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| September 2008 | Subscribe |
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In This Issue:
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II. Congressional Hotline |
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PRESIDENT SIGNS HEA REAUTHORIZATION INTO LAWLast month, President Bush signed the Higher Education Act reauthorization bill into law, two weeks after the bill was approved by Congress. Included in the newly signed Higher Education Act is authorization to award competitive grants to institutions of higher education. These grants are for the creation and enhancement of modeling and simulation programs. However, in order to receive a grant, a 25 percent matching grant is by non-federal source is required. Additionally, the law also requires a task force to be established to define the study and raise awareness of modeling and simulation. The reauthorization also includes a program to “address high need areas” has been included. A key component of this is the development of STEM programs. It also includes a national database of STEM scholarships.There´s also a new initiative for the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement (MSEI) Program “to support the participation to underrepresented minority youth” in STEM field via “outreach and hands-on experiential-based learning projects.” “UNPRECEDENTED” 2-YEAR DECLINE FOR U.S. SCIENCE FUNDSAn NSF survey released this month shows that for the second year in a row federal funds for academic scientific and engineering research have not outpaced inflation. The NSF have stated that in the 36 years of administering this survey, never before has this been seen where spending has decreased in current dollars.
PACE OF FOREIGN ENROLLMENT AT GRAD SCHOOLS SLOWSA new report by The Council of Graduate Schools shows that the rate of students pursuing graduate education in the U.S. is slowing. Foreign applications to graduate schools increased 6 percent in 2008, but that was less than the 9 percent increase in 2007. Additionally, when it came to offers of admission for international students to U.S. graduate schools, 2008 saw only a 4% growth, down from 7% in 2007 and 12% in 2006. NIH ANNOUNCES NEW "EUREKA" GRANTSThe NIH announced this month the start of a new grant to fund “exceptionally innovative research projects that could have an extraordinarily significant impact on many areas of science.” The grants this year will go to 38 research projects; each will receive $200,000, with the opportunity to receive that annual sum for up to four years. It also announced plans to invest $250 million over the next five years into a new “Transformative R01” Program, which is geared toward fostering “bold, creative, and risky” research. It augments the current Pioneer and New Innovator Awards programs. |
III. Teaching Toolbox |
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It´s About TimeBy Phillip Wankat and Frank Oreovicz How to Persuade Engineering Students to Hit the BooksThere´s no getting around it. Learning requires a certain amount of time, but many students would rather be checking their e-mail or chatting with friends than hitting the books. In one study, almost 25 percent of first-year students reported they study less than 10 hours per week outside of class, with only 12 percent saying they spend more than 25 hours on school work. The problem is that engineering is a particularly rigorous course of study, requiring more discipline than many young people have. We believe engineering colleges should increase the hours of structured in-class time for first- and second-year students. More courses should involve extensive recitations with students doing cooperative group problem solving. A supplemental instruction course coupled with a core course is another alternative. This method centers on group problem-solving sessions run by instructors who have nothing to do with assigning grades in the core courses. By increasing student effort and providing opportunities for students to be successful, supplemental instruction courses can help students learn the material and improve their grades in core courses by one to two levels. We must also expect students to study more outside of class. This can sometimes be accomplished by assigning students tasks they actually enjoy, such as computer simulations to solve realistic problems, or by giving them “what if” questions. We´ve found, for example, that most students enjoy Web searches. Another way to encourage students to study more is by assigning group projects and letting the participants pick the topic. A combination of studying alone and in groups seems to work best. Group work motivates students to focus on the task at hand. And based on our experience, there is less need for special tutoring and extra office hours when groups tackle the homework. To make this work, though, you may need to be creative—disguising homework as “extra credit” or having a debate between teams to spark interest and effort. Involving students is a surefire way for them to learn. Cooperative group learning, computer simulations, guided design and problem-based learning are methods we´ve used successfully. Keep in mind that students need to stay involved with tests and assignments even after the work has been turned in. Students must understand and use the feedback to correct or improve their results. You can encourage them to revise their work by offering extra credit.
