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A standard feature of many, if not most, undergraduate engineering programs is the requirement that students in the program take a certain number of technical elective courses. The widespread and long-standing use of this requirement in engineering programs may have led to a situation where many faculty do not even consider the purposes these courses serve, or whether requiring students to take a certain number of these courses is in the best interest of the students. The intention of this paper is to start a conversation on the purpose and appropriate number of technical electives required in an undergraduate engineering program. Technical electives can provide students with a number of benefits. One benefit is that technical electives give students the opportunity to learn specialized knowledge of an advanced nature that they can then apply to their work in various subfields of engineering. For example, a mechanical engineering student interested in the electricity-generation industry would benefit from taking technical elective courses in traditional power generation methods and in renewable energy technologies. But by their very nature as electives, technical elective courses should not be teaching material that is expected to be learned by every student graduating from a particular engineering discipline. Requiring students to take several such courses may impact their ability to take courses from other disciplines which may be beneficial to them in achieving their personal career goals. Therefore, it is important for engineering programs to consider the results they are intending to achieve by requiring students to take technical electives, how these courses may be impacting the overall education of the students, and what is an appropriate number of technical elective courses to require. It can be noted that ABET accreditation requirements should not be forcing programs to require students to take technical elective courses. In this paper, an overview of the nature of technical elective courses will be provided. The potential benefits and detriments of requiring technical elective courses will be explored. The paper concludes with some recommendations of what engineering programs should do as they consider the optimal number of technical elective courses to require of their students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As engineering education has developed over the years, the curriculum in engineering programs at most schools has become heavily dominated by technical engineering topics. While it is very important for engineering students to become well-versed in technical matters, concerns have been expressed by some in the engineering education community that students are not gaining an appreciation for non-technical topics that would improve their responsiveness as engineers with a broader view of the world and the role of their profession in that world. When faced with trying to create space in their undergraduate curriculum for new topics, engineering educators often use ABET accreditation requirements as a roadblock. But careful reading and consideration of the ABET criteria indicate that the criteria are not actually a roadblock to such changes for most schools. This paper describes the approach taken by the Mechanical Engineering program in one public research university to open credits in their undergraduate curriculum. Initially the curricular redesign was done to reduce the number of credits students needed to take to graduate. As the process progressed it became apparent that substantial flexibility for the students could be built into the program while maintaining the integrity of the curriculum from an ABET viewpoint. Changes in the curriculum included revising the number of courses and order of courses for covering traditional mechanical engineering technical topics and relaxing the requirements for technical elective credits. As a result, students now have the flexibility to take more courses outside of engineering that are of interest to them, potentially allowing them to minor in a nonengineering discipline or to take a broad array of non-technical courses while graduating in the same period of time. Students choosing to do this on their own may gain a broader perspective on their role as engineers in society. A program taking a similar approach to free up credits could also use some of these credits to develop new courses specifically for engineers that explore more of the non-technical aspects of the profession and world, rather than relying on students to gain the broader perspective serendipitously. While this is still a new curriculum modification, observations on the choices made by the first students encountering the curriculum are made. Such observations may help other schools considering such curricular revisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tenure in engineering programs at research universities usually is granted based on a faculty member's performance in teaching, research, and service. New untenured faculty hires at such institutions often have a reasonably good understanding of the teaching and research components of this trifecta, but have questions about the appropriate amount of service to perform. On the one hand, service can open up avenues to expand research activities and enhance teaching. On the other hand, service can also cause faculty to expend valuable and limited time on activities that will not be highly regarded by a tenure review committee. This can lead faculty members to question whether or not they should pursue particular service roles as they attempt to get their careers off to a successful start. In this paper, the various types of service roles are summarized. The potential benefits offered by the different types of service are explored. Additionally, the potentially negative aspects of the different types of service are highlighted. The impacts of service on the career paths of faculty are discussed. With this information in hand, new faculty will be in a better position to wisely choose between the different available service opportunities as they seek to produce the best portfolio for both their immediate goal of achieving tenure and their longer-term goal of having the career that they desire for decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A senior technical elective course on Internal Combustion Engines has been taught by the author for many years. This course includes a major design project to be performed by the students. The project is very open-ended, allowing the students to explore particular aspects of IC Engine design that they find of interest. For most of the course offerings over the last 20 years, students were assigned, essentially, to design "something related to an IC engine". While allowing for a very open-ended project, this format led to some students struggling with the lack of direction in the assignment and others producing designs that were impractical or unrealistic. To provide the students with more direction as well as to help develop the exploratory and entrepreneurial skills of the students, the project assignment was modified in the Spring 2018 semester. In the modified project assignment, student teams were asked to choose an engine that already exists, identify a component of that engine and propose reasons for why that engine component was designed in such a manner, and then to redesign the component to increase the value of the engine. Ways to increase the value include lowering costs, improving performance, and opening new markets for the engine. This format incorporates aspects of project-based learning into the course. While some students flourished under this new format, others struggled with various aspects in unexpected ways, and many groups were not particularly innovative in their projects. In this paper, the two project assignments are discussed in detail, and the author's observations of student reaction and performance on the two types of projects are reported. Summaries of assessments of the projects are also provided. Suggestions are also made on modifying the project further in the future so that students may gain more from the design project experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been interest in broadening the participation of students in undergraduate research experiences in engineering disciplines. While there has been considerable study and analysis of the benefits achieved by high-achieving undergraduate students engaged in research activities, relatively little consideration has been given to the impact and benefits of research experiences on engineering students who are better described as "average". Yet, these are the students to whom undergraduate research opportunities need to be provided in order to achieve broader participation. Therefore, it is beneficial to understand how these experiences impact average students so that programs are not designed that will not meet the students' expectations or needs. The primary purpose of this NSF-sponsored work is to provide definitions of what constitutes a successful undergraduate research experience for a wide range of students. Particular attention is devoted to students whose academic background and performance is solid, but not outstanding. For such students, some of the benefits for high-achieving students, such as increased likelihood of graduate school attendance, may not be appropriate measures of a successful experience. Through surveys and interviews of students who have engaged in undergraduate research experiences in engineering, we have developed a preliminary definition of a successful research experience. Specifically, a successful research experience for these students should develop the skills necessary for these students to be practicing engineers, increase their confidence in what?, and be centered around an experience that allows students to learn how to conduct a research project. In addition to the preliminary definition of a successful undergraduate research experience, this paper also presents insights gained from the study with respect to what makes the experience more positive for the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of an NSF-supported project, a summer bridge program for incoming engineering and computer science freshmen was conducted each summer between 2009 and 2012. The primary purpose of this program was to improve the mathematics course placement for incoming students whose initial placement as determined by a math placement examination was below Calculus I. The students retake the university's math placement examination at the end of the bridge program to determine if they may enroll into a more advanced mathematics course. The immediate goal of the program is to improve the math placement of the students. However, it is just as important in evaluating the success of the program to consider the performance of the students in their Fall semester math courses. The mathematics portion of the bridge program centers on using the ALEKS software package for targeted, self-guided learning. The program took place exclusively in an on- campus format, and also featured a required residential component and additional engineering activities for the students. The program's duration was 4 weeks, and students were expected to improve their math placement by at least one semester. It is expected that improving their math placement will reduce the student's time-to- graduation, which should in turn improve retention rates and eventually graduation rates. Data from the four cohorts have been collected and analyzed to judge the effectiveness of the program with respect to both improving the students' math placement and the students' performance in future math courses. A lower percentage of students (69%) improved their math course placement in the 2009 cohort, but all categories of bridge program students performed as well as the class average in the Fall 2009 semester. For the 2010-2012 cohorts, students succeeded at improving their math placement at a higher rate (83%-88%). Students who have placed into Calculus I through the bridge program have successfully completed Calculus I at a rate similar to all students in the course in the Fall semester. However, the results for students who placed into College Algebra after the bridge program are more mixed. As a result, while the bridge program is clearly beneficial to many students, it is likely that additional interventions are needed to further help students who do not place into Calculus I even with a bridge program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]