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| December 2008 | Subscribe |
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In This Issue:
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II. Congressional Hotline |
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SENATE REPUBLICANS TO DETROIT: DROP DEADCongress this month opted not to throw a lifeline to America´s beleaguered automakers. Although the U.S. House voted 237-170 to approve a $14 billion bailout of the domestic auto industry, the bill was killed by U.S. Senate Republicans -- it received only 52 of the 60 votes need to bring the measure to the Senate floor for a vote. The rejection was a slap in the face to the Bush White House in its waning days by members of the president´s own party. The Bush administration supported the measure, which it negotiated with Congressional Democrats. Detroit´s Big Three carmakers are in dire straits, as falling sales have been exacerbated by a recessionary market and a credit crisis that makes financing tougher. General Motors, once the world´s largest company, is teetering on the brink of collapse, as it is fast running out of cash, as is its smaller rival, Chrysler. Ford Motor Co., though badly battered, is in somewhat better shape than GM or Chrysler. The House measure would have required the companies to greatly restructure themselves in the coming months and also created a “car czar” to oversee the process and distribute the funds. Senate Republicans claimed the car companies were no longer viable, and also sought more concessions from the United Auto Workers labor union. President Bush, however, admits that America´s wobbly economy can´t withstand a failure of the auto industry. So, days after the Senate vote the White House indicated it might finance a bailout along the lines of the House package, using money from the $700 billion fund Congress created last October to ease the crisis in the financial services sector. |
III. Teaching Toolbox |
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A Case Study in DisasterBy Margaret Loftus
When Katrina breached New Orleans´s levees in 2005, engineering schools gained a valuable lesson in design flaws and the tragedy that can resultBy the time it slammed into the Gulf Coast just east of New Orleans on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina had weakened from a Category 5 storm to a Category 3, but it still had enough power to deal a catastrophic blow to the Big Easy. A 12-foot storm surge breached many of the levees, flooding 80 percent of the city and triggering one of the worst disasters in modern American history. In the end, the storm claimed 1,500 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of Gulf residents. Total damage has been estimated at some $80 billion. Hindsight is InstructiveWhile the breakdown of levees may have been the linchpin of the catastrophe, the groundwork for multiple system failures — from the shrinking wetlands to bungled communication — had been laid long before the hurricane started to churn in the Atlantic. In fact, Katrina was the perfect storm of SNAFUs, making it a rich case study for the classroom. “It´s important that engineering students be exposed to Katrina and other landmark failures,” says Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University and author of Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design. “We learn much more from failures than successes.” Today, Petroski and other engineering educators are using Katrina to teach students not only the technical aspects of flood control but how to consider the social, economic, and institutional impacts of their work.
In his freshman seminar on great projects, Petroski examines how the New Orleans levees failed and what we can learn from that. When engineers design a system, they are supposed to anticipate what can go wrong. But as seasoned engineers know all too well, hindsight is an invaluable teacher. A report released last year by the American Society of Civil Engineers found that the failures of the federally built levees were largely the result of design flaws. “When a large protective system fails, there´s a lot of information that can´t be tested in any other way,” argues Petroski. Maintenance, he adds, is an integral part of design; but in New Orleans, that was found to be inconsistent, at best. Some levees had sunk as much as two feet in places, says Werner Loehlein, an adjunct civil engineering professor at the University of Pittsburgh who works for the Army Corps of Engineers. He says Katrina shows his students how water systems are at the mercy of several government entities that maintain them. “When you have a long levee that crosses multiple communities that were built at different times, some parts may not be as solid as others.” Today, the Corps is working to shore up the city´s flood protection system to withstand a 100-year storm level, a project slated for completion by 2011. But the level of protection to which the levees should be built remains controversial, with local and national politicians pushing for a system that could withstand a Category 5 hurricane, a level that could be expected once every 170 years. Robert Houghtalen, the head of the department of civil engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology uses this case to introduce the concept of a cost-benefit ratio, as even engineering students have a hard time understanding why the levees weren´t designed for the worst-case scenario in the first place. “When you build a project like this, you don´t protect people at the highest level of storm,” Houghtalen explains. “Designs are based on the probability of failure.” Adds Loehlein, “You can´t build for Armageddon.”