The majority of engineering students are intelligent enough to succeed in college. Motivation is what often separates one student from another. Although we would rather that students be motivated internally, external motivators have to sometimes be used. Personal attention, particularly from teachers, can be a strong external motivator. You can do this by using students´ names, knowing something about them, and showing interest in their professional progress. Co-op or internship work sessions, service learning, undergraduate research, and tutoring others are good ways to keep students focused. By working together with other faculty members, you can ensure that lessons on how-to-learn are reinforced from one semester to the next. Improving student learning does not require further research and study. All of the necessary pieces have been studied and piloted—the challenge is to put these pieces together into a coherent program. Phillip Wankat is head of interdisciplinary engineering and the Clifton L. Lovell Distinguished Professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University. Frank Oreovicz is an education communications specialist at Purdue´s chemical engineering school. |
IV. JEE Selects |
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The Business of Engineering EducationBy A.L. SOYSTER
Consider the following conversation that might take place a dozen years into the future. Fall 2020, United University, College of Engineering. Dean: Welcome Sharon. It is so good to greet you again as a brand new faculty in our College of Engineering, and congratulations for being selected by our recruiting committee. Your teaching and mentoring experience was, of course, the key in our selection. I am sure that you had many other opportunities because of your fine record. Sharon: Thanks Dean. I am delighted to be here. After my visit here last March, I knew this was where I wanted to be. You must be extremely proud of being ranked No. 7 by American News and Global Report in the prestigious category of Teaching/Learning and Career Preparation. Dean: Yes, we are. You may not recall but back in 2010, engineering programs began to be ranked by how well they taught their students and prepared them for careers. This change had some early problems, such as finding metrics for judging success, but something had to change. Engineering enrollment was flat, tuition was rising, and, in our case, state support was falling. We had to focus more on our core business—educating new engineers. Sharon: That must have been a strange world 10 years ago. I remember back in high school reading The World is Flatand hearing of the “quiet crisis.” I did not understand then the larger meaning but I realize now how fortunate I am to have earned my Ph.D. My Ph.D. program not only provided a strong research background, but also gave me room to complete a minor in psychology, work for a local company, and pursue a three-semester program on “How Engineering Students Learn.” Dean: Sharon, it is important for you to focus on both the development of your research, scholarship program as well as your expertise in teaching, learning and advising. What is most important to our college is your critical role in the classroom. During this next six years you will be involved with several hundred students and you will be playing a critical role in their lives. Of course, for our own sustainability as an engineering college, we need to help them be successful, so we will be as well! I am relaxing our expectations on publications and research grant activity for the next few years so you can focus on the core mission of the college. Does this vignette seem a likely forecast of how engineering colleges may be operating in 2020? For most of us the answer is probably—“Yeah right, when pigs fly!” But why does the scenario seem far-fetched? Certainly it is different from the present. Today, engineering schools, at least the ones with graduate Ph.D. and research programs, take a different tack. New faculty members are given light teaching loads—little or no advising responsibilities—to enhance their scholarly outputs during the typical six year pre-tenure period. The desired norm becomes a bevy of refereed publications and increasingly important, externally sponsored research. Most often the new faculty is advised to focus on maximizing these research outputs while seeking to achieve a lesser goal in teaching and advising. In the spirit of full disclosure, this author has, in the past, sometimes dispensed this general advice as well.
