Category Archives: Universities

America’s Technology Advantage Slipping

The 30th Annual ACM-ICPC World Finals sponsored by IBM were held in San Antonio this April: view results.

Of the home teams, only Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked among the 12 highest finishers. Most top spots were seized by teams from Eastern Europe and Asia. Until the late 1990s, U.S. teams dominated these contests. But the tide has turned. Last year not one was in the top dozen.

As an indicator this is a minor one. But it is one more indication that indeed the tide is turning. The results seem worse based on “The 83 teams who competed in the World Finals are made up of 22 North American teams, 3 teams from Africa/Middle East, 7 from Latin America, 22 from Europe and Russia, and 29 from the Asia/South Pacific region.” So the USA had close to 20% of the participants and only 1 of the top 38 teams (Canada had at least 4 in the top 38). The USA had 5 of the 17 teams tied for 39th place.

The poor showings should serve as a wake-up call for government, industry, and educators. The output of American computer science programs is plummeting, even while that of Eastern European and Asian schools is rising. China and India, the new global tech powerhouses, are fueled by 900,000 engineering graduates of all types each year, more than triple the number of U.S. grads. Computer science is a key subset of engineering. “If our talent base weakens, our lead in technology, business, and economics will fade faster than any of us can imagine,” warns Richard Florida, a professor at George Mason University and author of The Flight of the Creative Class.

Again results of two years of this programming challenge are hardly a significant indication. Still if there was any field that Americans felt they still felt they were dominant in it would likely be programing (maybe health care – what do you think?). Given that this seemed at least worth a post in our blog.

It is also interesting to note, this Business Week article uses the “China and India, the new global tech powerhouses, are fueled by 900,000 engineering graduates of all types each year, more than triple the number of U.S. grads.” stats even though this article specifically tracks a Duke team and Business Week published several articles on the Duke study, USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates, that refutes those numbers.

Center for Innovation in Engineering Education at Princeton

The Center for Innovation in Engineering Education at Princeton University was created in February 2005 with the purpose of setting a new standard for engineering education emphasizing interdisciplinary areas, societal context, and leadership.

“Our plan is to set a new standard for engineering education,” said H. Vincent Poor, the director of the center and Princeton’s George Van Ness Lothrop Professor in Engineering. “We want to inject more engineering into the liberal arts and inject more of the liberal arts into engineering.”

Study on Minority Degrees in STEM fields

The American Council on Education has published a study: Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology.

Key Findings:

In the 1995-96 academic year, 18.6 percent of African-American students and 22.7 percent of Hispanic students began college interested in majoring in STEM fields compared with 18 percent of white students and 26.4 percent of Asian-American students.
By the spring of 2001, 62.5 percent of African Americans and Hispanics majoring in STEM fields attained a bachelor’s degree compared with 94.8 percent of Asian Americans and 86.7 percent of whites.

Students who graduated in STEM fields (by spring 2001) were:

better prepared for postsecondary education because a larger percentage took a highly rigorous high school curriculum.
nearly all were younger than 19 when they entered college in 1995-96
more likely to have at least one parent with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
came from families with higher incomes.
more likely to work 15 hours or more a week.

Full press release on the study.

Technology Education: USA and India

US wants to replicate India’s technology education success by Bibhu Ranjan Mishra:

Sources say that over 70,000 Indian students are undergoing higher studies in the US, which is the highest anywhere in the world. In contrast, there are just 780 US students presently undergoing studies in some Indian universities, mainly in IT, agricultural sciences and working with high schools to understand the pattern of higher secondary education in India.
…
Both Spellings and Enzi, who were the part of a delegation comprising some leading US Senators that visited Bangalore recently told Business Standard that the way India was churning out over 200,000 engineering graduates every year, while at the same time maintaining quality, really baffled them.

National Conference on Service Learning in Engineering

Service learning is a rapidly growing pedagogy in engineering, technology and computing that actively engages students in real problems in local and global communities. Research has shown that service learning enhances learning of classroom content. Research and active programs indicate that the community context can help address the under representation of our student populations. This conference will bring leaders from education, industry and government together with service learning practitioners to identify how to capitalize on the current momentum and to maximize its impact.

