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Engineering Ethics 101

Posted by Sheri on August 14th, 2008 | No Comments »

The decisions engineers make today, what technology they create and how they use those technologies will have far reaching implications for the future. The New York Times recently focused on the importance of ethical engineering in the article, Handle With Care, which highlighted the roles engineers play in solving environmental problems and creating them. The need for public awareness and increased ethical education and standards in science and engineering is also accentuated in the article.

Filed under Global, Society | Tags: engineering ethics

GENI Project Receives Additional Funding

Posted by Sheri on July 31st, 2008 | No Comments »

The internet is getting a lot of attention these days- and a lot of money. An additional $12 million of government funds will go into the GENI project. The 12 million is coming from the National Science Foundation. However, what has been donated to GENI so far is small in comparison to the $350 million in government funds that GENI will need to officially start construction within the next five years.

Filed under Society, The National Interest | Tags: GENI project

How to Build an Electric Car Charging Infrastructure: Smart Grids, Fast Charging and Universal Access

Posted by Sheri on July 25th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

“Green studies are among the fastest-growing degree programs at some universities” (posted Yesterday Green Degrees Environmental Courses Signal a Shift in Learning) making the topic of electric cars one that should interest both students and professors. Engineers will most likely be behind designing and implementing the grid system that will power these cars. gas2.0 provides an idea about how that might look.

Filed under Future, How Things Work, Innovation, Society | Tags: electric cars, green engineering

ASEE President: Sarah A. Rajala

Posted by Administrator on July 24th, 2008 | No Comments »

ASEE newest board president, Sarah A. Rajala, addresses ASEE members and colleagues about its� work in promoting engineering and technology education excellence. You can find the President�s message on the ASEE website.

In 2009 Rajala noted the importance of ASEE�s efforts to unite members abroad and work internationally, as well as ASEE�s challenge to reach K-12 engineering education. She brought attention to the need for diversity and reminded members of ASEE�s pioneering efforts to help transform engineering education. She writes:

�During 2006-2007, ASEE engaged in a Year of Dialogue addressing how we can advance engineering and engineering technology education based on the collective wisdom and experience of its more than 13,000 members. This dialogue began with a plenary session at the 2006 Annual Convention and was followed by discussion at each of the twelve section meetings. These efforts provided the foundation for an NSF-funded project to create a blueprint for transforming engineering education through educational scholarship and to initiate substantive actions to advance the proposed recommendations. Over the next year a team of more than fifty ASEE members and educational leaders will develop draft recommendations and plans for converting these recommendations into actions. Public distribution of the draft report for feedback will begin in early 2009�

Through out her life, Rajala has sought to open up the field of engineering to women and she serves as a role model for female students as she continues to move into traditionally male dominated roles. More information about President Rajala and her past accomplishments can be found in ECE News on the NC State University website. Rajala is currently the department chair and dean at Mississippi State University.

Filed under Society | Tags: ASEE, women

Enhancing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education Act of 2008

Posted by Sheri on July 22nd, 2008 | 3 Comments »

Back in May Rep. Mike Honda and Sen. Barack Obama came together and presented the Enhancing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education Act of 2008 (full text). After federal funding for STEM fields has been increasingly cut over the last few years, such an act provides hope. Groups like the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and the American Chemical Society have already come forward to show their support of the new policy effort. Now, other agencies are also standing up to back the legislation. One group The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) who also endorsed groups like �Project Lead the Way, FIRST Robotics, DoD STARBASE� has come out strongly behind the new STEM proposal. NDIA support makes it clear that efforts to improve STEM education are important to industry and other private sector companies. To quote the retired Air Force Lieutenant and current president and CEO of NDIA, General Larry Farrell, “The inability to hire a security-clearable, adequately educated work force of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians will be the single most economically crippling issue facing the US defense industrial base in the coming decades.” NDIA is urging House and Senate members to quickly act in supporting the bill.

Among some of the top goals of this bill would be to get states to adopt similar STEM education standards, currently standards are left to the state to decide and vary across the country. Moving to national STEM standards would ensure that children all across the United States are learning the same things in school. It would also allow standards and material to go through the federal President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy for review. A final goal of the bill is to target curriculum innovation by funding research that potentially can improve STEM education.

Filed under Education, Society, The National Interest | Tags: STEM legislation

Pop Culture and Engineering Intersect

Posted by Sheri on July 21st, 2008 | No Comments »

The new Film Wall.e released by Pixar in conjunction with Disney, succeeds in bringing attention to engineering education. The robot, Wall.e, creates discussion around current environmental concerns and technological innovation.

Could a robot like Wall.e someday exist?

Filed under Innovation, Society | Tags: robots, webcast

Going Global in Engineering Education: Considerations at the 2008 ASEE Conference

Posted by Sheri on July 8th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

The 2008 Annual ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition brought engineering professors and graduate students from across the US together in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to discuss engineering education. Some issues at conference included, connecting engineering departments to K-12 students and teachers, developing stronger freshmen engineering classes, and getting engineering students to think globally.

