scholarly journals Leveraging Students’ Passion and Creativity: ETHOS at the University of Dayton

Author(s):  
Margaret Pinnell ◽  
Malcolm Daniels ◽  
Kevin Hallinan ◽  
Gretchen Berkemeier

The Engineers in Technical Humanitarian Opportunities of Service-learning (ETHOS) program was developed in the spring of 2001 by an interdisciplinary group (electrical, chemical, civil and mechanical) of undergraduate engineering students at the University of Dayton (UD). ETHOS was founded on the belief that engineers are more apt and capable to appropriately serve our world if they have an understanding of technology’s global linkage with values, culture, society, politics, and the economy. Since 2001, the ETHOS program at UD has grown and changed. From conceptualization, to implementation, to maturation and national recognition, the program has addressed challenges of academic acceptance, programmatic integration and research support as a project-based approach to global engagement. This paper discusses how the program developed from a student idea to a nationally known program. It provides some examples of how projects from this program were integrated into other courses and linked to faculty research. Finally, it will present some of the challenges that face a program such as ETHOS.

2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Aizpun ◽  
Diego Sandino ◽  
Inaki Merideno

<p>In addition to the engineering knowledge base that has been traditionally taught, today’s undergraduate engineering students need to be given the opportunity to practice a set of skills that will be demanded to them by future employers, namely: creativity, teamwork, problem solving, leadership and the ability to generate innovative ideas. In order to achieve this and educate engineers with both in-depth technical knowledge and professional skills, universities must carry out their own innovating and find suitable approaches that serve their students. This article presents a novel approach that involves university-industry collaboration. It is based on creating a student community for a particular company, allowing students to deal with real industry projects and apply what they are learning in the classroom. A sample project for the German sports brand adidas is presented, along with the project results and evaluation by students and teachers. The university-industry collaborative approach is shown to be beneficial for both students and industry.</p>


Author(s):  
Michael Turner

It is common for engineers but rare for engineering students to be asked to work on projects with people whose expertise is in other fields. In an effort to address this shortcoming at the University of Dayton, an interdisciplinary mechatronics class was developed. This lab based course with equal numbers of electrical engineering and mechanical engineering seniors focused on designing, building and controlling electromechanical systems. This paper covers the development of the course and the challenges posed in teaching such a course. The course is centered on the concept of building an autonomous system by integrating a well designed mechanism with a well designed electrical controller. Particular emphasis is placed on the challenge of covering material which is basic and familiar to one set of students while being novel and challenging to another set of students. Additional discussion is included on encouraging cross-disciplinary communication, preventing asymmetrical workloads and stimulating innovation.


2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 366-372
Author(s):  
Amy Warncke Lang ◽  
Paulius V. Puzinauskas

To increase the design experience gained by undergraduate engineering students and to enhance their iterative thinking skills needed in the engineering profession, a new project was developed and assigned in the sophomore-level thermodynamics class taught at the University of Alabama. Students designed a mechanism using a toy drinking bird as a heat engine with the goal of minimizing the time required to raise a small weight a given distance. Besides building teamwork and design skills, several key thermodynamic concepts were also visualized for the students, thus increasing their overall comprehension of the course material.


Author(s):  
D. D. Mann ◽  
D. S. Petkau ◽  
K. J. Dick ◽  
S. Ingram

Design teams in industry are composed of individuals with diverse backgrounds at various stages of their careers. A unique set of group dynamics will be created with one member, likely someone with sufficient experience, assuming the responsibility of being the team leader. Design teams formed in engineering classes within the university setting typically consist of individuals at the same stage of their academic training, thus students do not experience the same group dynamics as they will find in industry. In an attempt to give undergraduate engineering students this experience, inter-year design teams were formed from engineering students registered in courses representing different stages of completion of the engineering degree. Students registered in the final-year design course were expected to assume the roles of team leaders or coleaders. This paper will discuss a number of issues that were observed with inter-year capstone design teams. It has been concluded that the disadvantages of inter-year design teams outweigh the advantages.


Author(s):  
A. Grocutt ◽  
A. Barron ◽  
M. Khakhar ◽  
T.A. O'Neill ◽  
W.D. Rosehart ◽  
...  

The Engineers Canada Accreditation Board outlines 12 Canadian Engineering Graduate Attributes required for program accreditation. One of these attributes is Individual and Team Work. Since 2016, at the University of Calgary, there has been a voluntary, undergraduate-wide survey administered to the Schulich School of Engineering students every spring via an online platform. The purpose of the survey is to assess students’ perceived development of teamwork skills during their program, and identify avenues to improve program offerings. After four consecutive years of this survey, with sample sizes ranging from 683-973 students, there are three main trends that can be identified: students perceive teamwork skills as highly important for their future careers, there are noticeable differences between male and female students regarding teamwork experiences, and students value teamwork skills training and opportunities for peer feedback. Implications of these findings are that there are gendered teamwork experiences among undergraduate engineering students and more research is needed to understand interventions that can mitigate this.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Nora Pillard Reynolds

This article was part of a larger study that explored community participants’ perspectives in [Municipality, Country] about the long-term global service learning (GSL) partnership with [Name of university] University’s College of Engineering (Author, year). This article explores the question: From the community participants’ perspectives, what are their educational goals for the university engineering students in this partnership? While I intentionally centered this article on the community participants’ perspectives, I also explored areas of alignment and areas of difference between the different stakeholder groups’ perspectives about learning and knowledge. Although global citizenship surfaced in interviews with both community and university participants, the community participant perspectives push farther than the university administrators/ faculty and call for critical global citizenship education (Andreotti, 2006).


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Yong

Writing a literature review for a design project, which may be undergraduate engineering students’ first encounter with published research on the impact of engineering solutions in a broad context, requires effective skills of interpretation and communication. Engineering Communication curriculum at The University of Adelaide is designed to enhance students’ skills in writing literature reviews. This chapter outlines the development of students’ skills in interpreting the literature and structuring a literature review; it explains the scaffolded learning approach of an Engineering Communication course, and describes means by which skill development may be facilitated in large classes. Students’ skill development can be traced from a descriptive, ‘cut-and-paste’ approach, to a relatively critical use of evidence from peer-reviewed sources, integrated into a well-structured discussion. A scaffolded approach to learning supports students’ improvement of their skills through staged-design of materials, and detailed feedback on draft attempts, according to highly specific assessment criteria. The process can be facilitated in large classes by the creation of online learning resources, including model texts and model seminar presentations.


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