May 24th and 25th, 2006, National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC. There is no charge to attend but space is limited.

Great Moonbuggy Race

Great Moonbuggy Race – Huntsville Center for Technology High School and Pittsburg State University win their divisions.

The two winning teams were among 33 that raced their original moonbuggy designs across a half-mile simulated lunar surface at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville April 7-8.

Sports Engineering

MIT is not the first school to come to mind when discussing athletics. However, the MIT Center for Sports Innovation (CSI) is making news. The CSI mission is to expand the students’ learning experience by involving them in the development of sports technology and products.

One project at the Center is a wind tunnel used for bicycle testing:

The design and construction of the bike test stand was Brian Hoying’s senior thesis project. The data acquisition software upgrade was Mark Cote’s freshman term project. The resulting test system was deemed “the best cycling test system I’ve ever seen” by Phil White, owner of CervÃ©lo Cycles, and sponsor of the CSC professional cycling team.

It is great to see student projects with such success.

PBS Online NewsHour article and podcast
Figuring ways to go faster with the flow by Phil McKenna, Boston Globe

Mark Cote, a researcher at the MIT Center for Sports Innovation, has an impressive list of clients — from Tour de France stage winners to some of North America’s leading bicycle manufacturers. Now the wind tunnel specialist plans to use his expertise in fluid dynamics to develop and, he hopes, patent his own advances in aerodynamic cycling gear.

Not bad, considering that Cote, 21, is still an undergraduate.

$1 Million Each for 20 Science Educators

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Names 20 New Million-Dollar Professors – Top Research Scientists Tapped for their Teaching Talent:

“The scientists whom we have selected are true pioneers—not only in their research, but in their creative approaches and dedication to teaching,” said Thomas R. Cech, HHMI president. “We are hopeful that their educational experiments will energize undergraduate science education throughout the nation.”

The Institute awarded $20 million to the first group of HHMI professors in 2002 to bring the excitement of scientific discovery to the undergraduate classroom.

The experiment worked so well that neurobiologist and HHMI professor Darcy Kelley convinced Columbia University to require every entering freshman to take a course on hot topics in science. Through Utpal Bannerjee’s HHMI program at the University of California, Los Angeles, 138 undergraduates were co-authors of a peer-reviewed article in a top scientific journal. At the University of Pittsburgh, HHMI professor Graham Hatfull’s undergraduates mentored curious high school students as they unearthed and analyzed more than 30 never-before-seen bacteriophages from yards and barnyards. And Isiah Warner, an award-winning chemist and HHMI professor at Louisiana State University, developed a “mentoring ladder,” a hierarchical model for integrating research, education, and peer mentoring, with a special emphasis on underrepresented minority students.

Google Announces 2006 Anita Borg Scholarship Winners

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship was established to honor the legacy of Anita Borg and her efforts to encourage women to pursue careers in computer science and technology. The award is a $10,000 scholarship for outstanding female undergraduate and graduate students completing their degrees in computer science or related fields.

More on the Google Anita Borg Scholarship.

NASA Engineering Challenges

NASA has been increasing the use of challenges to encourage innovation along the lines they could use for their future missions. The NASA challenges now 9 open challenges including the: beam power challenge and the astronaut glove challenge.

These centennial challenges provide a small monetary award to encourage solutions to challenges.

By making awards based on actual achievements, instead of proposals, Centennial Challenges seeks novel solutions to NASA’s mission challenges from non-traditional sources of innovation in academia, industry and the public.

Previous post: NASA Telerobotic Competition

Like to Tinker? NASA’s Looking for You by Noah Shachtman

Many of NASA’s contests also center on robotics. The Telerobotic Construction Challenge, scheduled for August 2007, requires a team of machines to assemble items with minimal human supervision. The idea is to let robots, instead of astronauts, build shelters and machinery on the moon and Mars.