Category: Uncategorized

In the big main section on the bottom of the page….

Every week, all semester long….

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Humans fear the unknown.

Recently, I invited a colleague, who is also a graduate student, to an informal professional society dinner gathering for women.  She confessed that she was anxious because she did not know what to expect.  My colleague explained that as an introvert, she is uneasy in social situations.  A short time into the event, she realized that the whole thing was not as scary as she had imagined, and she relaxed and had an enjoyable evening.

Communication in formal and informal settings is what propels the work of engineers.  At that same dinner meeting, women engineers discussed their resistance to joining management because they prefer “technical” work.  While an affinity for the “technical” is common to many engineers, “technical” engineering work certainly does not preclude interaction with other humans.  In every step of engineering design and problem solving, communication is a key component.  Nothing is done in isolation.  Increasingly, teams are multidisciplinary from the earliest stage of the project.  Young engineers must learn to talk to people with different backgrounds and interests.

In my first semester at Montgomery College, there was an opportunity for my class to host a distinguished lecture.  I showed the class how to plan a reception, and I explained that their duty as hosts was to “mingle” with guests before the lecture.

“You mean we have to talk to people that we don’t know?”

Uh huh.  Talk to them, offer them a glass of punch, find out about their interests that attracted them to the lecture, and introduce them to someone else.  Be the “spatula” and “scrape the bowl.” *

I have had some anxious moments in my past.  I registered for the fundamentals of engineering exam three times before I finally had the nerve to take the exam, only to find that my fears of being unprepared were unfounded.  Fear is paralyzing when it keeps us from our goals.

With students, fear of the unknown inhibits them from seeking advising.

This semester, I have pushed each of my students in class to make an advising appointment; as a result, I advised a number of students who had never seen a counselor or an advisor.  The majority of novice advisees asked me what happens in an advising session.  They came in wondering what I was going to do to them, and they left surprised that being advised is not painful or even unpleasant.  It’s simply a matter of receiving advice, as well as active assistance (in the form of referrals or overrides) to promote the student’s academic success.  I have seen the results of NOT being advised, and that can sometimes be painful:  taking the wrong class, losing financial aid, missed deadlines.  Advising is certainly a key to student success, but there is more that I can do for students.

The most important work that I do for students is the stuff that I do not get paid for.

It doesn’t matter much what I teach, as long as it includes communication skills, because the exact content of an engineering education is somewhat arbitrary.  What matters is the things that students will remember, that will help them overcome their fears and engage (as in perform acts of student engagement).  Taking them to lunch after the Kindergarten event; taking students to engineering banquets , conferences, and IEEE meetings; stopping to talk to someone when I am on the way out the door at the end of a long day; creating special awards to recognize students publicly for achievement when they do not expect it; taking my class to breakfast; mentoring clubs; leading out of town field trips; movie nights.  These are the things that really make a difference to the students and to me.  They are the things that call me to the professoriate.

*Spatula analogy for networking was a take-away from the VCCS New Horizons Conference in Roanoke, April 2011.  No published references.

I maintain an Engineering Advising Office, of which I am currently the sole tenant, and I have deliberately maintained a visible presence there for two years, while upgrading the appearance of the room to be colorful and inviting. All of this to tempt students to seek advising, so as to improve their success. As an advisor, I need supplies in the room. I have glossy paper to print colorful flyers for the large bulletin board outside the door. I have a wooden candy bowl, always stocked with goodies for hungry students (or the Dean). I have small bags of organic animal crackers from Wegmans, and small bottles of Wegmans water, because students sometimes need comfort. They may come in having forgotten to eat and feel woozy. There are bright school folders, which I salvaged, in case I need to send a prospective student away with information tucked neatly inside with my business card. I have business cards! Hundreds of them, as I increasingly give advisees my card and ask them to email me if I can help.

The one supply that I am refused is facial tissues, although the room came with them. When the box ran out, I requested another.

“We don’t supply tissues.”

Well, what if we make them cry? It has happened. During movie nights, the poignancy of the heroes’ and heroines’ dilemmas can move the entire class to tears. I just pass the box of tissues.

If you have movie nights, tell everyone to bring their hanky.

