Research shows that the senior design capstone projects, service learning, and human centered learning programs at universities (classified as design project classes) are proven and effective ways to prepare students for industry. This research seeks to explore what universities in the Midwestern states are doing to develop students for the real world and compare the findings to the objective of rotational onboarding programs in industry. The findings of this research has implications for how we as educators are designing curriculums to develop students’ attributes and skills.  From industry perspective, it gives companies insight on how design project classes might potentially aid student’s preparedness for industry. 

This class is designed to help new or seasoned writers to write stylistically. It provides structure, techniques, and advice on how to structure arguments and how to make transitions. It helps develop critical writing skills to help the student throughout their academic career. 

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GENISSON SILVA COURTINHO

Classroom in many American universities has evolved from a monolingual environment to a multicultural and multilingual space. This heterogeneous environment offers both opportunities and challenges for educators to design new learning environments that accommodate all learners’ needs.  In addition, students must be able to develop learning strategies that allow deep learning even when they face the challenges of studying abroad.  This presentation will describe the research design of a study aimed to explore students’ strategies to overcome language issues in classroom learning environments, and investigate students’ perceptions about current teaching methodologies which better support non-native English speakers’ learning in classroom. The subjects are graduate international students, non-native English speakers, at the Graduate Program in Engineering at a large Midwestern University. The research questions include: 1) What are the graduate international students` perceptions of US teaching practices with regard to language accommodation? 2) What kind of learning strategies develop by non-native English speakers students to overcome language issues in the classroom? 

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AVNEET HIRA

This independent study was initiated with the aim of understanding how concepts of social and cultural capital inform our understanding of students’ STEM education opportunities. We dedicated a major portion of the semester to some seminal readings of social and cultural capital, science and technology studies, tracking, and vocational education, which culminated in the development of a theoretical framework. The framework informs tensions and connections in the shared space of sociology and STEM education, particularly rendering a lens to analyze priorities and paradigms of our interest in engineering and technology education. We further apply this understanding to the Maker movement in education, as informed by a parallel independent study on democratizing education via the Maker movement. We identify and draw out theoretical misalignments within the proposed framework and prototypical Maker learning environments. 

The Maker movement in education evokes a spectrum of reactions from it being the panacea for engineering and design education to a fad that will be forgotten shortly. The theoretical inquiry we embarked upon this semester aimed at identifying both the potential opportunities and gaps the Maker movement presents for education. We started the inquiry from a perspective that this sort of approach to education has the potential to democratize engineering and design education through the use of co-working spaces (like Makerspaces). We collected evidence to support such a claim by understanding how Makerspaces are perceived in the United States and other cultural contexts, how academic literature espouses the virtues of Makerspaces, and finally connecting these virtues to developmental and educational theory. The study culminated in making connections between these areas and identifying the gaps that remain. Finally, we recommend lines of investigation that may help us better understand the potential benefits of Makerspaces in education. 

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JAMES HOLLY JR

The mission of the National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Administrators (NAMEPA) is tied to addressing issues surrounding diversity present at universities across the country. NAMEPA asserts, “through sharing of ideas, information and best practices, we prepare and invigorate individuals and institutions to be more effective in their mission to graduate, employ, and advance world-class engineers and leaders.” The work being presented is a systematic review of literature concerning Minority Engineering Programs (MEPs); specifically, highlighting aspects of these programs that advance the mission of NAMEPA. While the literature is modest on these programs it is growing and this review explores which traits are conveyed as being essential for MEPs, and their prevalence in the literature. Additionally, the definitions for success of MEPs was investigated.

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JUAN ORTEGA-ALVAREZ

The transition of Engineering Education Research (EER) into a scholarly field has been demonstrated by various milestones achieved in the last 10 years. This transition has been looked at from broad perspectives (bibliometric analysis, number of programs granting degrees in EER, grants for professional development programs, etc.) and in lesser depth from the experiences of members of the EER community that have lived this shift. This presentation summarizes my semester-long journey taking a more intimate look at the lived experiences of EER scholars through two lenses: Communities of Practice—to look at the emergence and strengthening of the field, and Change as a Movement—to look at the stages that individuals went through from deciding to choose EE as a different path, to going public with their ideas and achieving recognition on this new path.

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