Increase in Doctoral Degrees Awarded: Top 5 Engineering Disciplines

This month's Databyte presents the top five engineering disciplines whose percentage of doctoral degrees awarded increased the most between 2003 and 2013. Biomedical doctoral degrees awarded showed the largest increase, with an increase of over 280 percent; followed by three computer related disciplines - computer science (inside engineering), electrical engineering, and electrical/computer engineering. Mechanical engineering saw the fifth largest increase with 84 percent.

PANEL OKs VERSION OF FIRST ACT OPPOSED BY MOST ACADEMICS

The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee has sent its Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology Act (FIRST) Act to the full House, with the panel's Republicans lining up in favor and Democrats opposed. Party-line votes on a series of amendments and on final approval diminished chances of an ultimate bipartisan compromise if and when the Senate passes its own measure. The bill, covering the Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is the first of two bills reauthorizing agencies included in America COMPETES. Most troublesome to the academic community, which mostly lined up against the bill, was the insistence by Chairman Lamar Smith (R, Tex.) on a third criterion -- beyond merit and broader impacts -- for NSF grants. It requires that a grant be "in the national interest," with a written justification that it has the potential to achieve: increased economic competitiveness; advancement of the health and welfare of the American public; development of a STEM workforce and increased public scientific literacy; increased partnerships between academia and industry; support for the national defense; or promotion of the progress of science in the United States. The bill authorizes just one year of funding and at a total that comes in lower than the sum approved by the GOP-led appropriations committee.

LARGE MAJORITY IN HOUSE VOTES TO BOOST NSF, NASA SPENDING

The Commerce, Justice, Science appropriation, containing increases of three percent for the National Science Foundation and one percent for NASA, passed the full House 321-87. The lopsided majority in favor bodes well for bipartisan cooperation this year when it comes to science appropriations. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Rep. Lamar Smith (r-Tex.) tried to slice $15.3 million out of the NSF Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences directorate and reallocate it. But although their amendment passed, it will have no practical effect, according to the Association of American Universities' Weekly Wrapup. That's because "appropriators fund NSF research through the broad category of Research and Related Activities and not at the level of individual research directorates." Before finishing with NASA, lawmakers stripped out space-food technology.

CLIMATE CHANGE A SECURITY THREAT, SENATE PANEL TOLD

"The impacts (of global warming) . . . may aggravate existing or trigger new risks to U.S. interests," Daniel Y. Chiu, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, told the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee recently. Instability could arise from impaired access to food and water, damaged infrastructure, disease, mass migration, and competition for natural resources, among other causes. The Pentagon's climate-related R&D includes developing ways to assess the vulnerability of military installations worldwide. Chiu appeared alongside Navy assistant secretary Dennis McGinn, Edward Thomas Morehouse, Jr., a principal deputy assistant secretary of defense, and Brig. Gen. Kenneth D. Lewis of the joint staff. Besides climate, the hearing dealt with Pentagon energy innovation, and the Arctic.

ALIENATING DEEP LEARNERS

Sense-making, valued by engineers, can be discouraged in class.

By Brian Danielk, Ayush Gupta and Andrew Elby

It's no secret that many undergraduates feel alienated in their engineering programs and that such students often leave engineering. Our case study of "Michael," an electrical and computer engineering major at a large state university, highlights a previously underexplored reason that some students feel alienated. Michael felt that his ways of knowing and learning conflicted with the norms of his engineering program, which he thought rewarded procedural rather than deep understanding.

Across 12 hours of interviews conducted over three years, complemented by 12 classroom observations, Michael continually displayed "sense-making" habits of mind. He tried to understand the conceptual meaning of equations instead of just following rote procedures, and he sought to unite multiple representations and formal and informal knowledge about a concept or a physics/engineering situation into an integrated whole. He also tried to connect information across his math, physics, and engineering courses when solving a problem. Coordinating multiple representations and blending multiple streams of knowledge is characteristic of expert engineering practice; and all our observations indicate that Michael's approach to learning and sense-making resembled expert practice.

Furthermore, this type of sense-making isn't just something Michael does; it's part of who he is, as he emphasized repeatedly: I generally have a lot of pride [in sense-making] and . . . I feel that if [I] say something that makes absolutely no sense, like that's just the worst thing for me.

However, this sense-making aspect of his identity also made him feel alienated from what he perceived as the dominant culture of engineering instruction. Michael felt that almost all his courses rewarded quick, procedural problem solving over the deeper, integrated understanding he liked to pursue. He felt that pursuing deep learning (instead of grinding through dozens of repetitive practice problems) could actually hurt his grades because he wouldn't be as quick at carrying out calculations on exams. Additionally, he said that his pursuit of deep understanding placed him at odds with classmates and mentors; in one interview, making light of the matter, he said that some people call his commitment to sense-making "an illness."

