This dissertation integrates 2 soft skills, communication & teamwork, into a traditional Industrial Engineering course (MIE 353, Engineering Economic Decision Making) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the fall of 1997. This will be considered the program group. A team project, formally presented at the end of the course & graded by neutral observers to pre-set standards, supplemented the lecture material. A comparison or control group was concurrently measured in IE 312, Engineering Economic Analysis, (comparable engineering content & team project requirements, no exposure to communication & teamwork material) at Western New England College in Springfield, Massachusetts. Multiple assessments took place at both schools to measure performance & attitude differences. A University of Massachusetts alumni survey (same questionnaire) was also conducted to compare to the student data on the importance of communication & teamwork to their career success. Due to limited sample sizes at each school, this research is considered a "pilot study". The preponderance of the assessment data tend to support the Hypotheses. Rationale & motivation for this study follows: Engineering curriculum designers face several diverse stakeholders with often opposing needs. These stakeholders include their customers (the students) & their investing families, society & the local community, industry, graduate schools (both research & application oriented), accreditation boards, & other university departments & schools. Industry, as it always has, requires solid technical foundations; the "hard" skills, such as computer modeling, the sciences, analytic decision making & competence in the specific engineering discipline. Given worldwide competitiveness & complexity, accelerating product & service dynamics, & increasingly sophisticated customers, industry has incremented the hard skills above with a set of "soft" interpersonal skills, such as communication, teamwork, project management, delegation & leadership. To survive & thrive, industry has raised its expectation level of engineering graduates, as well as the engineering schools that produce them. Industry does not want to take on the entire soft training burden.

<p> Every field of study has a set of domain-specific concepts that anyone who desires to work in that field must know and understand. Most students who pursue university degrees in engineering trust that their education is designed to provide them with this knowledge. But does it? In electrical engineering (EE), conceptual understanding of electrical phenomena has rarely been addressed. Even though the presumed goal of instructors and students alike is to learn the concepts of electrical phenomena well enough to be able to use the concepts to design useful things, it is difficult to determine whether this goal is being achieved. The purpose of this study was to develop reasonable representations of the mental models used by senior EE students as they thought about and worked with electrical phenomena. Focusing on students&rsquo; mental models of threshold concepts in electrical phenomena can thus increase knowledge of students&rsquo; conceptual understanding, which can contribute to systematic research into pedagogical and assessment methods in this area of study, which forms one of the most basic and fundamental areas of knowledge needed by EE students.</p><p> Thus, the research question addressed by this study was:</p><p> What do senior EE students&rsquo; mental models of the fundamental electrical phenomena of voltage, current, and the relationship between them look like? </p><p> The theory of mental models claims that everyone organizes their understanding of the way the world works by constructing models in the mind by which they both explain phenomena that they observe, and make predictions about what is likely to occur in a given situation.</p><p> To observe the students&rsquo; mental models in operation, semi-structured interviews were used to engage the participants in a conversation concerning their knowledge and experience in applying electrical ideas. Using discourse analysis, a representation of each student&rsquo;s mental model was created, consisting of a concept map and a short narrative. While the models were all different, analysis of them as a group led to the emergence of five dominant themes, or ways of thinking.</p><p> The findings of this study have implications for the course of study that these students are engaged in. How effective has it been in developing the conceptual understanding that they will need after they graduate? Knowledge of the outcomes of a course of study: the conceptual understanding of these students, the misconceptions present in their models, and the dominant themes that drive their models, can inform ongoing efforts in curriculum development. </p>

