Teaching manufacturing processes to undergraduates with industrial and mechanical engineering majors poses a challenge, in that, students have little background from which to begin building their knowledge. Comparing and contrasting different processes becomes just another 'book' problem to solve and/or visualization of the processes is problematical for many students. A 'learning beyond the classroom' experience of industrial field trips has been implemented for four years as a regular class activity and integral part of student learning. The industries selected are local to the college and four field trips per semester are scheduled during regular class time to assure participation of the entire class. Key to this learning experience is that all trips are scheduled to coincide with topics being covered in class. Students are able to 'see' the technology presented in the text, establish a dialogue with the company's engineer and use their observations in class discussions. Small notepads are provided to each student to encourage note taking, improve retention of process details, and provide an opportunity for a student to roleplay, as a practicing engineer. A formal trip report is required and comprised of questions regarding the process technology and products manufactured at the facility. A key question on each trip report states, "What resources, i.e., information and people, would you request if you were a new engineer at this company?" In class, this question sparks discussion and to provides a link between the student's pre-professional experience and their future in the real world. The feedback from the students has been overwhelmingly positive. Assessment of student learning and basic knowledge is evidenced by the significant improvement in quality of the class discussions and the technical content in the trip reports. The feedback from industry has also been positive and their cooperation has been an asset to this activity.

Leadership and small-group skills for engineers are not only important for interacting with the 3-5 people on a design team during their academic career, but for performing well on professional engineering teams, which often include customers, support personnel (who are not engineers), and other constituencies in the workplace. This issue is best captured with this quote from Mr. Our work with freshman engineering students is based on the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) and Klein Group Instrument™ (KGI) assessments, training students to understand their own personality characteristics, and to refine them to become more effective leaders and team members. Our training aims to have students enhance their ability to offer new ideas or solutions to advance the work of their team and to productively address conflict while actively engaging team members and contributing to a constructive team climate. With the combination of MBTI and KGI, students will be trained to consciously recognize differences in personality styles, without labeling a characteristic as a strength or weakness. The results of these two instruments give students an individual 'portrait' of themselves, which is then used as a starting point for discussion, training, interaction with others, and conscious, insightful reflection. With the KGI, each student receives a personal profile comprised of numerous action items to develop group skills at his or her own pace. Our work in this freshman course provides the basic training on the utilization of information provided by these instruments, asks each student to pick two skills from their personal KGI profile, and has developed assignments to promote reflection on their implementation of KGI skills and personal behaviors.

The School of Engineering at Western New England College is redesigning its traditional core curriculum to provide Freshman engineering students with a more integrated and challenging educational experience. We began this evolutionary process by creating two new courses for the Fall 2000 semester -a new four credit hour course called Introduction to Engineering and a one credit hour Engineering Seminar. The content of the new Introduction to Engineering course focused on learning the engineering design process and some of the tools (such as graphics, CAD, and various computer packages) needed to support that design process. This course was designed with a significant portion of its content devoted to hands on exposure to engineering design. The students experienced the entire design process twice during the Fall semester using RoboLab by LEGO-DACTA as a platform to solve engineering problems. In the one credit hour Engineering Seminar, students learned strategies needed to be a successful engineering student (such as time management, test taking strategies, and oral and written communication skills) and were acquainted with various aspects of the engineering profession through trips to local industry and seminars given by practicing engineers.The Introduction to Engineering course was broken into four identical sections, each with fewer than 25 students enrolled. The faculty member teaching the section also served as the academic advisor for the students, allowing the faculty members to better advise students on their academic and professional pursuits. Faculty coordination and cooperation were cornerstones to the successful delivery of course materials. The new courses and curriculum structure were a success because the freshmen were able to demonstrate an understanding and ability to use the design process to solve engineering design problems. I.

Dr. Cindy Waters is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering and she specializes in porous metals for biological and transportation applications, and engineering education. Dr. Waters' research expertise is in the creation and characterization of metallic foams and porous metals for the future of applications ranging from space exploration to biomedical implants. These metals display a high density to strength ratio and improved ability for energy absorption, which leads to usefulness in many applications. Dr. Waters is also known for her engineering education efforts. She has past and current NSF funding with several facets of engineering education and these include: Assessment studies of classroom material science pedagogical implementations; Just in Time Teaching with Web-based Tools of Material Science; Case Studies in Material Science and Various Engineering Disciplines and; Engineering Faculty Barriers to Adopt Evidence-Based (or nontraditional) Teaching Methods. She has been invited to speak at conferences (MRS, MS&T, and ASEE) worldwide on the topic of Material Science education. She serves as the College of Engineering liaison to ASEE and advises the Society of Women Engineers student chapter and leads the students in developing and implementing yearly outreach events for the K-8 female community. She is author of many peer-reviewed conference proceeding and journal papers in the areas of both porous metals and engineering education. Prof. Stephen J. Krause, Arizona State UniversityStephen Krause is professor in the Materials Science Program in the Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University. He teaches in the areas of introductory materials engineering, polymers and composites, and capstone design. His research interests include evaluating conceptual knowledge, misconceptions and technologies to promote conceptual change. He has co-developed a Materials Concept Inventory and a Chemistry Concept Inventory for assessing conceptual knowledge and change for introductory materials science and chemistry classes. He is currently conducting research on NSF projects in two areas. One is studying how strategies of engagement and feedback with support from internet tools and resources affect conceptual change and associated impact on students' attitude, achievement, and persistence. The other is on the factors that promote persistence and success in retention of undergraduate students in engineering. He was a coauthor for best paper award in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2013. Paper ID #15012 engineering positions in industry (in particular, the materials science area) and was Chair of the ASEE Materials Division. She has written in the area of materials science education and is now working on leadership and teaming activities for engineers. Ms. Peggie WeeksPeggie Weeks has twice been a Program Officer at the National Science Foundation and currently serves as External Evaluator on six National Science Foundation projects and centers. She was on the faculty at Corning Community ...

Poster sessions are a common activity at technical conferences, offering authors an opportunity to present their work in this medium and easily establish a dialogue with their colleagues. Students entering college often have a perception that 'posters' were an activity they left behind at the junior-high or high school science fair. This experiential learning activity re-introduces posters and the poster session as an important and effective way to communicate technical information. A 'simulated' technical conference poster session has been developed and implemented as a required class activity within the one-semester, basic Materials Science course. In order to maximize the benefit to the students and achieve the environment necessary for this learning activity, the logistics for the poster session will be outlined. Assessment of the 'poster session' will be presented from both the instructor and student's point of view. To date, the qualitative assessment results show students have a positive opinion on this activity and a better 'understanding' of this presentation medium for technical communication. Assessment by the instructor is highlighted by observations of 'students-teaching-students' and the student's ability to use the 'language of materials science' in both the written information on their posters and in the oral dialogue with their peers about their selected applications or topics.