It occurred to me the other day that the next evolution of education may be a return to self-service education. Early engineers and scientists, even those who were fortunate to have access to formal education, had to fill the gaps with self-study. Their biggest impediment was lack of access to learning resources. Today, we have open access resources and MOOCs readily available to most learners. The only thing missing in a self-serve education is a curriculum.   Perhaps this is not an impediment.  It seems that only the first two years of the engineering curriculum are universally prescribed; the advanced engineering course requirements vary so much from one institution to the next, even within the same engineering discipline, that the exact selection of courses is somewhat arbitrary.

Every engineering school has its own curriculum, generally a mix of core or general education, a science and math foundation, and a set of program requirements, about a year-and-a-half of upper-level engineering courses.  Each graduate is considered an engineer, although the exact mix of courses is left to the institution.  The accreditation organization for engineering programs worldwide, ABET, prescribes the standards very broadly.  The accreditation criteria are silent on the exact mix of required upper-level courses, while specifying that measurable student outcomes should address certain abilities, for example:

• application of math and science
• data analysis and experiment design
• system design to meet desired objective
• multidisciplinary teamwork
• solving applied science problems
• ethical responsibility
• communication
• understanding of global and societal context

ABET criteria cover evaluation of student performance, competent faculty, facilities, and institutional support.  With the advent of open resources, personal computing, and even labs-in-a-box, such as Virginia Tech’s “ANDY” board, designed to conduct take-home electric circuit experiments and projects at home, “facilities” and “institutional support” may take a different form than previously defined.  Can such resources be used to deliver the same quality of engineering education?  As ABET criteria call for student assessment, program evaluation, and continuous improvement, the question is potentially answerable for accredited programs.

Perhaps community colleges will be important in a transition to self-service learning.  Community colleges are well-equipped to provide the first two years of engineering curricula, including the broad core, science and math foundation, and introductory engineering courses. Community colleges are distributed throughout each state, making them accessible to the population. An accredited associate degree program could be (and should be!) universally transferable to a baccalaureate degree.  The choice of upper-level courses sees such variation between schools that it is conceivable that a student could self-select courses without any loss of rigor.  The resulting credential may be a general engineering degree, with certificates reflecting specialties that the student has earned.

In most states, professional engineering registration is not specific to a discipline; there is just one “PE” license, although the registrant must pass an exam in a specific engineering discipline. If a PE license is not tied to a discipline, the engineering degree could be general as well. The engineer could demonstrate competence in a discipline by passing that discipline’s principles and practice of engineering exam. Likewise, a graduate could be credentialed with certificates earned through a combination of coursework and experience.

Perhaps the master’s degree will be of importance for engineer’s advanced credentialing. A single engineering discipline is really too broad to be a meaningful label on its own. Mechanical engineering graduates could certify in engineering mechanics, materials science, or the thermal sciences, to name a few. Electrical engineering encompasses electronics (which itself is very broad), power, information science, communications, and many others. How about nanotechnology? Is this electrical? mechanical? chemical? materials? Such inherently multidisciplinary fields could be accommodated easily through certificates. In my case, I have bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering and a master’s degree in electrical engineering, with research in electric power and signal processing. A more focused credential for me would be a bachelor’s degree in engineering with a certificate in power (which is “electrical” and “mechanical”), followed by a master’s degree.

This may not be a new idea. My thinking was influenced by a banquet address given by Dr. William Kelly, P.E., Director of External Affairs for the American Society for Engineering Education. Dr. Kelly said that engineering licensure is not a path for all engineers, for a variety of reasons, and that certifications are becoming more numerous and important as credentials in many fields of endeavor.  I was so struck at the prospect of community colleges taking on an increased role in engineering credentialing that I wrote an article about Dr. Kelly’s talk, and you can see it here.

To gain practical problem-solving skills in the discipline, an internship can be an important component of engineering education.  Institutional support can take the form of matching students with internships, perhaps on a rotating basis, and integrating work experience with capstone courses.  With the flexibility of self-paced courses and freedom from constraints of the semester system, the program could potentially be completed in a shorter time, or a longer time, depending on the student’s needs.

For more information, look here:

ABET Accreditation Criteria for Engineering Programs

VT “ANDY” Board User Manual and Test Procedure

Certifications are the New Coin of the Realm (page 7)