The Big PictureFor Alex Mayer, the director of the Center for Water and Society at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich., Katrina is a perfect example of the ways in which water impacts society and vice versa, from the formation of deltas to soil mechanics to climate change. His students are assigned John McPhee´s book, The Control of Nature, for background on how and why the Mississippi River has been manipulated, ultimately carving out a city below sea-level. Mayer also uses Google Earth to underscore New Orleans´s vulnerability to hurricanes and flooding, “When you move the cursor around, it really hits home that New Orleans is a bowl.” The enduring devastation is also apparent: Satellite images taken two years after the hurricane show houses off their foundations and at various angles to each other. And geotechnological issues are only half of it, says Mayer. To prompt discussion of how institutional and social factors played roles in the disaster, he screens Spike Lee´s four-part HBO documentary When the Levees Broke. “The human side is very clearly shown,” he comments. For example, the film examines the underpinnings of a widely held suspicion among African-Americans in the city that the government purposely blew up flood walls surrounding low-income neighborhoods. Damage PreventionSome educators are encouraging their students to come up with their own plans to protect the Gulf Coast residents. In the summer of 2005, Jim Hanson, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Rose-Hulman, was trying to devise a way to teach his structural engineering students the impact of engineering on society when Katrina hit. He asked students to write an essay proposing a solution for reducing the scale of destruction from future hurricanes in New Orleans. Rather than being evaluated on the strength of their proposals — which ranged from raising the elevation of the city to relocating it altogether — students were graded on the number of angles they explored, including crime rates and economic feasibility. Similarly, some teams in Amber Kemppainen´s engineering modeling and design class at Michigan Technological University are charged with formulating a sustainable solution to protect the city and developing a computer modeling program to show how it works. Plans are evaluated on how well they protect the environment, maintain the economy, and address social issues. Solutions have run the gamut from building flood gates to flooding the city, Venice-style. The advantage of Katrina is that students are already familiar with it, says Kemppainen, “Students aren´t in a bubble; they are socially aware, and keeping class interesting for them means bringing that social awareness into the classroom.” Service LearningDenise Wilson, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington, takes that concept one step further by leading students to New Orleans itself for full-quarter and mini-quarter programs. Her students rebuild houses by day and review their impressions in a classroom setting in the evenings, discussing issues like the communication breakdowns that contributed to evacuation problems in 2005 and the arsenic and lead contamination that remains in the soil of the Ninth Ward. Wilson says it wasn´t easy to shoehorn service learning into the rigid engineering curriculum, but she believes the effect it´s had on students has been well worth it. “There´s no substitute for putting engineering students on the scene. When they stay on campus, they start to think solutions should be ideal,” says Wilson. “In New Orleans, they start to chew problems in a way they don´t in the classroom. The impact on society is right there in front of them. The traditional engineering culture just goes away.” She hopes to impart to her students the importance of the technology they are engineering. “The big lesson of this course is that this wasn´t a natural disaster; it was a man-made disaster,” she says. “Katrina was a problem because of the choices we made. It empowers us to make better choices for the future and drives home that as engineers, we have a lot of influence over what goes on in the next century.”
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IV. JEE Selects |
A Way to Enhance TeachingBy Cynthia J. Finelli For many engineering faculty, the desire to engage intellectually with students and make a difference in their lives provides a strong incentive to be an effective teacher. However, until recently, opportunities for faculty to improve their teaching skills have been rare. In order to provide ongoing professional development, a growing number of engineering colleges and universities are establishing teaching centers that offer a range of services, including instructional consultation, whereby a trained consultant works with an instructor to assess and enhance teaching. Instructional consultations have consistently been shown to have a positive impact on teaching, and though one factor that influences their impact is the kind of data that guide them, little research has rigorously analyzed this aspect of the consultation. In this study, instructional consultants used either data from a midterm student feedback (MSF) session, videotaped class sessions or student ratings data as the basis of a consultation. The impact of consultation on the instructor´s teaching was then assessed. Our research shows that the kind of data used in consultations has a significant influence on the impact of the consultation. In general, faculty who received MSF-based consultations had greater gains in student ratings, reported more detailed changes in teaching, and rated most aspects of the consultation at least as high as faculty who had not received such consultations. During an MSF, the instructional consultant observes part of a regular class. Afterwards, the instructor leaves the room, and the consultant confers with students about what is going well and what changes would improve their learning. The consultant prepares a summary report for a follow-up debrief with the instructor. On the other hand, faculty who had video-based consultations did not have uniform gains in student ratings when analyzed in the aggregate, nor did they consistently report making changes in teaching or rate the experience highly. Consultations informed solely by student ratings data similarly resulted in limited improvement. Findings from this study also demonstrate that the instructional consultant plays a key role in assisting the faculty member to both interpret the available data and to identify strategies for teaching improvement. Drawing on their experience and professional judgment, instructional consultants had the ability to quickly direct faculty attention to specific teaching practices and avoid overwhelming the instructor with too much information. By contrast, faculty who received feedback data without the assistance of an instructional consultant did not benefit from a trained, neutral third party, and they showed fewer improvements in teaching. Based on these findings, we offer three suggestions for practice: Because MSF-based consultations resulted in the greatest overall impact in a variety of engineering settings, MSFs should be offered systematically and proactively for engineering faculty. Data for other kinds of consultations should be tailored to the individual needs of the instructor. For example, faculty who are able to view their teaching objectively, who can analyze behaviors from a neutral perspective, or who use a range of teaching techniques over the course of a single class session might especially benefit from video-based consultations. Likewise, student ratings data might be particularly useful for faculty with specific, concrete issues (related to class mechanics, for example). Instructional consultants should be available to collaborate with individual faculty to enhance their teaching. Consultants are instrumental in helping instructors understand available data and identify appropriate strategies for improving their teaching. Although this project does not negate the value of informal consultations with colleagues and other activities to improve teaching, it does underscore the benefit of having an established teaching center where engineering faculty can enlist the assistance of trained instructional consultants. Cynthia J. Finelli is an associate research scientist in Engineering Education and director of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) North, University of Michigan. This article is exerpted from “Utilizing Instructional Consultations to Enhance the Teaching Performance of Engineering Faculty,” in the Oct. 2008 Journal of Engineering Education. Coauthors are Molly Ott, a graduate student research assistant at the School of Education; Amy C. Gottfried, a lecturer in the Department of Chemistry; Chad Hershock and Christopher O´Neal, assistant directors of CRLT, and Matthew Kaplan, managing director of CRLT.
