Category Archives: Engineering

Fixing Engineering’s Gender Gap

Fixing Engineering’s Gender Gap by Vivek Wadhwa, Business Week

We can debate whether an engineering gap between the U.S. and India and China exists, but among U.S. engineers there is an indisputable gender gap — fewer than 20% of engineering graduates are women, according to the National Science Foundation. Perhaps a simple solution to maintaining American competitiveness is to encourage more women to enter engineering.

I agree. We need to do a better job of taking advantage of what women engineers can bring to our economy. By taking sensible actions (see some of the related posts below) we can create a system that produces more women engineers and we will benefit from that result.

According to the National Science Foundation, women make up only 5.2% of tenured engineering faculty. Students felt that they had no one to turn to for help and guidance. One student said she felt disadvantaged “when it comes to being an engineer without being like a man.”

Engineer Revolutionizing Icemakers

Dartmouth engineer revolutionizing the icemaker business

Technology developed at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering is about to revolutionize the $1 billion icemaker business. The invention is called pulse electro-thermal de-icing (PETD).

PETD inventor, Victor Petrenko, professor of engineering at Dartmouth states: “In fact, we can safely say that this technology can increase an icemaker’s production capacity by 70 percent while decreasing its energy consumption by up to 30 percent.”

Petrenko’s invention could ultimately transform the entire $40 billion refrigeration-air conditioning industry which, according to Petrenko, has struggled with the challenge of keeping cold evaporator coils free of frost and ice. Dartmouth’s PETD technology has proven its ability to de-ice these coils in seconds using a fraction of the energy required by conventional coil defrosters.

“In addition to this,” says Petrenko, “there are many other equally exciting applications for PETD in the works, such as for de-icing buildings and bridges, car windshields, airplanes, windmills and ships, and power lines.”

Innovative Technology and Engineering Education

The Laboratory for Innovative Technology and Engineering Education (LITEE) at Auburn University is funded by the NSF: National Dissemination of MultiMedia Case Studies that Bring Real-World Issues Into Engineering Classrooms.

The mission statement is: Develop and disseminate innovative instructional materials that bring real-world issues into classrooms, using multi-media information technologies and cross-disciplinary teams.

One of the results of their efforts is the Journal of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education (STEM).

The mission seems like a worthy goal. Like other such NSF funded efforts though I wish the web sites offered much more for students and teachers. I think NSF (or others interested in funding such efforts) needs to look at the gap between the potential to use the internet to meet such goals and what has been done to date. I think there is a huge gap between what could be done effectively, and for a reasonable price (for NSF or whoever funds the creation of the material), and what I have been able to find online.

To me these materials should be available for download online without a fee and targeted for teachers and students. That is a feasible goal and a method that most completely meets the mission.

The NSF is funding many excellent concepts with good results (see examples below). Still the opportunity is there for these efforts to be much more effective with a better use of the internet in my opinion. I think there would be great benefit to funding several grants that would then serve as advisers and provide technical support to creating a much richer result for teachers and students. There are obviously challenges with how to do this and how to coordinate the efforts but the potential benefits are huge.

If I were allocating funds I would set this up in a way that the primary grants (projects like LITTE and those listed below) included funds that was to be used for services from these “technical support and advisers.” Then those getting the primary grants could chose which of the providers they wanted to use to provide the service (they should essentially work for those getting the primary grants). In order to use those funds in any other way they would have to demonstrate they were effectively using the internet already (and the expectations would be for a much better use than any I have seen thus far for this NSF grants).

Previous posts about similar NSF funded efforts:

The Future is Plastics

Polymer science for everyone: Case School of Engineering faculty, students show that plastics can be interesting—and lots of fun. World of polymers brought to kids at Cleveland Museum of Natural History event.

“Do you guys do birthday parties?”

That was the question a mother of four young girls asked Case School of Engineering professors Christoph Weder and Stuart J. Rowan as they brought the intricate world of polymers to a whole new audience visiting the Cleveland Museum of Natural History on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, January 16.
…
Finally, undergraduate student Eric Giles, postdoctoral researcher Michael Schroeter and graduate student Wengui Weng highlighted the potential of polymeric materials in high-tech applications with their presentation, titled “The Future is Plastic!” They demonstrated the potential of polymer technology developed at Case, including stimuli-responsive polymer gels, high-strength/ultra light polymer AeroClay nanocomposites, smart polymers with built-in deformation and temperature sensors and shape memory materials.

via Polymer Science for Everyone

Chinese Engineering Innovation Plan

Building a self-innovation China:

Self-innovation has become a top priority to advance science and technology in China. Chinese President Hu Jintao launched the drive to build China into a self-innovative country by the end of 2020 early this year during the first national science and technology conference in the 21st century.
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Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice minister of Nat’l Development & Reform Comm., said: “In the next five years, the central government will set up 100 state-level engineering laboratories and push for the construction of 50 state engineering project research centers in the fields of the Internet, coal mine gas monitoring and digital equipment. These moves will help build technological centers in several hundred large-scale enterprises in various sectors.”

Wow! That’s Engineering?

Develop, Design, Discover: Women Innovating with Technology Week

Beginning on March 8th at our “Wow! That’s Engineering?” event in Chicago, and continuing through April 19th, the Society of Women Engineers is holding an essay contest asking girls ages 10 to 17 to write, in 100 words or less, about an invention/innovation they would create, using technology, to make the world a better place.

Girls will enter to win the ultimate grand prize: a trip to IBM Headquarters in Armonk, NY, where they will spend the day working with a leading engineer at IBM. Additional prizes will include a week at Camp Invention, laptops, MP3 players and more.

Enter the contest

In addition to Chicago events are planned for: Austin, Orlando, Philadelphia, Raleigh and San Francisco. See the web site for more details.

Engineering Education Worldwide

Quality vs. Quantity in Engineering

This article discusses the Duke study (USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates) proposing an adjustment to the numbers used for comparing engineering education results of the United States, China and India.

Like Wadhwa, Johnson suggested that the recent emphasis on increasing the number of engineers in America should take a back seat to promoting quality. “The fact there may be X, Y or Z number of [science and engineering graduates] floating around, doesn’t necessarily speak to the question of does that represent the actual high level high skill innovative talent American industries are looking for,” he said.

K-12 Engineering Education Grant for Purdue

Bechtel $1 million grant for k-12 engineering education programs at Purdue

The $1 million grant from Stephen D. Bechtel Jr is renewable for up to four additional years and will expand Purdue university’s educational research efforts to foster an interest in science and engineering in K-12 classrooms.

The grant will support research and program development in Purdue’s Department of Engineering Education.
Earlier the department received $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to launch the Multidisciplinary Engineering program.

Engineers Discuss: Is America Falling Behind?

Is America Falling Behind? Engineers Discuss Ways to Stem the Brain Drain by Chriss Swaney, Carnegie Mellon Today

“We still lead the world in research and development,” Carnegie Mellon University Engineering Dean Pradeep Khosla, said. “We can make the changes necessary to be competitive.”

“We must train engineers who will be managing, creating and deploying innovation.” – Khosla

Pittsburgh Post Gazzette article

$20 Million for Georgia Tech School of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Georgia Tech School of Industrial and Systems Engineering Receives $20 Million Commitment

Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), ranked No. 1 in the country for the past 15 years by U.S. News & World Report, has received a commitment of $20 million from Georgia Tech alumnus H. Milton “Milt” Stewart and his wife, Carolyn Stewart.

The commitment establishes a permanent endowment, the income from which will be available for unrestricted use within ISyE.