Engineering Commons^™

Method Of Joints: Theory And Practice Of Designing, Building, And Testing Trusses, Andrew J. Hughes, Chris Merrill

Educational Leadership & Technology Faculty Publications

The authors of this article, like many of us, are proponents of engineering education but are also proponents of shop skills, craftsmanship, technological literacy, and the tacit knowledge and skills developed through applying sound theories during practical hands-on learning. The authors believe that engineering is an important aspect of our discipline, but so are the application of thinking, tool skills, measurement, geometric construction, manufacturing, instrumentation, testing and analysis, mathematical and scientific theories, and many other hands-on, minds-on skillsets that all need to maintain association with our discipline. As the authors are proponents for engineering education that is done well, they …

The Challenges Of Engineering Education, Engineering Practice, Code Of Ethics, And Social Justice, Rachel Shannon

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Poster Presentations

Engineering has always been human-centered through the technologies we provide to enrich and make our lives more convenient. The engineering code of ethics uphold that engineers should put “the safety, health, and welfare of the public” first. However, we argue that the code of ethics is not enough, and that we need to reinforce human-centered design in engineering education through designerly ways of thinking, reflective practices, and being more student-centered.

Development Of Critical Consciousness Scale For Civil Engineering Students, Tonmoy Sarker, Dr. Cristinia Poleacovschi, Dr. Mollie Appelgate, Dr. Kate Swalwell, Dr. Christa Jackson, Dr. Kristen Cetin

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Poster Presentations

Recent research shows the engineers continue to think less critically at the end of their undergraduate engineering degrees and fail ro adhere to their professional responsibility. A key component to addressing these issues includes assessing engineers' critical consciousness (CC). The development of a Critical Consciousness Scale (CCS) is important for civil engineering education as it assists practitioners and educators with better means to assess whether ant interventions (e.g. ABET) and indeed efficacious.

Work In Progress – Building Innovative Curricula For Electrical And Computer Engineering Programs At The University Of Mount Union, Okechukwu Ugweje, Chad S. Korach

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background: The University of Mount Union has introduced new programs in Electrical and Computer engineering. In a liberal arts college with unique curriculum requirements, it is challenging to develop a new program in electrical and computer engineering. With several university mandates such as only 4- and 2-credit hours courses only, and Integrative Core liberal arts requirements, designing the new programs in engineering has been challenging.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the ongoing effort to develop new Electrical and Computer engineering programs at the University of Mount Union. The program curricula are unique as there are no …

Staying Connected – Interactive Student Learning During The Covid Transition To Remote Learning, Jeffrey A. Starke, Margaret L. Mcnamara, Richard J. Povinelli, Daniela Castillo-Perez, L. Noelle Brigham

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background. How can we transition courses in one week, while maintaining a similar experience for students? This was probably the initial response by faculty across universities as they transitioned to remote learning, mid-semester, in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Our approach is supported by the ICAP framework which posits that “as activities move from passive to active to constructive to interactive, students undergo different knowledge-change processes and, as a result, learning will increase.” (Chi and Wylie, 2014)
Purpose/Hypothesis. How we could foster students’ interactions with course material, instructors, and their peers using collaborative technology and course activities? It was hypothesized …

A New Method For Biomechanical Data Acquisition In Remote Laboratory Delivery During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Ahmed M. Sayed

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background: Delivery of a hands-on laboratory experience is a real challenge in the present pandemic environment. Many instructors tend to acquire and record experimental data, and then instruct their students to analyze such data to produce results and lab reports in an online course mode. Such a process considerably diminishes students’ motivation, engagement, and eagerness to explore further knowledge, as students appreciate more experimental data that they gather themselves. Such drawbacks are even more profound in a practical field such as biomechanics, where students need to feel the sense of kinematic and kinetic data of their own body motions and …

A Comparison Of Platform Configurations For Robotics Development Within Ros2, Raspberry Pi, Andwebots, Katherine Gisi, Diane T. Rover, Phillip H. Jones Iii

