Technical Writing Required of Graduate Engineering Students

1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory K. West ◽  
Patricia Byrd

Technical writing required of employees in business and industry has been investigated, but the writing demands on graduate students have not been systematically surveyed. To find out what kinds of writing are required of graduate engineering students, twenty-five engineering faculty members from the Engineering College at the University of Florida listed the kinds of writing assigned to graduate classes during the academic year 1979–80. Since the faculty members were asked to rank-order the writing kinds from most frequent to least frequent, the Friedman analysis of variance and the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test were used to test for differences in the rank ordering. The tests showed that faculty assigned examinations, quantitative problems, and reports most frequently, that they assigned homework and papers (term and publication) less frequently, and that they assigned progress reports and proposals least frequently.

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 119-123
Author(s):  
Maria Grosz-Ngaté ◽  
Saskia Pallais ◽  
Jonathan Walz

The University of Florida (UF) Center for African Studies and International Center jointly sponsor an academic-year program at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in Tanzania. Begun in 1989, the program offers students from across the United States the opportunity to pursue their studies in a range of fields alongside Tanzanian students. Students pay UDSM tuition and a program development fee. In accordance with the agreement between UDSM and UF, tuition is deposited in an account at the University of Florida to be used for UDSM faculty development: Each year several junior faculty members nominated by their departments spend three months at UF working in consultation with local faculty and using UF library and computer facilities. In my capacity as assistant director of the Center for African Studies, I have had the pleasure of working with both the visiting Tanzanian faculty and the U.S. students going to Tanzania.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 662
Author(s):  
María Jesús Santos ◽  
Alejandro Medina ◽  
José Miguel Mateos Roco ◽  
Araceli Queiruga-Dios

Sophomore students from the Chemical Engineering undergraduate Degree at the University of Salamanca are involved in a Mathematics course during the third semester and in an Engineering Thermodynamics course during the fourth one. When they participate in the latter they are already familiar with mathematical software and mathematical concepts about numerical methods, including non-linear equations, interpolation or differential equations. We have focused this study on the way engineering students learn Mathematics and Engineering Thermodynamics. As students use to learn each matter separately and do not associate Mathematics and Physics, they separate each matter into different and independent compartments. We have proposed an experience to increase the interrelationship between different subjects, to promote transversal skills, and to make the subjects closer to real work. The satisfactory results of the experience are exposed in this work. Moreover, we have analyzed the results obtained in both courses during the academic year 2018–2019. We found that there is a relation between both courses and student’s final marks do not depend on the course.


Author(s):  
Zulkarnain Hanafi ◽  
Chee Kiong Tong

The paper will cover all aspects of the change journey: engaging with relevant stakeholders, the recruitment and retention of high quality faculty members, the review and revision of the curriculum, improving the quality and quantity of research output and publications, developing centers of research excellence, raising the level of funding for both research and teaching, expanding the number of graduate students, developing an eminent visiting professors' program, the internationalization of the university, strengthening governance and administration and raising the international profile of the university. It will set out, in detail, the strategies and processes that were developed to realize the vision, as well as the challenges and problems encountered, and steps taken to address these challenges and problems. Mistakes were made along the way and the lessons that can be learnt for any university that aims to be involved in the ranking exercises.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (10) ◽  
pp. 321-330
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alboliteeh

Stress is defined as a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint, demand related to what he or she desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important. This study focused on the manifestations and the sources of stress on faculty members of Hail University for the 2nd Semester of Academic Year 2018-2019.  A quantitative-comparative approach was employed in this study. There were 236 faculty who had participated in the study resulting to 94.4% response rate. Data collection started from February 2019 to April 2019. To measure manifestations and the sources of stress, the Total Teacher Concern Inventory was used. This consists of 48 distinct statements. Weighted mean, Analysis of Variance (F-test), and (t-test) were used.  All statistical analyses were performed at 0.05 level of significance. Results shows that the faculty disagreed that the sources of stress from work-related stressors (3.47). A significant difference between time management and sex (0.04) was determined. Likewise, a significant difference between gastrointestinal manifestations (0.01), behavioral manifestations (0.01) and the faculty’s age was obtained.


