Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Reaching New Depths With Cutting-Edge Underwater Robotics, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

Every year, senior mechanical engineering students at Cedarville University complete a capstone project, a requirement before graduating. These projects allow the students to combine their book knowledge with practical skills they will use in their professional careers.

Junked Mercedes-Turned-Racing Car Ready For The Ultimate Driving Test, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

Professor Jay Kinsinger and a team of senior mechanical engineering students from Cedarville University are gearing up for the Grassroots Motorsports $2,000 Challenge in Gainesville, Florida. The competition is set to take place on April 6-7.

Supermileage Team Seeking Win At Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

In an era where electric cars are gaining more interest among U.S. consumers, there’s still a place for gas-powered vehicles. That’s why Cedarville University has built a car that could get up to 2,000 miles to a gallon, which it will test in the weekend’s Shell Eco-Marathon Americas competition at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The competition is from April 3-7.

Ford Motor Company Research Leads Cedarville Student To Doctoral Program, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

Reducing road noise through research that helps the Ford Motor Company better understand vibration absorbers drove Michael Kennedy to his full-ride scholarship at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Collaborations, Not Competitions, Can Reduce Gender Disparities In Robotics, Sonia Roberts, Alysson Light

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Did That Help? Harnessing Natural Language Processing To Uncover Characteristics Of Peer Feedback And Their Impacts On Teamwork-Skills Learning., Annamaria V. Wolf

All Dissertations

Peer Evaluation Systems (PESs) allow members of student teams to provide one another with computer-mediated feedback in the form of qualitative, open-ended comments. The current research leverages unsupervised Natural Language Processing (NLP), namely Biterm Topic Modeling (BTM) and sentiment analysis, to uncover latent topics and degree of positivity and negativity expressed in peer feedback, respectively. BTM results revealed a 6-topic model that was reliably replicated over 10 Gibbs initializations 80% of the time. Topics were labeled Timely Communication, Idea Generation, Coordination & Adaptation, Work Quality, Team Support & Focusing, and Work Accountability. Qualitative comparison suggests that these topics demonstrate …

Robotics Team Takes Top Prize In Engineering Competition, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

It takes a commitment to be part of Cedarville University’s robotics team that competes each year in the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Robotics competition.

Student-Designed Radio Has Worldwide Impact, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

When Josh Radcliffe and his two senior design partners started working on designing a fixed-tuned radio, they never could have imagined the impact this radio — the size of a mobile phone — could have worldwide.

“That Means Nothing To Me As A Normal Person Who Doesn't Know About Patents”: Usability Testing Of Google Patents And Patent Public Search With Undergraduate Engineering Students, Graham Sherriff, Molly Rogers

Journal of the Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association

Patent searching is an important research tool for undergraduate engineering students, yet it requires special topic knowledge to conduct successfully. Patent database websites have the ability to alleviate or add to the complexity of patent searching, depending on their usability. Prompted by the launch of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Public Search (PPS) website in early 2022, the authors investigated the usability of PPS and Google Patents. The study's objective was to gain insights into the ways in which the websites of commonly-used patent databases support undergraduate students’ patent searching activities. The study examined students’ performance of typical …

Ouachita's Engineering Program Receives Accreditation From Higher Learning Commission, Felley Lawson, Office Of Communications & Marketing

Press Releases

The Bachelor of Science degree program in engineering at Ouachita Baptist University has been approved by the university’s institutional accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission.

The engineering curriculum was approved by the faculty in Spring 2022. While several new engineering courses were available to students in the 2022-23 academic year, the official program launch is scheduled for Fall 2023. The 4-year residential program builds on the strength of Ouachita’s Bachelor of Science degree program in physics and is housed in the newly formed Department of Physics and Engineering in the J.D. Patterson School of Natural Sciences. Dr. Kevin Cornelius, professor of …

Students Who Engineer Together, Stay Together, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

One could say Annie Rourke and Jonathan Gregory do everything together. The pair of engineering students at Cedarville University plan to keep it that way with a wedding and mutual job designing missiles and rockets on the horizon.

From Softball To The Stars: Cedarville Junior Lands Nasa Internship, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

Lauryn Leslie, a junior electrical engineering major at Cedarville University, never thought the injury that ended her collegiate softball career would simultaneously lead her to the internship of her dreams with the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

Robert Hall Merrill: An American Engineer In China, Annie Benefiel

Presentations

Presented at the 2023 Archival Kismet Conference "Thinking About Stuff," this presentation explores historical documents found in the Robert H. Merrill papers in the Grand Valley State University Special Collections and University Archives.