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background: The field of robotics continues to expand with new, progressive technologies. The vast ecosystem of robotics, with its countless routes, is initially challenging to navigate. It is even more so during a season of virtual instruction. Creating strategic entrance points for the incoming students merits consideration. Purpose: Our aim is to provide a way for students to explore three critical areas in robotics: the physical robot (hardware), the simulated robot (digital twin), and the operating system and code (controller).
Method: We explore options for integrating two advanced robot development frameworks (i.e. Robot Operating System 2 (ROS2) and Webots) in …

Critical And Liberative Theories: Applications In Engineering Education, Corin L. Bowen, Aaron W. Johnson

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background. Higher educational programs in engineering today are seeking to correct disproportionately low enrollment and success rates of minoritized students. However, most diversity-related programming fails to address systems of structural oppression that cause particular students to be underrepresented in higher education. In addition, typical engineering pedagogical methods fail to address the reality and impacts of structural oppression, as educators cannot overcome the effects of structurally oppressive systems through traditional methods of controlling classroom and curriculum.
Purpose. This paper explores the relationship between existing critical and liberative theories and engineering educational systems and re-frames the goals and problems of diversity and …

An Augmented Reality Multimedia Learning Platform Assisting Online Lecture Delivery Of Engineering Classes: An Hvac Course, Huojan Yang, Jiaming Zhao, Tianyi Liang, Siqing Zheng, Nikolas R. Kukert, Jun Kong

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has recently resulted in an emergent shift of traditional instruction to (presumably temporary) online delivery, and many students were not able to participate in practical activities (e.g., laboratory experiments) due to inaccessible or unavailable “brick and mortar” laboratories. Purpose: This works-in-progress paper developed a multimedia learning platform with virtual laboratory modules through an Augmented Reality (AR) environment, where virtual objects (augmented components) are superimposed onto a real learning setting during online lecture instruction. Specifically, to facilitate students’ gaining practical skills, a library of virtual objects were established for the main physical components or systems related …

Proposing An Engineering Gendered Racial Microaggression Scale, Arielle True-Funk, Cristina Poleacovschi, Gloria Jones-Johnson, Scott Grant Feinstein, Meghan Berger

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background Minorities in engineering regularly experience negative statements or behaviors of others that disparage them due to their gender, race, ethnicity, or other identity. Students from engineering have cited these persistent subtle negative statements and behaviors, or microaggressions, as reasons for considering leaving engineering programs or the university entirely. Previous measures of microaggressions have not been designed to capture the unique experiences of minorities within the engineering environment.
Purpose This research differs from previous work because it incorporates an intersectional perspective by acknowledging microaggressions are not experienced universally for individuals within all groups or institutions (Crenshaw et al. 1993; Wilkins …

Correlating Mechanics Of Materials Student Performance With Scores Of A Test Over Prerequisite Material, Nicholas Alan Smith, Roy Y. Myose, Syed J. Raza, Elizabeth Rollins

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background – It can be difficult to differentiate the effects of curriculum and instructional changes from differences in student preparation and capabilities. Purpose – In this work we will determine whether a test over prerequisite material from Statics and Calculus can be useful in predicting performance in Mechanics of Materials courses.
Method –This “pre-test” involves the application of concepts and knowledge through problem solving rather than multiple-choice questions alone. This pre-test was administered to 692 students in 19 sections taught by three different instructors over four years at Wichita State University.
Conclusions – Results show that pre-test scores given …

A Hybrid Mechanics Of Materials Course Part 2: Study Of The Effect Of A Sudden Change To Fully-Online Format, Roy Y. Myrose, Elizabeth Rollins

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

The recent COVID-19 health crisis caused universities worldwide to move suddenly to an online format during the middle of the spring semester. This change in class format provides a unique opportunity to study the effect of this abrupt shift to online learning on student performance. In order to develop a baseline, the performance of 79 students in two sections of a hybrid Mechanics of Materials course during the face-to-face portion in the spring of 2020 was compared to the past performance of 461 students in 13 sections taught by the same instructor in a similar fashion. Using this comparison as …

Implementing Professional Skills Training In Stem: A Review Of The Literature, Ann M. Gansemer-Topf, Qing Li, Shan Jiang, Guk E. Okudan-Kremer, Nigel Forest Reuel

