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This paper describes and discusses several recent faculty-student research activities at Lincoln University (PA), an HBCU. Specifically, it makes connections between NSF-sponsored faculty research and the projects that several undergraduate Engineering Science and Physics students have been working on. The Engineering Science is a relatively new major at Lincoln. New research experiences are particularly useful, so integrated learning is an attractive methodology for some of the engineering courses. The paper includes several case-studies detailing the student projects in connection to their academic progress. It also suggests the opportunities for our students upon graduation. The key findings of this study are that the research activities enabled by this research initiation grant are sufficiently diverse; they provide necessary supplements for the courses taught to students who specialize in electrical engineering. Research experiences that students get through this project are particularly useful for their future graduate studies and industry careers.
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NSF RED: Supporting Convergence Development through Structural Changes to an ECE Program
This NSF Grantees poster discusses an early phase Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) project which is designed to address preparing engineering students to address large scale societal problems, the solutions of which integrate multiple disciplinary perspectives. These types of problems are often termed “convergent problems”. The idea of convergence captures how different domains of expertise contribute to solving a problem, but also the value of the network of connections between areas of knowledge that is built in undertaking such activities. While most existing efforts at convergence focus at the graduate and post-graduate levels, this project supports student development of capabilities to address convergent problems in an undergraduate disciplinary-based degree program in electrical and computer engineering. This poster discusses some of the challenges faced in implementing such learning including how to decouple engineering topics from societal concerns in ways that are relevant to undergraduate students yet retain aspects of convergence, negotiations between faculty on ways to balance discipline-specific skills with the breadth required for systemic understanding, and challenges in integrating relevant projects into courses with different faculty and instructional learning goals. One of the features of the project is that it builds on ideas from Communities of Transformation by basing activities on a coherent philosophical model that guides theories of change. The project has adopted Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom or capabilities framework as the organizing philosophy. In this model the freedom for individuals to develop capabilities they value is viewed as both the means and end of development. The overarching goal of the project is then for students to build personalized frameworks based on their value systems which allow them to later address complex, convergent problems. Framework development by individual students is supported in the project through several activities: modifying grading practices to provide detailed feedback on skills that support convergence, eliciting self-narratives from students about their pathways through courses and projects with the goal of developing reflection, and carefully integrating educational software solutions that can reduce some aspects of faculty workload which is hypothesized to enable faculty to focus efforts on integrating convergent projects throughout the curriculum. The poster will present initial results on the interventions to the program including grading, software integration, projects, and narratives. The work presented will also cover an ethnographic study of faculty practices which serves as an early-stage baseline to calibrate longer-term changes.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2022271
- PAR ID:
- 10356585
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exhibition
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 38236
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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