The Mechanical Engineering Department at a private, mid-sized university was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) grant in July 2017 to supports the development of a program that fosters students’ engineering identities in a culture of doing engineering with industry engineers. With a theme of strong connection to industry, through changes in four essential areas, a shared department vision, faculty, curriculum, and supportive policies, this culture of “engineering with engineers” is being cultivated.
Many actions have taken to develop this culture. This paper reports our continued efforts in changes of these four areas: Shared department vision: The department worked together to revise the department mission to reflect the goal of fostering engineering identity. From this shared vision, the department updated the advising procedure and began addressing the challenge of diversity and inclusion faced in engineering. A diversity and inclusion statement was discussed by all faculty and included in all syllabi offered by the department to emphasize the importance of an inclusive culture. Faculty: The pandemic prompted faculty to think differently on how they deliver their courses and interact with students. Many faculty members adapted inverted classroom pedagogy and implemented remote laboratories to continue the emphasis of “doing engineering”. The industry adviser holds weekly virtual office hours to continue to provide industry contacts for students. Although faculty summer immersion this past year was postponed due to pandemic, interactions with industry were continued in various courses. Curriculum: A new mechanical engineering curriculum rolled out in the 2019-20 academic year. Although changes have to be made due to the pandemic but the focus of “engineering with engineers” remained. An example would be the Vertical Integrated Design Projects (VIDP) courses offered in Spring 2020. Utilizing virtual communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, student teams in the VIDP courses could still interact with industry advisors on a regular basis and learned from their experiences. Supportive policies: The department has worked closely with other departments, the college and the university to develop supportive policies. Recently, the college recommended the diversity and inclusion statement developed by the department to all senior design courses offered in the college. The university was aware of the goal of this project in fostering students’ engineering identities, which in term can promote the retention of URMs. The department’s effort is aligned with the new initiative the university launched to build an inclusive environment.
More details of the action items in each area of change that the department has taken to build this culture of engineering with engineers will be shared in the full-length paper.
This project was funded by the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) IUSE/PFE: RED grant through NSF.
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The Agile Academic Enterprise
What might it mean to be an agile academic department? An agile college? An agile university?
“Agile”, as used here, refers to practices and frameworks in software development and deployment, such as Scrum, Extreme Programming, and Crystal Clear. The Agile movement’s founding documents, the Agile Manifesto and its accompanying Agile Principles [https://agilemanifesto.org/], were published by leading software engineering researchers in February of 2001. The Manifesto staked out distinction with the prevailing software development approach at the time, called planned development and otherwise known as waterfall. The Agile Manifesto states,
"We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan
"That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”
Since the Manifesto’s publication, Agile use has expanded from its then primarily application in software development into a wide range of activities, from rocket motors (Space X), to race car development (Wikispeed), to finance (World Bank), to human resources (ING). Denning postulates Three Laws of the Agile Mindset: (1) The Law of the Small Team, in which small cross-functions teams work in short iterations receiving regular customer feedback; (2) The Law of the Customer, in which delighting the customer is taken as the ultimate purpose for any enterprise; and (3) The Law of the Network, in which networks of small teams act, having trust in the competency of each other, act like small teams in themselves [The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done. AMACOM, 2018].
Academic enterprises have unique attributes — recurring, months long, instructional terms; “customers” (students) whose short-term dissatisfaction can be part of the path to long-term success; industrial stakeholders who influence program direction and focus to satisfy hiring needs; generation of new knowledge, often with financial support from government agencies and industry; service to the profession and to our institutions. Using Denning’s Laws as a framing, we present possible approaches to employing agile within an academic department and discuss potential expansion of such to the level of a college and even an entire university.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1920780
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10296464
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The Mechanical Engineering Department at a private, mid-sized university was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) grant in July 2017 to supports the development of a program that fosters students’ engineering identities in a culture of doing engineering with industry engineers. With a theme of strong connection to industry, through changes in four essential areas, a shared department vision, faculty, curriculum, and supportive policies, this culture of “engineering with engineers” is being cultivated. Many actions have taken to develop this culture. This paper reports our continued efforts in changes of these four areas: Shared department vision: The department worked together to revise the department mission to reflect the goal of fostering engineering identity. From this shared vision, the department updated the advising procedure and began addressing the challenge of diversity and inclusion faced in engineering. A diversity and inclusion statement was discussed by all faculty and included in all syllabi offered by the department to emphasize the importance of an inclusive culture. Faculty: The pandemic prompted faculty to think differently on how they deliver their courses and interact with students. Many faculty members adapted inverted classroom pedagogy and implemented remote laboratories to continue the emphasis of “doing engineering”. The industry adviser holds weekly virtual office hours to continue to provide industry contacts for students. Although faculty summer immersion this past year was postponed due to pandemic, interactions with industry were continued in various courses. Curriculum: A new mechanical engineering curriculum rolled out in the 2019-20 academic year. Although changes have to be made due to the pandemic but the focus of “engineering with engineers” remained. An example would be the Vertical Integrated Design Projects (VIDP) courses offered in Spring 2020. Utilizing virtual communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, student teams in the VIDP courses could still interact with industry advisors on a regular basis and learned from their experiences. Supportive policies: The department has worked closely with other departments, the college and the university to develop supportive policies. Recently, the college recommended the diversity and inclusion statement developed by the department to all senior design courses offered in the college. The university was aware of the goal of this project in fostering students’ engineering identities, which in term can promote the retention of URMs. The department’s effort is aligned with the new initiative the university launched to build an inclusive environment. More details of the action items in each area of change that the department has taken to build this culture of engineering with engineers will be shared in the full-length paper. This project was funded by the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) IUSE/PFE: RED grant through NSF.more » « less
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