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background: Project management and other professional skill training is often lacking in graduate student education, typically as a result of limited resources, lack of faculty buy-in, and narrow focus on thesis research. To address this need and with support from NSF, we are developing the Graduates for Advancing Professional Skills (GAPS) program at Iowa State University. To aid the initial development of this program, we conducted a literature review to understand the current context of the development and implementation of professional skills in higher education curricula, with specific interest in STEM fields.
Purpose: The purpose of our study was …

Revising A Portfolio Initiative To Assess Student Progress In A Mechanical Engineering Program, Nancy B. Barr

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background: This work-in-progress paper describes an effort to modify a pre-existing course portfolio initiative in a large mechanical engineering undergraduate program to be used for multiple forms of program assessment while maintaining its value as a student learning tool.
Purpose: This paper aims to outline the process that an ad-hoc department committee used to define what it wanted to assess in a required four-course second and third-year problem-based learning sequence by reviewing various rubric options.
Design: Deciding what to assess and what language to use in a rubric involved a series of facilitated discussions.
Results: Following a mock assessment exercise, …

A Community Of Practice Approach To Integrating Professional Skills Training With Graduate Thesis Research, Shan Jiang, Ann M. Gansemer-Topf, Nigel Forest Reuel, Gul E. Okudan-Kremer, Qing Li, Rebecca Mort

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background. It is well recognized that current graduate education is too narrowly focused on thesis research. Graduate students have a strong desire to gain skills for their future career success beyond thesis research. This obvious gap in professional skill training in current graduate study also leads to the common student perception that professional skills beyond academic knowledge should only be gained after completion of thesis research.
Purpose. A new program is being developed to rigorously integrate professional skills training with thesis research. The approach is to establish learning communities of Graduates for Advancing Professional Skills (GAPS) to incorporate project management …

The Investigation Of The Relationship Between Emotional Engagement And Creativity, Elif Elcin Gunay, Chih-Yuan Chu, Liyuani De Jesus Delgado Tapia, Omar El Menoufy, Ani Yam, Shibani Raje, Rafal Jonczyk, Danille S. Dickson, Janet Van Hell, Zahed Siddique, Gul E. Okudan-Kremer

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background - One of the most critical challenges in engineering education is improving students’ divergent thinking skills. Usually, we observe students’ fixating on only one single solution for engineering problems. However, their ability to think outside the box and provide alternative solutions should be developed. Research shows that engagement may foster the development of thoughts and boost creativity.
Purpose/Hypothesis – Our aim was to investigate students’ engagement with tasks that inspire different facets of creativity (verbal, numeric, and visual). Considering the role of demographics in student engagement, we explored the relationship between their engagement level and demographic traits such as …

Correlation Of Student Participation In Practice Exams And Actual Exam Performance, Antonette T. Cummings

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

Background: Practice exams are a type of formative feedback. These can be administered through learning management systems such as D2L and Canvas as low stakes assessment. This paper intends to show the relationship between students’ participation in online practice exams and their scores on the actual exams.
Research Questions: Does participation in timed, online practice exams correlate with improved actual exam performance on similar questions? Does a correct answer in a timed, online practice exam correlate with obtaining the correct answer on the actual exam on a similar question? Does participation in timed, online practice exams correlate with improved overall …

Faculty And Student Perceptions On Shared Teaching Materials For Advanced Manufacturing (Stam): Building Momentum Through Workshops, Richard Wysk, Gul E. Okudan Kremer

ASEE North Midwest Section Annual Conference 2020 Publications

In this paper, we summarize the outcomes of the two workshops aimed at speeding up the transition of research-based advanced manufacturing knowledge into course curriculum for technology and engineering programs. Advanced manufacturing technologies have opened up the realm for new products that only a decade ago were considered unproducible. For example metals 3D Printing has almost no geometric limitations, which allows engineers to develop mesh–based products. Unfortunately, the educational system that serves to educate the majority of manufacturing technicians and engineers still utilizes many of the same curriculum resources for these emerging areas (textbooks, traditional lectures, etc.), frequently creating an …

Engineered Full-Length Fibronectin-Hyaluronic Acid Hydrogels For Stem Cell Engineering., Sara Trujillo, Sebastian Vega, Kwang Hoon Song, Ana San Félix, Matthew J Dalby, Jason A Burdick, Manuel Salmeron-Sanchez

