in. When the physics and engineering instructors sat down to re-tool the curriculum, they agreed that the physics courses needed to be made more relevant to engineering. But the physics faculty were determined that the courses had to be taught from a physicist´s perspective. “We weren´t going to back down on that,” says Joshua Socolar, associate professor of physics. “On the other hand, the engineering faculty were saying, ‘If what you mean is teaching a course that our students can´t stand, then we´d rather just teach it ourselves.’” After considerable discussion, the two sides found an alternative. They decided to stretch the original two-course engineering physics sequence into three courses: introductory mechanics; introductory electricity, magnetism and optics; and applications of physics. “The impetus was to try to get students to feel that physics was about principles and concepts that you can apply to many situations,” Socolar says. Most engineering students now take the mechanics class in the spring semester of freshman year and the electricity and magnetism class in the fall of sophomore year. GREATER RELEVANCE AND DEPTH
This revamp meant removing about one-third of the material traditionally taught in the first semester. The course became “relentlessly mechanical—no thermodynamics, no fluids, no waves,” Socolar says. “What we did not do is simply remove those things and make the course two-thirds as hard. Instead, we added in some topics that flowed more easily in the context of discussions of mechanics.” One such change occurred in acquainting students with harmonic oscillators. Like a pendulum, harmonic oscillators are a classic example of a mass on a spring moving back and forth—and thus, a standard part of any introductory physics class. But the new course takes students further, demonstrating the result of a combination of two or more oscillators. “These are the sorts of things not in the introductory textbooks, but [that] we felt fit in a mechanics course and are equally important from a conceptual point of view,” Socolar comments. Another change entailed a greater focus on statics—identifying the forces on objects at rest. From a physics perspective, statics is treated as a special, simple case of dynamics in which the motion of an object is zero. But statics plays a key role in engineering, so devoting more time to the topic allowed engineering students to explore a side of physics that is highly revelant to their study. “Boy, we really saw the effect of that,” Laursen says. “The jump start that that gave the kids in terms of being really prepared . . . It did make a huge difference.” Focusing on fewer topics also paid off for students in the second introductory course. Stephen Teitsworth, who coordinates the class in electricity, magnetism and optics, has observed the benefits: “The students´ concept of an electric field—what it is, how to use it, how to compute it—electric potential, electromagnetic waves. . . . I think they emerge from this course with a more solid and mathematically precise grasp of these concepts,” he says. Instructors also found room to add exercises and labs using MATLAB, the computing and programming software package used by many engineers to solve problems. Incoming engineering students are required to take an introductory computation course to learn MATLAB, so, with encouragement from the engineering professors, the physics department incorporated the software into all three courses. As a result, one of the exercises in the new physics course now directs students to use MATLAB to simulate the process of diffusion and plot the probability distributions of particles. Working through the process gives them a better understanding of how diffusion works on a microscopic level, according to Teitsworth. The third class, which covers topics like thermodynamics, waves and optics, is not required for engineers, but it serves the needs of the 60 or so students each year who have earned Advanced Placement credit for the first two courses. The faculty felt strongly that all the students should study physics at a university level, says Dan Gauthier, chair of Duke´s physics department. So the engineering school requires them to take at least one physics course. The Applications of Physics class is a natural elective to fill that requirement.
