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is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology. Her dissertation research, "Steel Toes and Ponytails: Gender and Belonging in Engineering", investigates the boundaries of membership in engineering in the Capital District of New York. She is honored to be a research assistant on the NSFsponsored study on engineering education reform entitled "The Distributed System of Governance in Engineering Education." In addition to her academic experience, she is a former mechanical engineer with several years of experience in the aviation and construction industries.

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Materials Name Company Catalog Number Comments VWR micro cover glass VWR 48366 249 25 mm x 25 mm, no 1.5

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In this paper it is proposed that the current focus on problems in engineering education and technological literacy may be more constructively reframed by focusing on tensions. Priyan Dias claims engineering has an identity crisis that arises from tensions inherent in: 1) the influence of the profession on society, 2) the role engineers play, and 3) what constitutes valid knowledge in engineering. These are ethical, ontological, and epistemological tensions respectively, which Dias frames as a tension between identities of homo sapiens and homo faber. Beyond the tensions in engineering there are additional tensions that arise for engineering educators that impinge on identity, but derive from educators' beliefs about the aims of education and beliefs about teaching. With respect to the aims of engineering education the tension arises between utilitarian and humanistic aims and plays out through debates about the importance of diversity (inclusion vs. professionalization), discussion of which courses should be included in a curriculum, and the long simmering debate on four year vs. five year engineering degrees in the United States. Tensions that arise from beliefs about teaching are seen in the discussions on the relative merits of summative vs. formative assessment, student-vs. instructorcentered learning, and the relative merits of inquiry-based and active learning. Given that one aspect of the identity of an engineering education is being a problem solver, faculty may perceive these tensions as a problem or conflict to be solved. An alternative view is to see tensions as both necessary and generative. Tensions are necessary since they are a natural part of human affairs and generative in that tensions highlight dialectics from which new truths or perspectives emerge. From this viewpoint a key element of faculty development is developing a defensible personal philosophy that both lets one navigate and learn from the inevitable tensions that will arise in practice as well as contribute to larger dialogs from which new systems and forms of education emerge. IntroductionIn the United States there is a long history in engineering education of critical self-reflection and focusing on problems. This is not surprising because as early as the nineteenth century the United States possessed a Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education that had sponsored the first of these major reflections, and subsequently several more. Socially relevant issues in engineering education (and STEM education more generally) are often identified by nationally distributed reports from blue ribbon panels. In engineering these date back to the Mann report of 1918, through the 1923 Wickenden study, the 1940 Hammond Report, the 1955 Grinter Report, the Goals of Engineering Education report (1968), Engineering Education and Practice in the United States (1985), The Engineer of 2020Engineer of (2004, to the more recent Rising Above the Gathering Storm reports to name a few. The fact that issues are perceived as problems may arise since ...

The importance of design is increasing in undergraduate engineering programs. Design is seen by proponents as a vital element of learning engineering. Compared to courses which focus on engineering analysis, design courses emphasize application of a broad spectrum of knowledge in narrow contexts. The importance of design courses is magnified by their impact on students and their disproportionate importance for assessment and accreditation. One element of design courses, particularly capstone courses, that has received little attention is how to characterize and choose suitable design projects.To better understand what aspects of design projects lead to successful capstone design experiences for students, six years of evaluation data on electrical engineering capstone design projects at a large, public research university were reviewed. Additionally, transcripts from four years of a capstone design course end-of-semester "after action review" by faculty, students, and teaching assistants were reviewed. From this work several characteristics of "successful" capstone projects emerged. While a definition of success is, of course, highly dependent on program specific outcomes, for this study success was defined as a project that was: judged by both students and faculty to have been completed successfully, allowed meaningful contributions by most students on a team, and satisfactorily met written and/or oral reporting requirements. Additionally, where available, comments from program graduates were used to identify successful projects.The specifics of projects varied widely, however several characteristics shared by successful capstone design efforts were identified. One characteristic included projects that were able to be repeated, or iterated, several times during the semester in which the project was given. A second characteristic of successful projects were that they did not fall to either extreme of the technology readiness level (TRL). The third characteristic is that projects did not draw on knowledge beyond which students had been exposed to or outside the discipline. These results provide some guidance on relatively simple ways to improve outcomes in capstone courses. Background: Capstone DesignDesign as an activity is increasing in importance in undergraduate engineering programs both due to ABET criteria and an overall recognition that engineering needs to be more hands-on 1 . Supporters view design as a necessary aspect of learning engineering that plays a unique and important role in the engineering degree program. As a results design is being introduced across the curriculum from freshman courses to the traditional capstone programs. The importance of design, particularly capstone, courses arises both from their purported impact on students and because of their disproportionate role in assessment and accreditation in many program 2 .Despite the importance of design courses to program outcomes, their format varies widely and outcomes are not standardized across programs. For the purposes of this paper des...

Alan Cheville studied optoelectronics and ultrafast optics at Rice University, followed by fourteen years as a faculty member at Oklahoma State University working on terahertz frequencies and engineering education. While at Oklahoma State he developed courses in photonics and engineering design. After serving for two and a half years as a program director in engineering education at the National Science Foundation, he took a chair position in electrical engineering at Bucknell University. He is currently interested in engineering design education, engineering education policy, and the philosophy of engineering education.