In 1920, Robert Hall Merrill, a young civil engineer from Grand Rapids, Michigan, traveled to China to serve as Assistant Principle Engineer on a reconstruction project of a portion of the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal is the longest and oldest canal system in the world. Merrill's work produced a comprehensive survey report of the Grand Canal construction area near the Yellow River. The report contains numerous …

Enablers And Barriers Of Communication In Virtual Engineering Teams: The Role Of Teamwork Skills And Emergent Conflict, Pilar Pazos, Francisco Cima

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Communication is a critical process that facilitates team members' coordination, expertise exchange, decision-making, and, consequently, team elfectiveness. A focus on effective communication is critical in virtual teams due to their lack of face-to-face interactions and social presence. Communication becomes challenging in remote settings, and specific skills emerge as more essential to success. It is known that effective teams rely on planning, execution, and interpersonal skills to be successful. Still, the specific impact of these skills on virtual team effectiveness is not well understood. Additionally, conflict can emerge as a significant barrier to collaboration for remote teams that can hinder their …

Integration Of Public Policy Into Civil Engineering Undergraduate Curricula: Review Of Civil Engineering Body Of Knowledge And Course Application, Michelle R. Oswald Beiler

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

The field of civil and environmental engineering directly ties with serving the needs of the public through infrastructure development and improvements in sustainable environments. Integrating this reciprocal connection between public policy and civil engineering into undergraduate civil engineering education is critical for the preparation of the next generation of engineers. This project, first, reviews the guidance of public policy in civil engineering programs, such as ASCE’s Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge. Then, a pedagogical application is presented that focuses on the integration of public policy concepts, methods, assessment tools and techniques in a required, upper level course in civil and …

“That Means Nothing To Me As A Normal Person Who Doesn't Know About Patents”: Usability Testing Of Google Patents And Patent Public Search With Undergraduate Engineering Students, Graham Sherriff, Molly Rogers

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Patent searching is an important research tool for undergraduate engineering students, yet it requires special topic knowledge to conduct successfully. Patent database websites have the ability to alleviate or add to the complexity of patent searching, depending on their usability. Prompted by the launch of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Public Search (PPS) website in early 2022, the authors investigated the usability of PPS and Google Patents. The study's objective was to gain insights into the ways in which the websites of commonly-used patent databases support undergraduate students’ patent searching activities. The study examined students’ performance of typical …

Pumphrey To Help Launch Engineering Program At Ouachita, Felley Lawson, Ouachita News Bureau

Press Releases

Dr. Norman D. Pumphrey Jr. has been named professor of engineering at Ouachita Baptist University. Pumphrey joins Ouachita faculty in the J.D. Patterson School of Natural Sciences after serving nearly 30 years in the engineering department at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. He will help launch Ouachita’s new 4-year Bachelor of Science degree pathway in engineering, planned to begin in Fall 2023 pending approval from the university’s institutional accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission (HLC).

“We’re excited about the addition of Dr. Norm Pumphrey to help jump-start our engineering program, which will have three emphases: general, mechanical and civil,” said Dr. …

Winning On Autopilot For Cedarville Engineers, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

A team of Cedarville University engineering students navigated its way to first place in the Autonomous Vehicle category at the 29^th annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition June 3-6 in Rochester, Michigan. The victorious team finished in the Auto-Nav Challenge in 5:05 to win the $3,000 prize.

Prior Art Research In The Capstone Design Experience: A Case Study Of Redesigned Online And In-Person Instruction, Graham Sherriff, Dustin Rand

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Exploration of “prior art”—the state of a technology’s development, as manifested in literature, documentation, and artifacts—has many benefits for engineering students. It expands their understanding of the design problem, reveals a range of possible solutions, and develops research skills important to professional practice. While prior art often includes patents and research literature, it can include any type of publication or document. This paper presents an innovative approach to a prior art review assignment in the capstone course for mechanical, electrical, and biomedical engineering students at the University of Vermont (UVM). The assignment and accompanying instruction were redesigned in 2018–2019 to …

"But I'M Not An Engineer"...Collaboration Between A Librarian And An Upper Division Project-Based Engineering Program, Heidi J. Southworth, Rebecca Bates, Robert Sleezer

Library Services Publications

Since 2013, a librarian at Minnesota State University, Mankato has collaborated with faculty and students in an upper division project-based engineering program. While having several years of experience in university libraries plus advanced degrees in history, the librarian had a limited background in science, engineering, and technology, and lacked a formal engineering degree. At first glance, this match may appear to be a recipe for failure. Indeed, in those first few years, the librarian’s angst about the missing engineering degree caused many sleepless nights of worry and concern. However, there came a time when the words “but I am not …