Professors are finding that going global means that connecting engineering students to humanities and language classes is very important. Professors at the conference talked about strengthening language requirements and creating partnerships between humanities departments and engineering departments, in an effort to get more students to study abroad and think global.

The language of math and science is almost always English, so therefore many American engineering students get off easy, with less rigorous language requirements then in other disciplines. However, as a presenter at the conference pointed out, it is important that American students not be allowed to take “language” for granted. Having students learn a new language is not about what language they learn but that there is an effort to learn. It is really a challenge to teach students about the difficulties of learning a new language and making them aware of global language barriers.

Previously, most engineering students were not focused on the humanities or language classes, but now it seems new efforts may promise to produce even more qualified engineers. Helping the students think globally has led to the development of groups like the Engineers Without Boarders, who are passionate about the environment and others in a global society and work to use their engineering know- how to make changes.

With engineering departments making some sort of global experience a requirement and thinking about ties to language and humanities, this is a trend worth paying attention to.

Filed under Education, Society

Technology, Globalization, and Culture Lectures

Posted by John Hunter on June 25th, 2008 | No Comments »

View webcasts of lectures from the Technology, Globalization, and Culture course at Iowa State University (Fall 2007). Lectures include:

Jim Duderstadt, President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan on “The Globalization of Higher Education”
Newt Gingrich, Author of Winning the Future: A 21st-Century Contract with America
“The coming revolution in science”
Michael Curtin, Professor of Media & Cultural Studies, Director of Global Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison on “Global Screen Industries”
Klaus Hoehn, Vice President, Advanced Technology and Engineering, Deere and Company
“Globalization and Technology – Challenge and Opportunity for Future Engineers”
Governor Tom Vilsack on “Globalization – Threats and Opportunities”

Filed under Education, Future, Society, The Economy | Tags: lectures

Engineers Without Borders

Posted by John Hunter on April 4th, 2008 | 3 Comments »

Engineering as diplomacy

You cannot look into the eyes of a child who is dying from a disease caused by drinking dirty water — something that rarely, if ever, happens in the United States — and not feel changed. You cannot stand before her parents without thinking, “I’m an engineer. There must be something I can do.”
…
A year later, I returned with 10 engineering students from the University of Colorado. We devised a rudimentary pumping system, bringing water to the people of San Pablo. Today, the village’s young girls go to school and are healthier.

That trip was a transforming experience, not just for the villagers, but also for me. Intuitively, we engineers like things big — expansive bridges, colossal dams, massive tunnels. My experience taught me that small-scale engineering can have the most impact on people’s lives.

When I returned to Boulder, I began building something else: Engineers Without Borders — USA. The organization was formed out of the conviction that engineers have a leadership role to play in addressing some of the world’s most serious problems: contaminated water, poor sanitation systems, expensive or harmful energy sources.

In a world focused on bigger and newer, there is growing recognition that small-scale engineering can play a major role in helping end the cycle of poverty that persists among almost half the world’s population. Studies by the World Bank and United Nations suggest the most basic technology is critical to bringing more than 3 billion people out of poverty.

Today EWB-USA counts more than 11,000 student and professional engineers as members and works in 43 countries on 300 projects involving water, sanitation, energy and shelter. Whether it’s combining sustainable technologies with advanced construction techniques to bring affordable housing to pockets of the world, drilling drinking water wells in Kenya, constructing fog collectors in the Himalayas to harvest fresh water or installing solar panels to provide energy for a remote hospital in Rwanda, we are healing communities throughout the globe, giving people dignity and hope for better lives.

Engineers without Borders is another vivid example of the benefits engineering brings to society.

Filed under Innovation, Society, The Economy, The National Interest | Tags: appropriate technology, engineers, Engineers Without Boarders, making a difference, Society

Princeton Engineering School Targets Societal Needs

Posted by John Hunter on February 29th, 2008 | No Comments »

Engineering school’s growth targets societal needs

The primary role of engineering as a discipline is to use scientific knowledge to do useful things for society. So in academia, engineering serves as a bridge between the natural sciences on one hand and the humanities and the social sciences on the other. Engineers are, of course, involved very closely with natural scientists in seeking new scientific knowledge. But, engineers also work closely with humanists and social scientists in examining the implications of technology. At a liberal arts university, engineering plays a central role not only in research but also in teaching. It is our responsibility as engineering educators to make sure that all of our students, whether they are majoring in engineering or not, are technologically literate.
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The School of Engineering already has significant research programs related to human health, from the development of nanoparticles for drug delivery to innovative approaches for treating diabetes. But we have even bolder ambitions. As President Shirley Tilghman has often noted, biology is experiencing a revolutionary shift, one that calls for multidisciplinary collaboration. At the vanguard of this shift are unrivaled researchers at Princeton in the Department of Molecular Biology, the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. While we have substantial collaborations now with our colleagues in these life sciences, by deepening, expanding and leveraging these collaborations the School of Engineering can become a world-class center for biological engineering.

Filed under Education, Society, The Economy, The National Interest | Tags: engineering education, making a difference, Society

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