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Departmental Research

Mechanical cues induce a variety of downstream effects on cells, including the regulation of stem cell behavior. Cell fate is typically characterized on biomaterial substrates where mechanical and chemical properties can be precisely tuned; however, most of these substrates do not recapitulate the biological complexity of the extracellular matrix (ECM). Here, hydrogels are engineered for mechanobiological studies using two major components of the ECM: hyaluronic acid (HA) and fibronectin (FN). Rather than typical surface chemisorption of FN to substrates, the system contains full-length FN covalently crosslinked to HA throughout the hydrogel. The control over the mechanical properties of the hydrogel …

Increasing Concurrence Of Wildfire Drivers Tripled Megafire Critical Danger Days In Southern California Between 1982 And 2018, Mohammad Sadegh Khorshidi, Philip E. Dennison, Mohammad Reza Nikoo, Amir Aghakouchak, Charles H. Luce, Mojtaba Sadegh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wildfire danger is often ascribed to increased temperature, decreased humidity, drier fuels, or higher wind speed. However, the concurrence of drivers—defined as climate, meteorological and biophysical factors that enable fire growth—is rarely tested for commonly used fire danger indices or climate change studies. Treating causal factors as independent additive influences can lead to inaccurate inferences about shifting hazards if the factors interact as a series of switches that collectively modulate fire growth. As evidence, we show that in Southern California very large fires and 'megafires' are more strongly associated with multiple drivers exceeding moderate thresholds concurrently, rather than direct relationships …

Data And Analysis Toolbox For Modeling The Nexus Of Food, Energy, And Water, Mojtaba Sadegh, Arvin Farid

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Energy, water, and food resources are highly interdependent. Agricultural irrigation accounts for 84% of global consumptive freshwater use, the food supply chain demands up to 30% of global primary energy use, and roughly 80% of global electricity generation depends on water for cooling (an average of nearly 100 L of water withdrawn per kWh). Improving understanding of the complex interactions of this resource nexus is, therefore, a top priority for human well-being, sustainable development, and policymaking. Here, we present an interactive analysis toolbox, Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water (NeFEW), that synthesizes available global data to …

A Mathematical Framework For Estimating Risk Of Airborne Transmission Of Covid-19 With Application To Face Mask Use And Social Distancing, Rajat Mittal, Charles Meneveau, Wen Wu

Faculty and Student Publications

© 2020 Author(s). A mathematical model for estimating the risk of airborne transmission of a respiratory infection such as COVID-19 is presented. The model employs basic concepts from fluid dynamics and incorporates the known scope of factors involved in the airborne transmission of such diseases. Simplicity in the mathematical form of the model is by design so that it can serve not only as a common basis for scientific inquiry across disciplinary boundaries but it can also be understandable by a broad audience outside science and academia. The caveats and limitations of the model are discussed in detail. The model …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 61 Number 3, Fall 2020 [Print Issue V.61:2], Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

16 - THE GIFT Is sacrifice, given willingly and with love, what makes us human? Leslie Griffy.

20 - NOT A MOMENT, BUT A MOVEMENT From protests in Benson in 1969 to a multi-decade movement called Unity, students of color have consistently pushed SCU to progress. Matt Morgan.

28 - ON BEING BETTER Discover the ways we can better support each other, particularly as white people seek to become allies to people of color. Lauren Loftus.

32 - THE SACRIFICIAL TWEET Social media missteps are costly, perhaps now more than ever. Just what are we willing to give up to …

Wind Hazard Resilient Construction Mitigation Decision-Making Using A Multi-Objective Optimization, Erin Gregory

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

While storms worsen and damage to homes increases, limited information is available about mitigations that are effective in lessening damage to homes and/or buildings. Information on past storms exists within FEMA’s Hazus-MH application, but the information provided by the data within the Hazus-MH application, while very informative on its own, was decidedly more precise and useful when optimized to provide defined information to those responsible for determining building codes or regulations for homes.