Before the curriculum change, it was difficult for students to place out of the two introductory physics courses, even if they had very high AP scores. That´s because the AP Physics exam that prospective engineering students take doesn´t cover thermodynamics and waves—topics included in the original Duke mechanics course. It meant that top students were being forced to take introductory courses and sit through a lot of material they already knew—a sure way to breed dissatisfaction. With the change, these students now have access to a more appropriate course. NO MORE ANGRY T-SHIRTSWhile the professors have been collecting data to see whether students are learning better with the new course sequence, they have yet to establish any trends. Nonetheless, student course evaluations have given the professors a sense that the curriculum revamp is working. “There were two gains: one was in physics, and one was in the introductory computation course,” says Laursen. “The ratings went way up.” In addition, in exit surveys taken before students graduate, physics is showing up much less often on the list of things they didn´t like. Aside from providing engineering students with better preparation, the Duke approach may well be a more conceptually sound way to teach introductory physics. Socolar—who had to write a series of lecture notes for the statics portion of the mechanics course because no textbook presented the material in the order he wanted—is convinced. “I like this way of doing it,” he says. “My gut feeling is that it´s easier to learn about vectors in the context of static force problems” instead of the way those concepts are usually taught. Duke isn´t the only school changing the way science is taught to engineering students. Attempting to bolster retention of engineering majors, the University of Maryland has upgraded faculty used in introductory classes, incorporated design earlier on and tried to show how science will be applied in engineering. (See “Staying on Track” in the Jan. 2008 Prism for other examples.) The new mechanics course at Duke “absolutely was relevant and complemented the engineering courses really well,” says Joseph Repp, a sophomore mechanical engineering student. Repp has a unique perspective because he decided to fulfill the electricity and magnetism requirement over the summer, when Duke only offers the version for life science and pre-med students. “It didn´t get into the MATLAB programming and was more textbook–oriented,” he says. To the relief of the Duke faculty, the angry T-shirts disappeared a few years ago. “The feedback has gone from ‘we absolutely hate this course’ to ‘this is OK,’” Socolar says. “And comments about the labs went from ‘This is horrible’ to not many comments.” For one of the toughest and most rigorous courses an aspiring engineer will take, this is a big improvement. |
IV. JEE Selects |
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Context and Challenge for Twenty-First Century Engineering EducationBy Charles M. Vest The engineering workforce of tomorrow, and indeed that of today, will face profound new challenges. Every day the men and women of this workforce will face the stress of competing in the fast-paced world of change we call the knowledge-based global economy of the twenty-first century. They will also face even larger challenges because the nation and world will need to call on them to seize opportunities and solve global problems of unprecedented scope and scale. The United States has long been King of the Hill in engineering education, especially at the graduate level, and certainly in the quality and accomplishment of our research universities overall. We have been the most technologically innovative nation on the planet. But things are changing rapidly in the twenty-first century. The last half of the twentieth century was dominated by physics, electronics, high-speed communications, and high-speed long-distance transportation. It was an age of speed and power. The twenty-first century appears to be quite different, dominated by biology and information, but also by macro-scale issues like energy, water, and sustainability. These are things that should be strengths of U.S. engineers, but the context is rapidly evolving. We once dominated all other countries in terms of expenditures on R&D, but today North America, Europe, and Asia each account for about a third of the world´s R&D expenditures. Whereas, the U.S. is still on top, we are losing “market share” in every category used to evaluate R&D. From 1986 to 2003 the U.S. share of R&D spending dropped nine percent. The U.S. dropped eight percent in share of scientific publications, dropped 10 percent in share of new of science and engineering bachelors degrees, dropped two percent in share of U.S. patents, and dropped 30 percent in share of new science and engineering Ph.Ds. Now this is not all bad, because it largely reflects growth in other parts of the world, and we should celebrate the advances of other countries. Nonetheless, because we must depend on out-thinking and out-innovating others, these trends must be watched carefully.
