He earned his BS in Ceramic Engineering from the Ohio State University and his MS and PhD in Materials Science and Mineral Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. He then joined the Mechanical Engineering department at the University of New Mexico where he taught Materials Science, Thermodynamics, Manufacturing Engineering, and Technical Communication. Martin then joined Johnson Matthey Electronics/Honeywell Electronic Materials where he held positions in Technical Service, Product Management, Six Sigma, and Research & Development. He is inventor on a dozen patents and patent applications and has published over 30 papers and book chapters on topics including ceramic processing, Pb-free solder development, experimental design, and biomechanics. Dr. Saad received his high school education in Lebanon. His BS and MS were received from Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. The emphasis of his master's dissertation was on a finite element analysis of a solder joint under thermal loading. Dr. Saad received his PhD from Washington State University in Pullman, WA. His research focused on the energy dissipation function of an abrasive water jet cutting through steel. In addition to this, Dr. Saad has taught a vast number of engineering classes at many institutions and is currently teaching, among other classes, Statics, Strength of Materials, Dynamics and Senior Capstone at Eastern Washington University. Professor Durfee received his BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University. He holds a Professional Engineer certification. Prior to teaching at Eastern Washington University he was a military pilot, an engineering instructor at West Point and an airline pilot. His interests include aerospace, aviation, professional ethics and piano technology.

DURFEE received his BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University. He holds a Professional Engineer certification. Prior to teaching at Eastern Washington University he was a military pilot, an engineering instructor at West Point and an airline pilot. His interests include aerospace, aviation, professional ethics and piano technology. Hani Saad, Eastern Washington University Dr. Saad received his high school education in Lebanon, his native country. He received his BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. His doctorate was awarded by Washington State University in Pullman, WA also in the field of mechanical engineering. His areas of interests are Heat Transfer and Thermodynamics.

Teaching technical writing to engineering students is a challenging task since they are very math oriented and reluctant to recognize the importance of the topic. But communication is most definitely an engineering asset that any successful engineer must have. The goal of this research is to compare the technical writing performance of students before and after a series of changes were implemented in the university's technical writing course 'Laboratory Analysis and Reports'. These changes included providing more feedback to students, allowing them to resubmit assignments after an initial grading, reading assignments in front of the class, reading, summarizing and discussing technical papers in addition to other laboratory exercises. The results are evaluated by grading a number of student final projects from the pre and post-changes cases. The final project is an extensive report on a fictitious experiment the students have designed and supposedly executed. The idea is not to have them execute the experiment, but write effectively about it. Grading is done without the grader knowing whether the student is from a class where these changes were implemented or not. The assessment was done using six criteria that include: (a) document structure (b) objectives and conclusion, (c) grammar and spelling, (d) quality of writing, (e) depth of analysis and (f) scientific integrity. The results obtained show increases of 8% for categories (a), (c) and (d) , 14% for category (b), 7% for category (f) and a decrease of 3% for category (e). These results suggest that the changes implemented had a positive impact on the technical writing level of the students.

Engineering and Engineering Technology students need to learn to innovate and embrace new technologies as they develop and progress through their careers. The undergraduate degree program needs to provide this first opportunity at innovation allowing the student to gain experience and confidence at solving technological problems. This paper describes the learning experiences in innovation using an undergraduate course in robotics and automation. The course is composed of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Technology students. The paper relates the successful attempt the students had in developing and using innovation through the creation opened-ended industrial robot system projects. The undergraduate student project teams in the course are self-directed and have to use innovation to develop a robotic project of their own design. This breaks the cycle of students just doing the same preset experiments that others have done before them. Although doing preset experiments can reinforce theory given in classroom, it does little to develop skills in innovation, which will be the key to success in the global economy. The course provides an excellent framework for the student teams to demonstrate their ability to innovate using new technology to solve a complex problem while having the mentorship from instructors as they take their first steps in actually doing innovation. The confidence and process used to solve these problems will provide a basis upon which they can formulate new strategies to incorporate new technologies throughout their career.

The Engineering & Design Department of Eastern Washington University (EWU) recently added a Mechanical Engineering (ME) degree to the existing Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) program. The ME program is more theoretical and requires more advanced mathematics where the MET program is more hands-on with mathematics requirements up to Calculus II. However, the programs are taught side-by-side and complement each other. When we developed the ME program we wanted to maintain as much of the strong hands-on aspect of MET program as possible. Therefore, we teach the required Capstone Design and Senior project courses with a mix of ME and MET students. Prior to creating the ME program, we taught these courses to a mixture of MET, Applied Technology, and Manufacturing option students where the emphasis was given to product development and completion of a small production run. With the development of the new ME program, we decided to teach these classes with a combination of ME and MET students and take advantage of the strong research and development approach. We designed the stronger R&D approach to expose the MET students to applications of the theories taught to the ME students. On the other hand, we expose the ME students to the hands-on shop skills involved in prototype development taught to the MET students. We have taught these courses four times with the new R&D focus, and would like to present our findings and plans. Literature Review of Capstone ProjectsYousuf and Mustafa [1] at Savannah State University conducted a capstone project that dealt with Electronic Name Tag (ENT) system that can be used for conferences, visitors' badges, and other purposes. The basic project requirement was to design and build an ENT system using the PIC16C57 microcontroller. The main objective of the project was to familiarize students with Embedded Systems, which is a combination of computer hardware and software, and additional mechanical and electronic parts. Students were required to design the system to perform a dedicated function. The 3D modeling software called Autodesk Inventor was used to design and assemble the case for the ENT system. Students provided the formal presentation with the opportunity to conduct tests with a Stamp Microcontroller, PBASIC compiler and other interfacing devices. This capstone project was implemented within one semester in the Department of Engineering Technology in Spring 2012 for the Civil and Electronics Engineering Technology majors. This project served as a reference for providing students with challenging and exciting hardware and software design experiences that are involved with various fields of 3D modeling, electrical, and physical layout design concept. It provided opportunity for both faculty and students to work in an application oriented environment.