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Developing Changemaking Engineers – Year Five

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Conference

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual On line

Publication Date

June 22, 2020

Start Date

June 22, 2020

End Date

June 26, 2021

Conference Session

NSF Grantees: RED 1

Tagged Topics

Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--34427

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/34427

Download Count

413

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Paper Authors

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Susan M. Lord University of San Diego

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Susan M. Lord received a B.S. from Cornell University in Materials Science and Electrical Engineering (EE) and the M.S. and Ph.D. in EE from Stanford University. She is currently Professor and Chair of Integrated Engineering at the University of San Diego. Her research focuses on the study and promotion of diversity in engineering including student pathways and inclusive teaching. She is Co-Director of the National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI). Her research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Lord is among the first to study Latinos in engineering and coauthored The Borderlands of Education: Latinas in Engineering. Dr. Lord is a Fellow of the IEEE and ASEE and is active in the engineering education community including serving as General Co-Chair of the Frontiers in Education Conference, President of the IEEE Education Society, and Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Education (ToE) and the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE). She and her coauthors received the 2011 Wickenden Award for the best paper in JEE and the 2011 and 2015 Best Paper Awards for the IEEE ToE. In Spring 2012, Dr. Lord spent a sabbatical at Southeast University in Nanjing, China teaching and doing research. She is on the USD team implementing “Developing Changemaking Engineers”, an NSF-sponsored Revolutionizing Engineering Education (RED) project. Dr. Lord is the 2018 recipient of the IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award.

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Rick Olson University of San Diego

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Rick T. Olson is Associate Dean in the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering at the University of San Diego. His research interests lay in engineering student persistence, and applied operations research. He is active in outreach activities targeting underrepresented populations and has received NSF funding to support U.S. military veterans, community college transfer students, and innovative engineering education. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and M.S. in Industrial Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with emphasis in Operations Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Chell A. Roberts University of San Diego

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Chell Roberts is the Executive Dean and former Chair of Engineering for the College of Technology and Innovation at Arizona State University. As Executive Dean, he serves as the College’s Chief Operating Officer. As the Founding Chair of Engineering, Roberts led a clean slate design and development of a new engineering program created to be responsive to the latest knowledge on engineering education. He is currently leading the development of highly innovative programs at the intersection of traditional disciplines for a new college model that brings together engineering, science and business in a multi-disciplinary fashion focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship. The newly developed curricular model is studio based and highly flexible. As part of the program development, Roberts has created a corporate partners program that has resulted in a high level of industry leadership and funding of multidisciplinary senior projects. Roberts received a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Virginia Tech, a master’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Utah, and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Utah. Roberts has published more than 70 technical articles, has guided more than $2 million of research, provided consulting services to many companies, and served on many national conference organization committees, national review boards, and technical committees. Roberts’s primary research and teaching interests are in the area of engineering education, computer simulation, and manufacturing automation.

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Caroline Baillie University of San Diego

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Caroline Baillie is Professor of Praxis in Engineering and social justice. She has held multiple, academic positions in materials engineering and engineering education in the UK, Canada and Australia before joining the University of San Diego. Baillie's specialization is the intersection of engineering and social justice and she has published over 200 books and articles on related topics. She also runs a not for profit organization, Waste for Life, in which she explores how to be an engineer who practices in a social just way.

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Odesma Onika Dalrymple University of San Diego

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Dr. Odesma Dalrymple is an Associate Professor and Faculty Lead for the Engineering Exchange for Social Justice, in the Shiley Marcos School of Engineering at University of San Diego. Her professional pursuits are focused on transforming engineering education and its public image; making it more inclusive and socially connected. This mission is partially actualized through her research, which explores the wealth of embodied knowledge, skills and practices that under-represented/marginalized communities can bring to bear on engineering practice. These insights are in turn used to inform the development of asset-based engineering learning experiences for middle and high school populations that predominantly comprise students of color from low-socioeconomic neighborhoods, and the creation of guides on how engineers can collaboratively work with communities on grass roots socio-technical challenges.

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Leonard A. Perry University of San Diego

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Dr. Leonard Perry (ISE) has research interests in the area of system improvement via quality improvement methods especially in the area of applied statistics, statistical process control, and design of experiments. Dr. Perry consults, instructs, and collaborates on quality improvement projects with representatives from biotech, health care, defense, and traditional manufacturing institutions. He has been an instructor for the Six Sigma Black belt training at the Six Sigma Institute for three years. He is a UCSD Certified Six-Sigma Master Black-Belt and an ASQ Certified Quality Engineer.

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Abstract

This paper describes progress to date resulting from a National Science Foundation (NSF) IUSE/PFE Revolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) grant. Traditionally, engineering students are trained technically, with less focus on critical examinations of assumptions within engineering practice, and the larger contexts in which engineering is embedded. With funding from this RED grant, our School of Engineering is working towards redefining the “engineering canon” with the goal of developing “Changemaking Engineers”. This revised canon teaches technical skills within a contextual framework that includes humanitarian, sustainable, and social justice approaches. This requires an enhanced curriculum that also includes a focus on student teamwork, a greater consideration of social and economic factors, improved communication with diverse constituents, and reflection on an ethical understanding of decisions and solutions. This broader perspective of engineering practice will produce graduates who can address a wider range of societal problems bringing new perspectives to traditional areas.

In this paper, we will review our progress towards achieving this vision, including curricular efforts related to the revised canon, a program to develop professional skills and greater connections to professional practice, and establishing partnerships with industry, community, and students that value our vision of changemaking engineers.

We have developed several kinds of curricular revisions across multiple engineering courses and disciplines. We will summarize these efforts including new courses and modules within existing courses in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and General Engineering. New courses include Engineering and Social Justice, Engineering Peace, and an Integrated Approach to Electrical Engineering. Modules or other content have been incorporated in courses including Circuits, Materials Science, Operations Research, Six Sigma – Process Improvement Methods, Professional Practice, and Robotics.

An Industry Scholars Program (ISP) is a year-long industry immersion program for outstanding first- and second-year engineering undergraduates established by the industry advisory board of our engineering school to instill professional and leadership skills in these future engineers. We will summarize the development and experiences with this program since it launched in Spring 2017. Activities include industry-led monthly professional skills workshops and industry site visits during the academic year and summer internships. An Industry Scholars Mentorship Program has also been developed. These programs exemplify how industry partnerships in higher education are vital to increased preparedness of engineering graduates.

In March 2019, we launched the Engineering Exchange for Social Justice (ExSJ). ExSJ defines a new approach for engineering and community partnerships. Through the mutual exchange of expertise, technical know-how is combined with contextual, cultural and historical knowledge of the community to identify real needs. Community defined ‘problem briefs’ can then be turned into actionable student assignments, design projects, research theses or extracurricular pro bono engineering projects that are supported by local professionals. The first results from ExSJ collaborations will be reported.

Lord, S. M., & Olson, R., & Roberts, C. A., & Baillie, C., & Dalrymple, O. O., & Perry, L. A. (2020, June), Developing Changemaking Engineers – Year Five Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34427

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