<p> Pultruded glass fiber reinforced polymer (pGFRP) composite profiles, having the advantages of high strength-to-weight ratio and light weight, have seen significant developmental progress and numerous practical applications in the field of civil engineering. However, the low modulus of elasticity and high anisotropy, in addition to the relative slenderness of the thin-walled profiles, result in complex local and global buckling behavior for pGFRP members and significant interaction between local and global buckling modes. In this work, the stability behavior of pGFRP I-sections subject to flexure was addressed. An extensive review of stability behaviors of pGFRP members, including: flange local buckling (FLB), global lateral torsional buckling (LTB) and interaction between local and global buckling (interactive buckling) behaviors, was carried out. Two experimental programs were conducted: 62 four-point bending tests to investigate FLB behavior and 86 three-point bending tests to investigate LTB behavior. Interactive buckling behavior was observed in both series of tests and was shown to be quite prevalent in results from the LTB tests. Experimental results were compared with existing design guides and analytical solutions. Uniform under-predictions were found for FLB behavior of the I-sections considered and over-predictions were generally found for LTB behavior, exhibiting the need of new design formulas with improved accuracy. Analytical studies were presented and non-empirical design formulas derived using energy methods were proposed with respect to the buckling behaviors observed in the experimental program. Supporting the experimental work, a series of material characterization tests were carried out to evaluate the mechanical properties of the pGFRP materials used. Both standard and nonstandard test methods that can be readily conducted using typically available test equipment as well as those requiring simple material preparations are recommended.</p><p>

<p> In 2012, 1% of the African American women who enrolled in an undergraduate engineering program four years prior graduated, amounting to 862 African American women graduating with engineering degrees. This qualitative study, anchored in interpretive phenomenological methodology, utilized undergraduate socialization with an overarching critical race theory lens to examine the manner in which African American women in engineering, such as the 862, make meaning of their experiences at predominately White institutions. </p><p> The findings of the study are important because they corroborated existing research findings and more importantly, the findings in this study emphasize the importance of faculty and institutional agent support, self-efficacy leading to motivation, academic achievement goals and the development of science identities. These factors were significant to the persistence of African American women in this study. Moreover, this study&rsquo;s findings suggest that these factors must work in concert to be most effective. The findings demonstrated that students need to develop relationships with faculty, administrators and peers. The administrators provide access to resources that assist with persistence and peers are needed for group work and academic support. The faculty relation is most important because the faculty members provide access to information, research opportunities, grades and research and industry contacts. The research also found that the women carried the responsibility of developing and nurturing the relation with the faculty. </p><p> Moreover, all of the African American women in the study acknowledge racism and sexism however, they responded to these deterrents differently. Some of the women were negatively affected while others chose to ignore the deterrents. However, with the presence of these obstacles, the study validated the notion that these African American women in engineering had a strong sense of self-efficacy which provided a foundation for the women to possess science identities: research scientist, altruistic or disruptive. With these identities, the African American women sought to engage their scientific knowledge further in graduate school, the workplace and altruistically to improve upon society. </p><p> These findings produce implications for policy and practice, suggesting that engineering colleges commit to transforming academic environments to reflect an atmosphere that is inclusive and supportive of racial and gender differences. This transformation should encompass pedagogy, curriculum, composition of faculty and student populations as well as the academic culture, allowing for a more welcoming and supportive atmosphere, where African American women can persist without concern for proving themselves because of their race or gender.</p>

Engineering education reform has been a topic of discussion for the last twenty years. The concern has only intensified in recent years as stakeholders strive to improve quality in engineering education. Today, stakeholders are recognizing that one of the keys to successful engineering education reform is in taking a systems view of higher education. Academic departments within the higher education system are organized around academic disciplines for the purpose of creating, transferring, and applying knowledge in three principal areas: teaching, research and service. This study addresses the need for quality improvement in the engineering higher education system by first completing a literature review in order to identify recurring themes on the issue. A proposed systems view is presented. The thesis builds a case for viewing students as the primary stakeholder based on stakeholder theory concepts. The application of a systems view is then used to identify the impacts of the recurring issues on the identified stakeholders of the system. Recommendations are made to address the system’s issues.

Engineering education reform has been a topic of discussion for the last twenty years. The concern has only intensified in recent years as stakeholders strive to improve quality in engineering education. Today, stakeholders are recognizing that one of the keys to successful engineering education reform is in taking a systems view of higher education. Academic departments within the higher education system are organized around academic disciplines for the purpose of creating, transferring, and applying knowledge in three principal areas: teaching, research and service. This study addresses the need for quality improvement in the engineering higher education system by first completing a literature review in order to identify recurring themes on the issue. A proposed systems view is presented. The thesis builds a case for viewing students as the primary stakeholder based on stakeholder theory concepts. The application of a systems view is then used to identify the impacts of the recurring issues on the identified stakeholders of the system. Recommendations are made to address the system’s issues.