Title: Understanding the Industry Perspective on the Current U.S. Hardrock Mining Engineering Education
Mining industry receives an increasing attention in green energy transition technologies in the U.S. However, little information is available regarding how the U.S. mining engineering education, particularly hard rock mining, is prepared to meet with the industry needs. This study summarizes a survey with an aim to understand the industry perspectives. The survey consisted of both closed- and open-ended questions. The survey results showed that the industry is concerned with a shortage of qualified graduates from the current U.S. hard rock mining engineering education system. The qualifications of the current education system need to be improved include engineering sciences underlying mining methods, mining design experience, mining feasibility study, the connection between theory and practice, and understanding the overall mining operation. The future desired qualifications were also suggested. Notably, the most desired ones in the next five years include an ability to acquire and apply new knowledge as needed and sufficient field experience. The survey participants, regardless of the nature of their affiliated mining companies, unanimously recommended that the collaborations between the industry and academia in the U.S. should be enhanced. Based on the survey results, the study concluded with four recommendations: (1) involve more multiple stakeholders in reforming mining education programs, (2) reinforce field experience as a key part of mining engineering programs, (3) enhance a closer collaboration between academia and industry, and (4) integrate emerging technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence/virtual reality) guided by pedagogical theories into new mining engineering curriculums. more »« less
Ogunseiju, Omobolanle; Akanmu, Abiola; Bairaktarova, Diana
(, Proceedings of 57th Associated Schools of Construction Conference)
null
(Ed.)
The fast-growing adoption of sensing technologies in the construction industry has necessitated a demand for workforce with technical skills. This study explores the current state of sensing technologies in the industry and sensing technology education in construction engineering and management programs. The study investigates the agreeability of industry and academia’s perceptions of the integration of sensing technologies in construction engineering and management curricula. The study employs online surveys to capture industry and instructor perceptions of the skills required of graduating construction engineering and management students and the extent of sensing technology education respectively. Comparison of the survey responses reveals differences between sensing technologies and applications deployed in the industry and those taught in construction engineering and management programs. While reinforcing the need for technical skills in the industry, results provide highlights to well-structured sensing technology courses based on required competencies to prepare students for a relevant and successful career in the industry.
Not AvailableWith a high demand to fill jobs in the semiconductor manufacturing due to the Chips Act there is a need to increase job readiness in graduate education, as industry members think current graduate students are not well prepared to transition from academia to industry. Current graduate academic education pedagogy does an excellent job of providing students with knowledge and scientific skills, such as technical writing and communication. However, current graduate education often does not fully prepare students for industry. Students can get the necessary experience through an internship, but this is not always possible due to location, research time constraints, citizenship, and academic time commitments. Students often struggle with transitioning from an academic setting to industry, because they have only ever experienced academia, and most faculty teaching students have little or not experience working in industry. To overcome this challenge, we developed a novel two course curriculum that aims to mimic a semiconductor industry internship. This is accomplished through “role-playing” courses where students act as internships in the 1st semester (onboarding) and then they transition to employees in the second semester, where they will work with other “students/employees” on creating a “startup” microsystem company. The instructors act as Program Managers/ boses. The courses use problem-based learning (PBL) in a nanofabrication cleanroom. The courses are designed to give students hands-on experience to provide them with the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) that are needed in industry. The key KSA’s were determined by an industrial panel of process engineers via a survey which was used to determine which KSA industry (multinational and SME) value the most. The same survey was given to faculty members to compare differences between what faculty and industry value as critical KSA’s needed in the semiconductor industry. To determine where the gaps were between traditional graduate courses and industry a survey listing 48 different KSA’s was provided to both industrial members and engineering faculty. The survey allowed the industry panel to state what KSA’s were important and what KSA’s they thought Universities already do a good job of teaching to graduate students. The initial results showed that the industry panel thought 37.5% of the KSA’s were important and lacking in current graduate education. That means 63.5% of the KSA’s were either not important or that universities already do a good job of teaching those KSA’s. However, engineering faculty said 58.33% of the KSA’s were needed and not currently taught. This shows a strong discrepancy between what Professors think and what industry consider necessary KSA’s. The KSA topics were divided into categories and the ones with the largest discrepancy between faculty and industry were essential skills and statistics. The results of this study will be beneficial to other programs that wish to provide similar experiences for their graduate students.