Author(s):  
Fred Hay

When I came to the University of Florida in 1981, I was informed that Charles Wagley was not accepting new graduate students. After my first class with Wagley, he agreed to be my advisor and mentor and I became the last student he accepted. Though better known for his sensitive and pioneering ethnography of indigenous and peasant populations and his influential anthropological/historical overviews of Brazil and Latin America, Wagley and his students' contributions to the study of Afro-American cultures and race relations in the Americas are considerable. Among the important concepts that Wagley articulated were 'social race', 'Plantation America', and the 'amorphous and weakly organized local community without clear boundaries in space or membership'. Wagley guided my dissertation research in Haiti. In it I developed his concept by proposing 'cultural amorphousness' as a 'total cultural style' (following Kroeber) of African Diaspora cultures in the Plantation American cultural sphere: a primary organizing principle that has proved to be an effective adaptation to plantation and its successor societies.


2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evangelia Krassadaki ◽  
Kleanthi Lakiotaki ◽  
Nikolaos F. Matsatsinis

It is remarkable how often academic staff discover students' weaknesses in expressing their thoughts in written and oral contexts, and in team working. To examine these weaknesses, a study was conducted in 2009–2010 and 2010–2011 of students taking an engineering course. Students self-reported an initial high level of weakness in both communication skills (writing and speaking), while expressing higher levels of confidence in their team working skills. This suggested that there was significant potential for improvement in both forms of communication skills and a lower potential for the improvement of team-working skills. On that basis the Technical University of Crete organized short training workshops based on experiential learning methods, during the academic year 2012–13. Other factors taken into account were the lack of awareness of such skills in traditionally-organized Greek universities; the inability to redesign all courses, currently dependent on a content-based curriculum, on a competency basis; and findings in the international literature, which highlight specific generic skills of engineering students as essential to their studies and future career prospects. The aim was to enhance the three skills of writing, speaking and team working. Participation was voluntary and open to students from all schools in the university. This paper assesses this initiative and analyses the contribution of the workshops to skills development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
Ioannis Lignos

Students who do not engage enough with their studies could place themselves at risk of underperforming or failing. Such a risk may be higher for students who are assessed in one or more mathematics modules and lack the appropriate background knowledge, or do not engage enough with related teaching activities. It has been shown for students who engage with mathematics support, there is a significant impact on student performance and progression in the relevant modules. Thus, improving the mechanisms of engagement with mathematics support should be a priority for any student success strategy.We discuss the monitoring of attendance and performance data of first-year engineering students, as it becomes available, in order to inform interventions which suit the observed student behaviour best. Specifically, the method described was used with first-year engineering students at the University of East London (UEL) during the 2017-8 academic year. We find that when monitoring processes are applied to an already tailored support package, they can often help maintain engagement levels, understand why some students do not engage, and prompt us to differentiate support further.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Harder ◽  
Matt Benge ◽  
John Diaz ◽  
Grady Roberts ◽  
Laura Warner

Academic departments need to periodically assess their programs to ensure that students are developing the competencies needed for successful careers. Consistent with this goal, a new framework for guiding the doctoral specialization in extension education was developed by the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication at the University of Florida. A modified Delphi method was used to guide the project with a goal of achieving consensus regarding fundamentally important theories, knowledge, literature, and experiences for graduate students pursuing doctoral degrees specialized in extension education. The resulting framework can be used as a guide for recruiting, advising, and communicating job qualifications.


Author(s):  
Mary Alice Conroy

The collaboration described in this chapter differs somewhat from that in other chapters. A university in Texas—Sam Houston State University—established a forensic training clinic staffed by doctoral trainees in clinical psychology and supervised by faculty members. This clinic offered services to courts in the region, primarily involving the evaluation of individuals involved in the criminal justice system on issues such as competence to stand trial, sentencing for individuals committing sexual offenses, mental state at the time of the offense, and others. This yielded valuable specialized training opportunities for graduate students, strong evaluations at a reasonable rate for courts, and an opportunity to generate funding for the university and the training program. The “collaboration,” therefore, was between the university and the court system rather than a state department of mental health; however many of the developmental and operational considerations were comparable to those described in other chapters.


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