The research available from Hazus-MH details results from past storms categorized by building type, mitigations, and intensity of disaster. The data can be used to simulate storm …

Novel Application Of Graphene Oxide Based-Biosensor Utilizing Crispr/Dcas9 For Rapid Detection Of Antibiotic Resistance Genes, Joel Omage

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest public health challenges globally. To combat this threat, we have designed a method for the facile and rapid detection of antibiotic resistance gene (ARG) in bacteria. We utilized an emerging tool termed the clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) in complex with deactivated CRISPR associated proteins (dCas9) on conjugated 2-dimensional graphene oxide (GO) sheets. Nuclease-deactivated Cas9 in complex with customized single guided RNA (sgRNA) was used for the target DNA recognition. The sgRNA was easy to design and we demonstrated that it is complementary to its target sequence by performing a …

Utilization Of Lidar Technology To Assess Vertical Clearances Of Civil Infrastructure, Daniel Levi Mcintosh

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The issue of vertical clearances along highway systems impact the functionality of the road network. Extracting current routing clearances for each structure can be a challenging and hazardous task. Pavement changes and roadway rehabilitation projects can alter roadway geometry, complicating efforts to maintain accurate clearance databases. Vertical clearance measurements may vary from one lane to another beneath overhead structures and are often difficult to obtain due to high traffic volumes. Inherently, traditional methods that are used to obtain the measurements routinely impede the flow of traffic and subject workers to dangerous environments. This study will examine the use of a …

Dual Target Optimization Of Two-Dimensional Truss Using Cost Efficiency And Structural Reliability Sufficiency, Mohammad Rezaee, Seyed Hooman Ghasemi, Mansoureh Rezaee

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Departmental Research

The main contribution of this study is to open a discussion regarding the structural optimization associated with the cost efficiency and structural reliability sufficiency consideration. To do so, several various optimization approaches are investigated to deliberate both cost and reliability concerns. Particularly, particle swarm optimization is highlighted as a reliable optimization approach. Accordingly, an illustrative example is rendered to compare the feasibility of the considered optimization approaches. The feasibility of the investigated approaches is evaluated using the cost and reliability analysis. For the considered example, it was observed that the PSO optimization algorithm has multiple advantages such as easy realization, …

Titan: Uncovering The Paradigm Shift In Security Vulnerability At Near-Threshold Computing, Prabal Basu, Pramesh Pandey, Aatreyi Bal, Chidhambaranathan Rajamanikkam, Koushik Chakraborty, Sanghamitra Roy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we investigate the emerging security threats at Near-Threshold Computing (NTC) that are poised to jeopardize the trustworthy operation of future low-power electronic devices. A substantial research effort over the last decade has bolstered energy efficient operation in low-power computing. However, innovation in low-power security has received only marginal attention, thwarting a ubiquitous adoption of critical Internet of Things applications, such as wearable gadgets. Using a cross-layer methodology, we demonstrate that the timing fault vulnerability of a circuit rapidly increases as the operating conditions of the transistor devices shift from super-threshold to near-threshold values. Exploiting this vulnerability, we …

Trust-Based User Interface Design For Islanded Alternating Current Microgrids, Yuliya Matlashova

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Futuristic microgrid systems may be capable of providing extensive information to the operator. As microgrid systems become more pervasive there will be a need to adjust the information an operator requires, to provide an optimized user-interface. In this paper, a combinatorial optimization strategy is used to provide an optimal user-interface for the microgrid operator that selects information for display depending on the operator's trust level in the system, and the assigned task. We employ a method based in sensor placement by capturing elements of the interface as different sensors, that find an optimal set of sensors via combinatorial optimization. However, …

Manual For Thin Asphalt Overlays, Lerose Lane, R. Gary Hicks, Dingxin Cheng, Erik Updyke

Mineta Transportation Institute

This manual presents best practices on project selection, mix design, and construction to ensure a superior product when constructing thin asphalt overlays. Experience shows these treatments provide excellent performance when placed on pavements in fair to good condition using proper construction techniques. Though sometime referred to by other names, thin asphalt overlays have been widely used for pavement preservation throughout the world for over 50 years.

Limited infrastructure funding at the local, state, and federal levels has resulted in greater emphasis on the use of pavement preservation techniques to extend pavement life and reduce maintenance costs. Thin asphalt overlays are …