With the understanding that the mining industry is an important and necessary part of the production chain, we argue that the future of mining must be sustainable and responsible when responding to the increasing material demands of the current and next generations. In this paper, we illustrate how concepts, such as inclusiveness and the circular economy, can come together in new forms of mining—what we call inclusive urban mining—that could be beneficial for not only the mining industry, but for the environmental and social justice efforts as well. Based on case studies in the construction and demolition waste and WEEE (or e-waste) sectors in Colombia and Argentina, we demonstrate that inclusive urban mining could present an opportunity to benefit society across multiple echelons, including empowering vulnerable communities and decreasing environmental degradation associated with extractive mining and improper waste management. Then, recognizing that most engineering curricula in this field do not include urban mining, especially from a community-based perspective, we show examples of the integration of this form of mining in engineering education in first-, third- and fourth-year design courses. We conclude by providing recommendations on how to make inclusive urban mining visible and relevant to engineering education.
Volpe, Elizabeth; Simmons, Denise; Rojas, Sara
(, ASEE Conferences)
The development of inclusive leaders is essential for the success of future engineering and our nation. Equipping students with vital leadership-enabling competencies is necessary to develop a workforce that is prepared to act ethically, and responsibly, and tackle unforeseen challenges in the future. Inclusive leaders, or leaders that are self-aware, empathetic, and prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in their decision-making, are essential for the forward progress of engineering. A growing body of literature highlights the numerous ways in which students may develop leadership skills outside of the classroom through involvement in out-of-class activities (e.g., internships, clubs, sports, and research experiences). Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) may provide students with a unique opportunity to develop leadership-enabling competencies that will prepare them for leadership in graduate school, the engineering industry, or academia. The goal of this research was to identify how students’ engagement in an engineering education virtual REU site contributed to their development of essential leadership-enabling competencies. The research question guiding this study was ‘What inclusive leadership-enabling competencies and skills did engineering students learn and develop during an engineering education Summer REU program?’ Qualitative data was collected via weekly open-ended surveys from 9 students (7 women, 2 men) participating in an REU over 9 weeks. Participants in this study consisted of students from underrepresented groups in engineering (e.g., Black, Latinx, women, students from low SES backgrounds, or first-generation students), attending large public research universities across the United States. This study implemented mixed methods to understand what leadership competencies were occurring most frequently and how students were learning and developing these competencies. A combination of text mining for frequency (quantitative analysis) and deductive and inductive coding (qualitative analysis) was used to analyze the data. A codebook was developed based on the leadership-coupled professional competencies that engineering industry leaders identified as essential for engineers entering the workforce. Researchers also allowed for other competencies and leadership-enabling skills to emerge from the data. Findings from this work indicate that students were developing a vast amount of inclusive leadership knowledge and skills from participating in the virtual REU site. This paper highlights, through the use of word clouds and text mining software, the many leadership-enabling competencies that participants developed throughout the summer research experience (e.g., learning, communication, adaptability, self-awareness, balance, networking, etc.). Further, students were able to develop digital literacy, increased communication skills, knowledge of career pathways, intrapersonal growth, and interpersonal relations. This work offers a novel contribution to the literature in understanding how students can develop technical engineering and research skills as well as professional and leadership skills in the same space. Findings from this work help to illuminate the benefits of this virtual REU site focused on engineering education research resulting in terms of developing inclusive leadership skills. Implications for future REU programs, students interested in developing leadership skills, engineering graduate programs, academia, and industry employers are outlined.