"But I'M Not An Engineer"...Collaboration Between A Librarian And An Upper Division Project-Based Engineering Program, Heidi J. Southworth, Rebecca Bates, Robert Sleezer

Library Services Publications

Since 2013, a librarian at Minnesota State University, Mankato has collaborated with faculty and students in an upper division project-based engineering program. While having several years of experience in university libraries plus advanced degrees in history, the librarian had a limited background in science, engineering, and technology, and lacked a formal engineering degree. At first glance, this match may appear to be a recipe for failure. Indeed, in those first few years, the librarian’s angst about the missing engineering degree caused many sleepless nights of worry and concern. However, there came a time when the words “but I am not …

100%: Cedarville's Engineering Grads Success On Licensure Exam, Grad School Entrance, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

For someone who is desiring to work as a professional engineer following college graduation, the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam is the first step toward achieving this goal. The exam features seven academic disciplines, including civil engineering, and for Cedarville’s first group of civil engineering graduates, their success rate has exceeded traditional expectations.

Cedarville’S Endurance Leads To 13th World Solar Splash Championship, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

One year after the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez snapped Cedarville University's five-year winning streak in the World Solar Splash competition, Cedarville used a flawless run in the endurance segment of the 2022 World Solar Splash to win this year’s championship. The competition was held June 7-11 at Champion Lake in Springfield.

Rocket Team Lifts Off At Nasa Competition, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

The Cedarville University Student Rocket Team took flight at the NASA Student Launch 2022 competition in Huntsville, Alabama, placing second in two categories during the three-day competition in April.

The Ideal Mentor: A Qualitative Study On Underrepresented Students' Perspectives On Mentoring Relationships In Engineering, Sergio Armendariz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Engineering stands as one of the disciplines with the highest rates of student attrition, which is exacerbated by the misrepresentation of women and racial/ethnic minorities (Roy 2019). As a response, multiple universities have launched successful initiatives to recruit women and racial/ethnic minorities into engineering degrees, but have continued to fail in retaining that same student demographic. Mentoring relationships have been regarded as an efficient strategy to mitigate the rates of attrition in engineering degrees (Wilson et al. 2012). However, mentorship in engineering is likewise lacking in diversity, and positive outcomes of mentorship are not universal. Nonetheless, successful mentoring relationships do …

The Water We Were Swimming In: Transgender And Gender Nonconforming Students' Lived Experiences In Engineering., Natalie Saroff Oliner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Few studies address the lived experiences of transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) students in engineering. Grounded in critical trans politics (Spade, 2015), this dissertation contributes to the literature on TGNC students in engineering by examining their experiences negotiating their identities while navigating interrelated systems of oppression in a field dominated by White, heterosexual, cisgender men. Using a critical constructivism framework, I conducted a narrative inquiry to explore the lived experiences of five TGNC students in engineering programs. Participants experienced TGNC oppression at their universities, built LGBTQ+ and TGNC communities, and described more welcoming climates in non-engineering contexts compared to engineering. …

Steam Explores Project Based Assessments, Erica Luvone, Loretta Radulic, Joe Mondanaro, Nicole Acevedo, Erika Dent, Ann Rhodes

STEM Month

This year, our approach to STEAM explores project based assessments in the disciplines of science and social studies. Students work in groups to produce projects that showcase work and proficiency. These projects are presented, displayed, discussed, and revisited or revised at student discretion.

Lift Off! Rocket Team Qualifies For Nasa Competition, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

The Cedarville Student Launch team has qualified for the 2022 NASA Student Launch competition on April 22-23 at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Students Launching Full-Scale Rocket Prototype, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

A team of Cedarville University students have worked for months designing and testing a rocket that will be used for the 2022 NASA Student Launch competition April 20-23 in Huntsville, Alabama.

Designing And Implementing A Novel Graduate Program To Develop Transdisciplinary Leaders In Urban Sustainability, Megan M. Wallen, Ingrid Guerra-Lopez, Louay Meroueh, Rayman Mohamed, Andrea Sankar, Pradeep Sopory, Ryan Watkins, Donna R. Kashian

Biological Sciences Faculty Research Publications

Urban settings, where >50% of the world's population resides, are increasingly faced with environmental challenges that threaten their sustainability. Aging infrastructure, water and air pollution, and increasing recognition of environmental injustices highlight the need for professionals to employ complex scientific reasoning across disciplines where they can effectively address the multifaceted issues of urban sustainability. Here we present an innovative model for preparing the next generation of public, private, and academic leaders to address complex problems in urban sustainability. Specifically, we outline the design and implementation of an integrated, adaptable graduate training program, with the goals of science leadership, curriculum relevancy, …