MENU
  • ASEE Logo
  • Give
    Give
    ASEE Donations...
    Classified Volunteer
    Login
  • Join Login Volunteer Classified Give
    Give
    ASEE Donations...



About
  • Overview
    • Mission, Vision, Goals
    • Public Policy Statements
    • Constitution
    • Bylaws
    • Organizational Structure
    • Investment Policy
    • Financial Policy
  • Our History
  • Staff Contacts
  • Leadership
    • Board Of Directors
    • Academy Of Fellows
    • Past Board Members
    • Advisory Committees
    • Representatives to External Organizations
    • Executive Director's Message
    • Meeting Minutes
  • Volunteer
  • Careers at ASEE
  • Privacy Statement
I Am A...
  • Member
      Login Required
    • Your Member Page
    • Membership Directory
    • Financials
    • Volunteer for Task Force
      • COVID Recovery
      • Engineering Culture
    • No Login Required
    • Awards
    • Divisions, Fellows, and Campus Reps
    • Sections and Zones
    • Resources
  • Prospective Individual/Organizational Member
    • About ASEE
    • Individual Membership
    • Institutional Membership
    • Major Activities
  • Donor
  • Prospective Partner or Sponsor
  • Advertiser
  • Fellowship Seeker
    • About Fellowships
    • High School
    • Undergraduate
    • Graduate
    • Post-Doctoral
    • Other Programs
Events
  • Conferences and Meetings
    • 2022 Annual Conference & Exposition
    • 2021 Virtual Annual Conference & Exposition
    • 2020 Virtual Annual Conference & Exposition
    • Section & Zone Meetings
  • Council Events
    • Conference for Industry and
      Education Collaboration (CIEC)
    • CMC Workforce Summit
    • Engineering Deans Institute (EDI)
    • Research Leadership Institute (RLI) (Formerly ERC)
    • Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • EDC Public Policy Colloquium (PPC)
  • Featured Events
    • Frontiers in Education
    • NETI
    • CoNECD
    • First Year Engineering Experience
    • Workforce Summit
  • Future Conference Dates
Publications
  • News
    • Newsletters
    • eGFI
    • Division Publications
  • Journals and Conference Papers
    • Overview
    • Journal of Engineering Education
    • Advances in Engineering Education
    • Conference Proceedings
    • Section Proceedings
    • Zone Proceedings
    • PEER
    • Plagiarism
  • Monographs and Reports
  • Prism Magazine
  • Data
    • Profiles of E&ET Colleges
    • Case Study Series: Engineering-Enhanced Liberal Education
Impact
  • Public Policy Statements
  • Data Analysis
  • Annual Reports
  • Diversity
Education & Careers
  • Academic Job Opportunities
  • Course Catalog
  • Engineering Education Research and Innovation
    • Engineering Education Community Resource
  • PreK-12
    • eGFI Teachers
    • eGFI Students
  • Engineering Teacher PD Endorsement
Calendar
2020 Annual Conference
The ASEE 2020 Virtual Annual Conference content is available.
See More....
  • International Forum
    • Past Forums
  • 2020 Research Leadership Institute(RLI) (Formerly ERC)
    • Overview
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ERC Past Conferences
  • 2018 Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ETLI Sponsorship Options
  • 2017 Global Colloquium
  • Pre K-12 Workshop
    • Call for Proposals
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Sponsors
    • Program Schedule
    • Past Conferences
  • STEP Grantees Meeting
  • Annual Conference
    • Past Conferences
  • International Forum
    • Past Forums
  • 2020 Research Leadership Institute(RLI) (Formerly ERC)
    • Overview
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ERC Past Conferences
  • 2018 Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ETLI Sponsorship Options
  • 2017 Global Colloquium
  • Pre K-12 Workshop
    • Call for Proposals
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Sponsors
    • Program Schedule
    • Past Conferences
  • STEP Grantees Meeting
  • Annual Conference
    • Past Conferences

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Integrating Experiential with Technical: How Materials Science Modules Can Help Redefine the Traditional Engineering Canon

Presented at Materials Division Technical Session 1

There is a need for engineering students to be more fully engaged in the socio-technical facets of what it means to be a 21st century engineer. Traditionally, the engineering canon focuses solely on technical skills, but there is a growing industry demand for engineers who possess professional skills and global values. It is the larger goal of this work to empower student engineering changemakers through refinement of the engineering canon. It is also a goal of this work to develop content useful for other faculty so that incorporation into another's classroom, whether in part or in full, is not such an arduous and impossible task.