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V. Fellowship/Scholarship Programs |
SMARTScience, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for Service Program. The purpose is to promote the education, recruitment and retention of outstanding undergraduate and graduate students in science, mathematics, and engineering studies; the DoD is also interested in supporting the education of future scientists and engineers in a number of interdisciplinary areas. Scholarships awarded include a cash award, full tuition, required fees, and a book allowance. The SMART Program will allow individuals to acquire an education in exchange for a period of employment with the Department of Defense. The program is intended for citizens of the United States; students must be at least 18 years of age to be eligible for an award. Application opens August 15, 2008 and the deadline is December 15, 2008. For information and to apply online, go to http://www.asee.org/smart NDSEGThe National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program (NDSEG). The fellowship program is sponsored by the Army Research Office, Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program. This program is intended for U.S. citizens at or near the beginning of their doctoral studies in science or engineering programs. The fellowships are for three year tenures and include full tuition and fees, a competitive stipend, and a health insurance allowance. The application deadline is January 5, 2009. Go to: http://www.asee.org/ndseg for applications and detailed program information. NSF-GRFPThe National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). For U.S. citizens, nationals, or permanent resident aliens at or near the beginning of their graduate studies, this program offers a stipend of $30,000 a year for three years and a $10,500 cost of education allowance and a one-time $1,000 travel allowance. For application and deadline information, go to: http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov. For additional program information, go to: www.nsf.gov/grfp . Application opens late August, and is expected to close early November. NSF-EAPSIThe National Science Foundation East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes (NSF-EAPSI) Program. The East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes provide U.S. graduate students in science and engineering first-hand research experience in Australia, China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore or Taiwan. Students receive a $5000.00 stipend and international roundtrip airfare. The primary goals of EAPSI are to introduce students to East Asia and Pacific science and engineering in the context of a research setting, and to help students initiate scientific relationships that will better enable future collaboration with foreign counterparts. The institutes last approximately eight weeks from June to August. Application opens online in September and closes December 9, 2008. For additional program information, go to http://www.nsf.gov/eapsi. ONRThe 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 opens September 2, 2008 and closes December 5, 2008. Go to: http://www.asee.org/summer. SFFPThe Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP). This program is intended for US citizens or permanent residents who have an earned doctorate in science or engineering and who hold full-time science or engineering faculty positions at US 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, 2008 and closes November 21, 2008. To apply online, go to: http://www.asee.org/sffp . Navy Postdoctoral Fellowship ProgramThe Navy Postdoctoral Fellowship Programs. This program is open to US citizens and legal permanent residents and offers a competitive stipend as well as insurance, relocation, and travel allowances. Locations include Navy Research Lab (NRL) and Naval Surface Warfare Center/ Indian Head. This 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. This program has a rolling admission. Go to: http://www.asee.org/nrl/ . NREIPThe Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program (NREIP). NREIP is a ten week summer research opportunity for undergraduate Juniors & Seniors, and Graduate students, under the guidance of a mentor, at a participating Navy Laboratory. The stipend amounts for the program are $5,500 for undergraduate students and $6,500 for graduate students. U.S. citizenship required; Permanent residents accepted at certain labs (Please see website for details.) The application opens October 15, 2008 and must be completed by January 12, 2009. Go to: http://www.asee.org/nreip. SEAPThe Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP). SEAP is an eight week summer research opportunity at participating ONR laboratories for high school student who have completed at least grade 9, must be 16 years of age for most Laboratories, and a U.S. citizen. A graduating Senior is eligible to apply. The stipend for the summer program is $1,500 for new students; $1,550 for returning students. The application opens October 15, 2008 and must be completed by January 26, 2009. Go to http://www.asee.org/seap. NASA Aeronautics Scholarship ProgramNASA Aeronautics Scholarship Program. The purpose of this NASA program is to help advance the nation’s aeronautics enterprise by investing in the educational development of the future aeronautics workforce and to provide opportunities to attract highly motivated undergraduate and graduate students to aeronautics and related fields. Scholarships awarded include competitive stipend payments anticipated amount for undergrad up to $15,000 and up to $35,000 for graduate. There is an option to attend a summer internship (up to $10,000 per summer) at a participating NASA Research Center. The undergraduate program is open to U.S. citizens, and applicants should have completed their sophomore year of college by fall of 2009, and should be in good standing at an accredited college or university. The graduate program is open to U.S. citizens, the applicants should be accepted or enrolled in an accredited program, and remain in good academic standing at their respected college or university. Application opens September 5, 2008 and closes January 2009. For more information, contact nasa.asp@asee.org . |
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