Category Archives: Universities

Engineering a Start-up

Engineering a start-up at University of California at San Diego:

Fifteen von Liebig-supported projects have been converted into startup companies. In the past two years alone, start-up companies that received von Liebig support have raised more than $10 million in capital. And even more discoveries have been licensed to telecommunications, biotechnology and other industry companies that are using the UCSD science to make new products or make their existing products better.

The center, started with a $10 million grant, has awarded a total of $2.4 million to 56 projects. An additional 25 projects have benefited from the center’s advisers. The return on investment has climbed steadily. The revenue UCSD received from the commercialization of discoveries out of the Jacobs School of Engineering has grown from $57,563 in 1999 to $602,713 in 2004, the most recent year for which figures were available.

Great stuff – this is the kind of thing that allows the ingenuity of engineers to benefit the economy and the engineers. Small focused efforts like this can have a huge long term impact, I believe. For those interested in building economic advantage through engineering education creating an entrepreneurial environment is a very important factor.

Leah Jamieson on the Future of Engineering Education

Leah Jamieson’s address, 2007 IEEE President and dean of the Purdue Engineering school, to DesignCon 2007. (link broken by DesignCon, so removed. How are organizations that seek to have people come to them to learn how to adopt good engineering practices still failing to basic things like keeping urls live forever?).

The future of engineering education: More questions than answers by Michael Santarini:

In addition, many academics estimate that the half-life of engineering knowledge is between two to seven years, Jamieson said. “I can tell you for us at the universities, if it’s less than five or certainly less than four [years] we’re going to get scared because it means students come in as freshmen and by the time they are done, half of what we’ve done for those first couple of years may or may not be relevant?” she said. “It’s a frightening thought, and so it means we have to keep asking ourselves, what are the parts that stay relevant, so that in fact the education is current after the students graduate or at least current on the day they do graduate.”

NSF’s K-12 Math and Science Partnerships

NSF’s Math and Science Partnerships Demonstrate Continued Increases in Student Proficiency:

NSF’s MSP program supports partnerships among higher education, local K-12 school systems, and supporting stakeholders, such as businesses or informal science-education organizations. At a minimum, each partnership must contain one institution of higher education and one K-12 school system. The program’s portfolio includes 52 partnerships and more than 30 other projects engaged in the development of tools, research and capacity building for evaluation to support the work of the partnerships.
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An analysis of 123 schools participating in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program shows improvements in student proficiency in mathematics and science at the elementary, middle- and high-school levels over a 3-year period.

Educating the Engineer of 2020: NAE Report

Educating the Engineer of 2020:

The BS degree should be considered as a pre-engineering or “engineer in training” degree.

I am not convinced of this idea. It seems to me a BS degrees in engineering should be a full degree not some “pre” degree like pre-law. Obviously no engineering degree is an invitation to stop learning; life long learning is a requirement whether the engineering degree is earned in 4, 6, 8… years. Improving the life long learning methods is where effort should be focused in my opinion not in making the original degree take longer to earn.

The engineering education establishment should participate in efforts to improve public understanding of engineering and the technology literacy of the public and efforts to improve math, science and engineering education at the K-12 level.
NSF should collect or assist collection of data on program approach and student outcomes for engineering departments/schools so prospective freshman can

These seem like good ideas to me.

Other than trying to get people to buy the content that they provide for free I can’t understand why they present the material so poorly online. Once again basic web usability principles are lacking on their site.
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Anger at Anti-Open Access PR

Blog posts angry at the anti open access moves by science journals are exploding. Which is a good thing; hopefully the momentum will keep up and some real changes will take place.

Those with money to lose will fight against freedom of information by Bora Zivkovic, is pretty representative:

While the world is moving towards an Open Science model of exchange of scientific information, there are, as expected, forces that are trying to oppose it. Whenever there is a movement to change any kind of system, those most likely to lose will make a last-ditch and nasty effort to temporarily derail the progress.