Why is it that engineering schools, in general, mentor their new, highly prized and heavily recruited faculty to focus the beginning of their careers on the research side of their portfolio, and not on their classroom and advising responsibility? One reason is to encourage new faculty to capitalize on the momentum of their Ph.D. research as a means for joining their community of scholars. But a more dominant reason, in my view, is that the rewards, in the present organizational culture, heavily favor the faculty member who demonstrates research expertise, rather than the innovative teacher and mentor. The successes of these researchers in turn reap success for the leaders in the institution (department heads, deans, provosts, presidents, and governing boards) in both dollars and rankings (25 percent of the U.S. News and World Reportcomponent of Engineering Graduate School rankings is sponsored research). It is a win-win scenario for everyone, so it is no wonder that our engineering culture so strongly reinforces the status quo. Even individuals with different roles in the engineering college (deans and department heads in contrast with faculty tenure committees), seem to adhere to this modem of institutional rewards. Do I think that the current model of faculty rewards and advancement is misguided, that the overall enterprise should be restructured so that entrepreneurial researchers would receive less status and rewards? Absolutely not! If I were to launch a brand new College of Engineering, many of my “first round draft choices” would be engineering researchers who have been my colleagues and competitors. Knowledge discovery and innovation will always be a core business of engineering colleges. Furthermore, faculty recruited in 2008 will be teaching our engineering students in 2048, so they must be able to “retool” themselves on a regular basis. The major challenge, however—and where I believe there has been a void in engineering education—is to understand that engineering education, like research, is a business. It is a big business. In the U.S. alone we enroll on the order 400,000 undergraduate engineering students. If the average tuition is $10,000 per year, then our universities are collecting about four billion dollars annually. Add to this, the fees, room and board, and state subsidies, this annual revenue stream surely exceeds six billion dollars (without even considering graduate students), which interestingly is on the order of twice the annual federal R&D funds received by engineering colleges. So, engineering colleges are really operating two businesses, one in education and one in research, with education the major source of revenue. So, why is it that the smaller business dominates the larger business in the reward structure? The “research business” has two significant and defining characteristics: (1) it is measurable and (2) it is now! The first characteristic of the “research business” is probably the most critical. From an ordinary business perspective, the returns (at least in the short-term) can be measured by the usual and customary accounting systems within the institution. Engineering schools can measure current expenditures, new grants and overhead returned to the last dollar and these are in a language that everyone inside and outside the university understands. If the results are good, they show up in newsletters and personnel performance plans. Most importantly, however, is that research results are ultimately translated into dollars, the international language of business, and, quite frankly, the ultimate measure of sustainability.
What about engineering education? Where does the productivity and quality of the fall semester Thermodynamics and Statistics courses appear in the accounting, if it appears anywhere, it is a cost! Quite simply, we do not have systems of measurement that impute clearly defined marginal revenue for outstanding performance in the classroom. One of my former colleagues of some years ago taught a course in Engineering Economics over a period of 25 years to at least 200 students annually, and did it spectacularly well. If the students could “vote” their tuition, this individual would be responsible for millions of dollars of marginal revenue. But, current tuition dollars are not “voted” or returned (like overhead). More importantly, the ultimate value imparted by the faculty in the education of an engineering student is deferred, much like a long-term capital investment. These graduates are forever alumni, ambassadors and the public images needed for sustaining a flow of new students into their Alma Maters. But, these business parameters are (1) difficult to measure, and (2) generate returns that are realized at a much later time. However, some of these later returns can be substantial, because 25 or 30 years from now some very successful alumni will want to create an engineering endowment, and these alumni will remember the Engineering Economics professor as someone who made a difference in their careers. It has been my experience that the alumni who provide support to an engineering college do because of their undergraduate experience and, almost always recall certain faculty who made a difference in their lives with great detail. I estimate that 90 percent of all alumni endowments in engineering schools originate from their very positive experiences as an undergraduate. A valuation of engineering education suffers relative to engineering research, in two important ways: (1) measurability and (2) time frame. These issues are difficult to address. Insight is needed here on the recurring theme of a need to change “the culture of rewards” in engineering colleges. In the National Academy of Engineering study, Educating the Engineer of 2020, one recommendation is “colleges and universities should develop new standards for faculty qualifications, appointments and expectation....” Maybe not all of our future faculty should be held to the same criteria. Based on my experience, our culture will only change when the financial “futures” of both individuals and organizations are at stake, which some reports suggest may be true. But I am optimistic about our future. I have witnessed a lifetime of anecdotal evidence which supports the hypothesis that quality in the classroom leads to retention, which leads to improved graduation rates, and ultimately the launch of successful engineering careers. Improving these processes should enhance the revenue and the sustainability of engineering colleges. But these casual observations are not enough. Businesses require proof and we, as engineering educators, should as well. A. L.Soyster is director of the National Science Foundation´s Engineering Education and Centers Division. This ran a guest editorial in the January 2008 edition of the Journal of Engineering Education. |
V. Fellowship/Scholarship Programs |
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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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