In his first year, he resisted compromising his learning for the sake of grades. But over time, as the coursework became harder, Michael talked about adapting to the system: For the record, I got straight A's last semester. . . . I think the reason [my devotion to sense-making] actually hasn't affected my GPA is because I view learning as a hobby. So, as with any hobby, you shouldn't let it interfere with your GPA. But it is one of my hobbies, and I do enjoy learning, I just — up to the point where I get my grades done.

In demoting deeper learning to a "hobby," Michael compromised part of who he is in order to continue succeeding in his program. This tension between the reward system of the program and his sense-making identity led to frustration and alienation. As of the end of our study, Michael had taken a leave of absence from his program — maybe temporary, maybe not — to co-found a software start-up company.

In summary, our study illustrates how feelings of alienation stemming from tension between one's identity and an engineering program can arise for an ironic reason: Michael finds his sense-making identity — the sort of sense-making employed by professional engineers — conflicts with the intellectual expectations of his engineering program. Based on this work, we urge engineering educators to expand the focus of retention efforts to include retaining and rewarding engineering sense-making practices.

Brian A. Danielak is a post-doctoral researcher in engineering education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ayush Gupta is a research assistant professor of physics and instructor in the School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where Andrew Elby is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, Policy, and Leadership. This article is excerpted from "The Marginalized Identities of Sense-makers: Reframing Engineering Student Retention" in the January 2014 issue of the Journal of Engineering Education. This work was supported by NSF grant EEC-0835880.

IN AMERICA'S CLASSROOMS, A RACIAL MISMATCH

This fall, according to Arne Duncan, U.S. education secretary, his department projects that the majority of America's public school students will be nonwhite. That's a history-making demographic change. But, the Associated Press reports, America's teaching force is nowhere near as diverse as the students it teaches, according to two new studies from the Center for American Progress and the National Education Association (NEA). The center's most recent statistics showed that the U.S. student body was racing toward the tipping point that Duncan says will occur this autumn: 48 percent of students were nonwhite (23 percent were Hispanic, 16 percent black and 5 percent Asian). But in 2012, of the 3.3 million primary and secondary teachers in the U.S., 82 percent were white. Only 8 percent were Hispanic, 7 percent black and 2 percent Asian. Kevin Gilbert, an NEA executive committee member, says it would be easier for children of color to excel in school if more of their teachers looked like them. "Nothing can help motivate our students more than to see success standing right in front of them," he told the AP. Changing those numbers won't be easy, the NEA study says, noting that most states have programs in place to boost the numbers of minority teachers, "but the yield of new teachers of color is disappointing."

BUDDING INVENTORS SHINE AT WHITE HOUSE SCIENCE FAIR

The annual White House Science Fair is one of President Obama's favorite events. And this year's, the fourth so far, had plenty of exhibits to keep him entertained and amazed. For example: a "sandless" sandbag that's more efficient at keeping flood waters at bay, designed by Peyton Robertson, 12; a "concussion cushion" that would make football helmets safer, invented by Maria Hanes, 19; and magnets developed by 14-year-old Kavita Selva that contain little or none of the "rare earth" metals that are becoming increasingly expensive. The focus of this year's fair was women in STEM disciplines. Noting that women comprise only a small number of America's STEM workforce, Obama said "that means we got half our team we're not even putting on the field. We've got to change those numbers." The president announced at the fair a new, $35 million Education Department competition to help with the administration's goal to train 100,000 teachers, the New York Times reports. The White House is also enlarging an existing AmeriCorps program that aims to improve STEM education for 18,000 low-income students, the Times says. The students selected for the fair -- including some as young as 6 and 8 -- were winners of nationwide STEM competitions and came from 30 different states.

Webinar: How Can Symbolics Help Engage Students and Enrich Controls Curriculum

In this webinar, learn new techniques for using symbolic computation to engage students, enriching their understanding of systems and enhancing the way control design is taught. Different aspects of controls, including multidomain plant modeling, linearization, design and controller testing with hardware will be demonstrated.

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The advanced National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI-2) is a two-day workshop given once every two years. This year's is scheduled for July 14-16 in Montreal. It is designed to add to the pedagogical expertise of engineering instructors who are knowledgeable about the subjects covered in NETI-1. Two instructional approaches will provide the foundation for the workshop content: cooperative learning and inductive teaching and learning (inquiry-based and problem-based learning). Topics covered for each technique will include definitions, learning benefits and the research base that demonstrates them, implementation suggestions, problems that may arise in implementation and how to avoid them, and how the methods can be used to address ABET Outcomes 3a-3k and promote' development of conceptual understanding and high-level thinking and problem-solving skills. In February of a year in which NETI-2 will be given, nominations from deans and self-nominations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis, and will be closed at 50 enrollees