More: My advice to the American Chemical Society – Big Content’s ‘pitbull’ and the AAA – Science Journals Hire “PR Pit Bull” – Traditional science publishers hire PR firms to scuttle open access – The Open Access “Debate” – A quick bit on the future of Open Access Publishing, Anthropology, and Public Relations – More on the AAP PR campaign – Anti-Open Access Propaganda: An Institution Under Siege – Science publishers get stupid

Good. Go blogosphere, Go Open Access and Go Badgers, too.

The Future of the Scholarly Journal

Publishing Group Hires ‘Pit Bull of PR’:

Those groups, along with many members of Congress, want to make the published results of federally financed medical research freely available to the public whose taxes funded the work — results that today are typically available only to journal subscribers or to people willing to pay expensive per-page fees.

The publishing association, which includes among its members some of the world’s biggest and most profitable scientific journals, has argued that free Internet access to the publicly funded portion of their contents would undermine their subscription bases. Lacking that income, they claim, they would not be able to do the invisible, unsung but important, work of screening out bad science and publishing and archiving the very best.

As I have said before, this information should be publicly available. The funding mechanism for peer review needs to change. If the Journals want to stay in business they need to find a way to add value that doesn’t keep public funded information from the public.

Entrepreneurial Engineers

Business Leader Says Today’s Engineers Have to Be Entrepreneurial:

“Every engineer and scientist entering the job market today needs to be entrepreneurial, whether or not they plan to start their own business,” says Donna Novitsky, partner at venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures and adjunct professor in the School of Engineering. “It’s no longer an optional job qualification. It’s a ticket to entry in leading companies, even for undergrads.”

Strong words. A great resource mentioned in the article Stanford Technology Ventures Program Educators Corner, includes a large number of podcasts and short (2 – 10 minute video webcasts):

Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) Educators Corner is a free online archive of entrepreneurship resources for teaching and learning. The mission of the project is to support and encourage faculty around the world who teach entrepreneurship to future scientists and engineers, as well as those in management and other disciplines.

Educating Engineers for 2020 and Beyond

Educating Engineers for 2020 and Beyond by Charles M. Vest, President Emeritus, MIT Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering (nominated to become the President of the National Academy of Engineering, with a term starting in July 2007). A 70 minute videocast:

To prepare this new generation, engineering schools should focus on creating an environment that provides inspiration. In the long run, offering “exciting, creative adventures, rigorous, demanding and empowering milieus is more important than specifying details of the curriculum,” says Vest. Students are “driven by passion, curiosity, engagement and dreams.” Give them opportunities to discover and do – to participate in research teams, perform challenging work in industry, gain professional experience in other countries. Vest says, “We must ensure the best and brightest become engineers of 2020 and beyond. We can’t afford to fail.”

via: Video: Former MIT President on the future of engineering education

Hispanic Engineering Students

A Future Engineer:

While they are the largest minority group in the United States at 14.5 percent of the population, only 4 percent of engineers in the workforce in this country are Hispanic. Just 7 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in engineering, 5 percent of master’s degrees and even fewer doctoral degrees are awarded to Hispanics
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To this end, several universities host summer camps to expose young Hispanics and other minorities to STEM subjects. New Mexico State University’s College of Engineering, for instance, brings 180 middle and high school students to campus each summer for intense math and science workshops. “We target demographics that we really want to push engineering on,” says Castillo, who became interested in engineering himself at a summer camp at rival University of New Mexico. “It’s been an extremely successful program for us.”

Edinburgh University $115 Million Stem Cell Center

Stem cell centre plan confirmed

Additional Scottish Executive funding of Â£24m will allow Edinburgh University to develop the Â£59m centre in collaboration with Scottish Enterprise. The Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine (SCRM) is thought to be equalled only one in Kobe, Japan. Prof Ian Wilmut, formerly of the Roslin Institute, will be the director.

The state-of -the-art facilities are expected to house 220 academic researchers and will include a centre for “scale-up” development and manufacture of cells. Space will also be made available for commercial regenerative medicine. It is hoped that the SCRM, which will be part of the new Centre for Biomedical Research at Edinburgh’s Little France, will create about 560 jobs and generate Â£18.2m per year for the Scottish economy.

via: Univ. of Edinburgh Launches $115 Million Dollar Stem Cell Research Center