A series of modules have been developed for a third-year level Materials Science course, a segment of an NSF-funded REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) grant. These modules gave 32 students from General, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering the opportunity to engage in collaboration with their peers through innovative classes in Fall 2017. Students were grouped in interdisciplinary teams in which they interact with material that communicated the importance of materials science in everyday life.

Several modules have been developed and are currently being implemented in Fall 2017 in Engineering Materials Science. These modules have been designed to creatively integrate social justice, humanitarian engagement, peace studies, and sustainability into the classroom while not forfeiting but complementing the required engineering technical skillsets. Four modules explore these topics through the following areas of interest: (1) materials classification in your trash and recycling, (2) material choice factors within bioengineering design for emerging markets with special consideration for user life expectancy and cost, (3) ethics of research for a novel 3D-printed material in innovative Diabetic shoe inserts, and (4) mechanical testing of innovative 3D-printed materials and traditional engineering materials. Each module is presented with its learning objectives, breakdown of materials required, artifacts developed, space set-up, assessment, lessons learned, and a detailed facilitator guide that can be integrated into any materials science course.

The first of these modules to be implemented required students to bring to class with them a week’s worth of their own trash. A portion of class time focused on the materials categorization and classification. Then, a class debrief directed students’ attention toward topics related to recycling in general and, more particularly, to responsibilities that engineers have to consider the whole lifecycle of their projects. This might include choosing materials suited to a product’s designed purpose and considering costs and required material properties and addressing where it might go after use. Students were prompted to provide the meaningful takeaways from class. In a reflection after class, one student said, “[W]e explored the reality of our consumer waste and how as engineers we could do something to change it.” By the conclusion of Fall 2017, all four modules will have been implemented, and outcomes will be evaluated in light of achieving the overall goal of redefining the engineering canon.

Authors
  1. Dr. Bre Przestrzelski University of San Diego [biography]

    Bre Przestrzelski, PhD, is a post-doctoral research associate in the General Engineering department in the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering, where she seeks to innovatively integrate social justice, humanitarian advancement, and peace into the traditional engineering canon.

    Before joining USD in August 2017, Bre spent 9 years at Clemson University, where she was a three-time graduate of the bioengineering program (BS, MS, and PhD), founder of The Design & Entrepreneurship Network (DEN), and Division I rower. In her spare time, Bre teaches design thinking workshops for higher education faculty/administrators at the Stanford d.School, coaches a global community of learners through IDEO U, and fails miserably at cooking.

  2. Dr. Elizabeth A. Reddy University of San Diego [biography]

    Elizabeth Reddy is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Division of Engineering, Design and Society at Colorado School of Mines. She is a social scientist, holding a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Irvine.

  3. Dr. Susan M. Lord Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2675-5626 University of San Diego [biography]

    Susan M. Lord received a B.S. from Cornell University and the M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is currently Professor and Chair of Electrical Engineering at the University of San Diego. Her teaching and research interests include electronics, optoelectronics, materials science, first year engineering courses, feminist and liberative pedagogies, engineering student persistence, and student autonomy. Her research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Lord is a fellow of the ASEE and IEEE and is active in the engineering education community including serving as General Co-Chair of the 2006 Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference, on the FIE Steering Committee, and as President of the IEEE Education Society for 2009-2010. She is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Education and the Journal of Engineering Education. She and her coauthors were awarded the 2011 Wickenden Award for the best paper in the Journal of Engineering Education and the 2011 and 2015 Best Paper Awards for the IEEE Transactions on Education. In Spring 2012, Dr. Lord spent a sabbatical at Southeast University in Nanjing, China.

Download paper (1.52 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session


  • Follow Us
  • twitter
  • facebook
  • youtube
  • instagram
  • linkedin
  • 1818 N Street N.W. Suite 600, Washington DC 20036

  • Telephone: 202.331.3500 | Fax: 202.265.8504

  • © 2023 Copyright: ASEE.org All rights reserved. Privacy Policy.