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More than Advice: Increasing Industry Advisory Board Member Involvement

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Conference

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Indianapolis, Indiana

Publication Date

June 15, 2014

Start Date

June 15, 2014

End Date

June 18, 2014

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

College Industry Partnerships Division Technical Session 3

Tagged Division

College Industry Partnerships

Page Count

9

Page Numbers

24.914.1 - 24.914.9

DOI

10.18260/1-2--22847

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/22847

Download Count

403

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Paper Authors

biography

James W. Jones Ball State University

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Dr. James W. Jones is the Construction Management Program Director and an Associate Professor in Ball State University’s Department of Technology. He has taught in the areas of leadership and construction management for more than 10 years and has more than a decade of experience managing construction projects in both field and office environments.

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Abstract

More than Advice: Increasing Industry Advisory Board Member InvolvementEngineering programs from all disciplines rely on their industry advisory board members to helpground curricula in the current and future needs of the profession. This “real world” advice canbe invaluable to balancing theory versus application in the classroom, help programs stay abreastof technological and other trending factors in the workplace, and assist instructors prepare “workready” graduates. In addition, accreditation guidelines require industry advisory boards to beactive within programs, emphasizing their importance.These advisory boards are often comprised of program alumni, who are able to bring their ownexperiences from both the classroom and the office into these meetings. Other members ofteninclude professionals from allied disciplines to round out the board and provide both breadth anddepth to the collective knowledge of the group. The board comes together one or more timesduring the academic year to advise the program on the state and direction of the profession andindustry as well as act as a sounding board for new initiatives under consideration.However, many programs only involve their members in the regularly scheduled advisor boardmeetings, with a result that their participation and impact is limited. This objective of this paperis to examine one program’s approach to increasing and leveraging members’ impact beyondthese meetings and into other areas of the curriculum. Specific practices reviewed includeadvisory board member participation in courses and laboratories, student organizations, studentcompetitive teams, individual and team mentorship, faculty development, accreditation, andcapstone courses. Additionally, the expectations, effects, and challenges that it places on theboard membership are explored, including its relationship to recruitment, geographic region, andretention. Through this examination of the program’s efforts, other engineering educators will beable to build upon their successes and avoid some of their difficulties while involving theirindustry advisory board members in other ways.

Jones, J. W. (2014, June), More than Advice: Increasing Industry Advisory Board Member Involvement Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--22847

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