The rise of production of engineers in China is unprecedented. China now educates about 250,000 bachelor-level engineers per year while the U.S. graduates about 60,000. Yes, there are still large quality differences, and numbers are not everything, but Floyd Kvamme, a highly experienced high-tech venture capitalist with Kleiner-Perkins, says that “Venture capital is the search for smart engineers.” So we do have to worry about numbers, and we must note with deep consternation that fewer than 15 percent of U.S. high school graduates have sufficient math and science backgrounds to even have the option of entering engineering school. Our engineers must work and innovate at ever accelerating rates. When the automobile was introduced into the market, it took 55 years, essentially a lifetime, until a fourth of U.S. households owned one. It took about 22 years until 25 percent of U.S. households owned a radio. The World Wide Web achieved this penetration in about eight years. Such acceleration drives an inexhaustible thirst for innovation and produces competitive pressures. The spread of education and technology around the world magnifies these competitive pressures many fold. Globalization is changing the way in which engineering work is organized and in which companies acquire innovation. Today the service sector employs more than 70 percent of the U.S. workforce. The development and execution of IT-based service projects is usually accomplished by dividing the functions into a dozen or so components, each of which is carried out by a different group of engineers and managers. These groups are likely to be in several different locations around the world. In the manufacturing sector, this new distribution of work is even more dramatic. For example, the new Boeing 787 reportedly has 132,500 engineered parts that are produced in 545 global locations. Indeed, IBM CEO Sam Palmasano says that we have now moved beyond multinational corporations to globally integrated enterprises. An emerging element of this evolving engineering context is “open innovation.” Companies no longer look just within themselves for innovation, nor do they just purchase it by acquiring small companies. Today they obtain innovation wherever it is found—in other companies, in other countries, or even through arrangements with competitors. Working in this evolving context requires a nimble new kind of engineer and engineering organization. Perhaps even more dramatic than the changes brought about by globalization and competition in the Knowledge Age are the new engineering frontiers and grand challenges. I think of two frontiers of engineering, Tiny Systems and Macro Systems. Tiny Systems are those developed in the “Bio/Nano/Info” world where things get increasingly smaller, faster, and more complex. Here there is little distinction between engineering and natural science. Research and product development are done by teams of men and women from various scientific and engineering disciplines that rapidly move from reductionist science to synthesis and system building. Macro Systems are of ever increasing size and complexity. Work at this frontier may be associated with systems of great societal importance: energy, water, environment, health care, manufacturing, communications, logistics, etc. Research, development, and the design and deployment of projects frequently require teams of engineers and people with backgrounds in social science, management, and communications. Much of what will be exciting and valuable in the twenty-first century will be the work of engineers who will move tiny systems technology into macro systems applications. Here I have in mind the application of bio-based materials design and production, bio-mimetics, personalized predictive medicine, biofuels, nano-technology-based energy production and storage devices, etc. We also must think about what projects should engage the best of engineering talent and knowledge in the years ahead. The National Academy of Engineering formed a committee of 17 amazingly creative and accomplished engineers and related scientists and medical experts and asked them to define several Engineering Grand Challenges for the decades ahead. These challenges were to be such that accomplishing them would advance the human condition, and that the committee believed could actually be accomplished in the next few decades. The committee proposed 14 unranked Engineering Grand Challenges:1
These challenges involve energy and sustainability, medicine and healthcare, reducing our vulnerability to natural and human threats, and advancing our human capabilities and understanding of our world and ourselves. Meeting some of these challenges is imperative for human survival, meeting some will make us more secure, and all will improve quality of life. My message here is that the twenty-first century will be very different from the twentieth. Engineering will be enormously exciting, and increasingly rich and complex in its context and importance. As we think about the challenges ahead, it is important to remember that students are driven by passion, curiosity, engagement, and dreams. Although we cannot know exactly what they should be taught, we can focus on the environment in which they learn and the forces, ideas, inspirations, and empowering situations to which they are exposed. Despite our best efforts to plan their education, however, to a large extent we simply wind them up, step back, and watch the amazing things they do. In the long run, making universities and engineering schools exciting, creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding, and empowering milieus is more important than specifying curricular details. Nonetheless, I hope that those who design curricula, pedagogy, and student experiences will profitably contemplate the new context, competition, content, and challenges of engineering. Charles M. Vest is President of the National Academy of Engineering. This ran as a special guest editorial in the July 2008 Journal of Engineering Education. |
V. Fellowship/Scholarship Programs |
PostdoctoralThe 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/. |
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