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Background This paper contributes to the growing body of scholarship on engineering students' conceptions of core concepts in engineering, including their conception of engineering itself. Understanding how students view engineering practice can provide guidance into student responses to course features such as collaborative projects. Purpose (Hypothesis) The research question addressed in this study is: What do student portfolios reveal about student constructions of engineering? Design/Method Texts from portfolios created by mechanical engineering undergraduates were analyzed qualitatively using concepts drawn from discourse analysis. This approach makes it possible to examine conceptions through close reading of linguistic structure of a body of writing. Results Students conceived of engineering practice as “the real world,” with most students not conceiving school experiences as integral to practice. Students conceived of engineering practice in terms of strongly contrasting elements rather than as a system of intrinsic elements. Two major aspects in student conceptions were present in the portfolios: values in engineering practice and the role of other people. Largely missing also from the student discourse was the sense that engineering is inherently collaborative. Conclusion Student conceptions formed continua which bear further study to more completely characterize student views. Conceptions of engineering leaders and engineering educators deserve greater attention as well as contrasts and models for comparison to student conceptions. The benefits of understanding conceptions more completely include understanding student resistance to exercises, predicting student difficulties with exercises, and understanding the distance between what educators are trying to teach students and what students are “hearing.”

Summary Describes the activities of a university \"directed research group,\" highlighting interesting tensions that emerged thereinAsserts that actively exploring such tensions with students creates a rich learning environment

♦ Describes the activities of a university \"directed research group,\" highlighting interesting tensions that emerged therein ♦ Asserts that actively exploring such tensions with students creates a rich learning environment

Investigating Best Practices in the Research Mentoring of Underrepresented Minority Students in EngineeringThis study addresses the need to increase the numbers of traditionally underrepresented minority(URM) students in engineering careers through an investigation of the role of research mentoringin recruiting and retaining URM students in engineering. Mentoring students in engineering andscience research has long been acknowledged as an effective way to engage undergraduates inengineering majors, and is also an essential component of the doctoral degrees that represent thegateway to careers in engineering research. This study was guided by the following questions: 1)What can we identify as best practices in mentoring and supervising URM students as theyconduct engineering research? 2) How is the effectiveness of these practices perceived by URMpopulations? 3) To what extent are these best practices in research mentoring congruent withcommonly accepted guidelines for undergraduate and graduate students from majority groups?In order to answer these questions, data was collected through an online survey of a nationwidesample of URM engineering undergraduate students, graduate students, and recent PhDrecipients. This survey included open-ended questions eliciting narratives of critical incidentsand multiple choice questions about the respondents’ experiences with mentoring in engineeringresearch. Semi-structured follow-up interviews were conducted by telephone with a sub-set ofthe survey respondents, in which subjects were asked to clarify or expand on their surveyresponses. Through coding and narrative analysis of qualitative data and triangulation withquantitative survey data, several themes emerged regarding the impacts of mentoring andstudents’ perceptions of best practices in research mentoring. In this paper, we focus on onetheme which stood out in the data: the role of informal mentoring by research supervisors inretaining undergraduate students in engineering. 61% of the undergraduate respondentsindicated that mentoring during their research experience contributed significantly to theirpersistence in engineering, including decisions to major in engineering, go on to graduate school,and/or pursue a career in engineering. Of those respondents, most cited informal types ofmentoring as being influential. By “informal” mentoring we refer to interactions during astudent’s research experience that are not specifically related to the research project at hand, suchas conversations about career or academic pathways, or support during struggles in a student’spersonal life. In this paper we describe what informal mentoring looks like in the context ofengineering research experiences, and the ways in which this form of mentoring has contributedto students’ persistence in engineering. We also explore how informal mentoring may beparticularly beneficial for URM students. We propose that incorporating more informal types ofmentoring into the research mentor-mentee relationship is one effective way for faculty tofacilitate the retention of URM undergraduate students in engineering.

Passive stand-off layer (PSOL) and slotted stand-off layer damping treatments are presently being implemented in many commercial and defense designs. In a PSOL damping treatment, a stand-off or spacer layer is added to a conventional passive constrained layer (PCL) damping treatment. In an SSOL damping treatment, slots are included in the stand-off layer. In this research analytical and finite element models were developed and experimental studies conducted in order to analyze the contribution of the stand-off layer to the overall system damping in PSOL and SSOL damping treatments applied to one dimensional beam structures. The mathematical model for the PSOL, or non-slotted stand-off layer case, characterized the treated beam as a boundary value problem which was then solved using the method of distributed transfer functions by Yang and Tan. The SSOL, or slotted stand-off layer case was solved mathematically with transfer matrices using a periodic structure approach. These two mathematical models were then verified with finite element analysis using ANSYS. The experiments, mathematical and numerical models were all specifically designed so that specific geometric and material properties of the stand-off layer could be varied in order to determine the contribution of these stand-off layer characteristics to the overall system damping. Some significant findings from this study indicated that although the inclusion of slots in the stand-off layer may provide advantages such as reduced total treatment mass and increased conformability when applying these treatments to curved surfaces, the addition of these slots did not improve the damping performance. In addition, the bonding layers used to fabricate these treatments were found to be non-negligible in many configurations and these layers had a noticeable and significant effect on the frequency response of the structure. Changing the tensile moduli of the stand-off layer had a significant and noticeable effect on the frequency response functions measured in the experiments and predicted by the mathematical and finite element models. The experimental results from the study described in Chapter 8 further indicated that for beam structures, solid stand-off layer damping treatments made from lighter density rigid foams outperformed slotted stand-off layer damping treatments made from higher density rigid foams of greater total treatment mass.

Since President Trump has taken office, reporting in the public interest has seen an encouraging resurgence. According to a recent Survey Monkey poll, a majority of Americans disapprove of his use of Twitter. Instead of giving top billing to outrageous anti-media tweets, news outlets should dedicate more airtime to reporting about the president’s executive orders, new standards at the Environmental Protection Agency, knee-capping of the State Department through understaffing, plans to slash student aid and food stamp assistance, efforts to radically alter our healthcare system, and instability in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula. In a Supreme Court decision establishing new organizations’ right to publish the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, Justice Hugo Black wrote that “the press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the public.” Jessica Yellin is former CNN Chief White House Correspondent and a senior fellow at...

SINCE President Trump has taken office, reporting in the public interest has seen an encouraging resurgence. There is a renewed sense of purpose among reporters covering the White House and a renaissance in investigative journalism. All this...

SINCE President Trump has taken office, reporting in the public interest has seen an encouraging resurgence. There is a renewed sense of purpose among reporters covering the White House and a renaissance in investigative journalism. All this...