Zhao, Zhen; Carberry, Adam; Larson, Jean; Jordan, Michelle; Savenye, Wilhelmina; Eustice, Kristi; Godwin, Allison; Roehrig, Gillian; Barr, Christopher; Farnsworth, Kimberly
(, American Society for Engineering Education)
National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Engineering Research Centers (ERC) must complement their technical research with various education and outreach opportunities to: 1) improve and promote engineering education, both within the center and to the local community; 2) encourage and include the underrepresented populations to participate in Engineering activities; and 3) advocate communication and collaboration between industry and academia. ERCs ought to perform an adequate evaluation of their educational and outreach programs to ensure that beneficial goals are met. Each ERC has complete autonomy in conducting and reporting such evaluation. Evaluation tools used by individual ERCs are quite similar, but each ERC has designed their evaluation processes in isolation, including evaluation tools such as survey instruments, interview protocols, focus group protocols, and/or observation protocols. These isolated efforts resulted in redundant resources spent and lacking outcome comparability across ERCs. Leaders from three different ERCs led and initiated a collaborative effort to address the above issue by building a suite of common evaluation instruments that all current and future ERCs can use. This leading group consists of education directors and external evaluators from all three partners ERCs and engineering education researchers, who have worked together for two years. The project intends to address the four ERC program clusters: Broadening Participation in Engineering, Centers and Networks, Engineering Education, and Engineering Workforce Development. The instruments developed will pay attention to culture of inclusion, outreach activities, mentoring experience, and sustained interest in engineering. The project will deliver best practices in education program evaluation, which will not only support existing ERCs, but will also serve as immediate tools for brand new ERCs and similar large-scale research centers. Expanding the research beyond TEEC and sharing the developed instruments with NSF as well as other ERCs will also promote and encourage continual cross-ERC collaboration and research. Further, the joint evaluation will increase the evaluation consistency across all ERC education programs. Embedded instrumental feedback loops will lead to continual improvement to ERC education performance and support the growth of an inclusive and innovative engineering workforce. Four major deliveries are planned. First, develop a common quantitative assessment instrument, named Multi-ERC Instrument Inventory (MERCII). Second, develop a set of qualitative instruments to complement MERCII. Third, create a web-based evaluation platform for MERCII. Fourth, update the NSF ERC education program evaluation best practice manual. These deliveries together will become part of and supplemented by an ERC evaluator toolbox. This project strives to significantly impact how ERCs evaluate their educational and outreach programs. Single ERC based studies lack the sample size to truly test the validity of any evaluation instruments or measures. A common suite of instruments across ERCs would provide an opportunity for a large scale assessment study. The online platform will further provide an easy-to-use tool for all ERCs to facilitate evaluation, share data, and reporting impacts.
Chu, P, and Chen, L_T. Understanding the Industry Perspective on the Current U.S. Hardrock Mining Engineering Education. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10620982.
Chu, P, & Chen, L_T. Understanding the Industry Perspective on the Current U.S. Hardrock Mining Engineering Education. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10620982.
Chu, P, and Chen, L_T.
"Understanding the Industry Perspective on the Current U.S. Hardrock Mining Engineering Education". Country unknown/Code not available: Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10620982.
@article{osti_10620982,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Understanding the Industry Perspective on the Current U.S. Hardrock Mining Engineering Education},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10620982},
abstractNote = {Mining industry receives an increasing attention in green energy transition technologies in the U.S. However, little information is available regarding how the U.S. mining engineering education, particularly hard rock mining, is prepared to meet with the industry needs. This study summarizes a survey with an aim to understand the industry perspectives. The survey consisted of both closed- and open-ended questions. The survey results showed that the industry is concerned with a shortage of qualified graduates from the current U.S. hard rock mining engineering education system. The qualifications of the current education system need to be improved include engineering sciences underlying mining methods, mining design experience, mining feasibility study, the connection between theory and practice, and understanding the overall mining operation. The future desired qualifications were also suggested. Notably, the most desired ones in the next five years include an ability to acquire and apply new knowledge as needed and sufficient field experience. The survey participants, regardless of the nature of their affiliated mining companies, unanimously recommended that the collaborations between the industry and academia in the U.S. should be enhanced. Based on the survey results, the study concluded with four recommendations: (1) involve more multiple stakeholders in reforming mining education programs, (2) reinforce field experience as a key part of mining engineering programs, (3) enhance a closer collaboration between academia and industry, and (4) integrate emerging technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence/virtual reality) guided by pedagogical theories into new mining engineering curriculums.},
journal = {},
publisher = {Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration},
author = {Chu, P and Chen, L_T},
}
Warning: Leaving National Science Foundation Website
You are now leaving the National Science Foundation website to go to a non-government website.
Website:
NSF takes no responsibility for and exercises no control over the views expressed or the accuracy of
the information contained on this site. Also be aware that NSF's privacy policy does not apply to this site.
An official website of the United States government
