Letter from the President
Weave Students Into Engineering, Don’t Weed Them Out
A mindset change is overdue.
By Jenna Carpenter
For much of its history, engineering education in the US has weeded out all but the perceived “best and brightest,” with the belief that the majority of students who wanted to major in engineering did not have what it takes. In recent years, we have broadened our views of which students have potential to become engineers (and dropped some overt weed-out practices), yet many of the structures, policies, mindsets, traditions, and approaches in engineering education today are still rooted in and perpetuate the weed-out philosophy.
How does weeding out show up? In how we recruit, admit, retain, and graduate students. Our systems filter in students who have enjoyed the most opportunity, not students with the most ability. Preparation and background are a consequence of opportunity, not ability. What kind of opportunity? Family wealth, education, and social status. Access to higher-quality K–12 education with strong math and science preparation. Family legacies of college-going that offer knowledge of how to prepare for and get into college, as well as how college works—in addition to access to tutoring, SAT/ACT prep courses, and repeated test-taking to boost scores.
How does weeding out show up in our courses and programs? Expecting strong background knowledge of all students, curving grades, and cramming in too much material too quickly, with little depth or conceptual mastery. A heavy focus on memorization, rote problem-solving, and theory with little application or context. Primary reliance on lecture versus hands-on, team-based experiences. One-and-done grading that doesn’t provide opportunities for students to learn and grow.
It is time to update our notions of teaching and learning. We know better. We need student-centered cultures that embrace diverse cohorts of students with varied precollege opportunities, use asset-based approaches, and provide personalized on-ramps and pathways that foster success and persistence versus attrition. Our nation’s need for a growing engineering workforce requires both more graduates and more diverse perspectives to improve innovation, design, and the ability to solve complex problems. Demographics show a long-declining birth rate resulting in fewer high school graduates. Moreover, graduates are increasingly from historically marginalized populations that engineering struggles to attract, coupled with declines in populations that engineering typically does attract.
Broadening access is critical to the future of engineering and engineering higher education. Institutions will have to admit students into engineering whom they might have turned away in the past in order to keep their enrollments steady. We must figure out how to retain and educate the students we have today, not the students we had 10 or 20 years ago. It is time to welcome the nation’s diverse array of students into engineering and provide the robust support, thriving environments, and engaging experiences that empower them to become outstanding engineers. It is not about lowering standards or quality of graduates. It is about setting appropriate expectations and helping students meet them, versus expecting students to walk in the door already possessing the knowledge, skills, and background required to do so.
What can you do to weave students in? Examine your messages and images about what engineering is and who can study engineering. Collect data on your students. What attributes predict success and how can you use that information to intentionally recruit students with a wider array of backgrounds? Admit students directly into engineering the first year. Look at entry-level math and science requirements. What is actually necessary? Create multiple pathways and support services for students with different precollege preparation. Create robust entry-level courses to engage students in engineering from day one. Lighten students’ load the first semester while they figure college out. Provide training on study skills, time management, and organization. Normalize questioning and seeking help. Teach students to take ownership for their learning and practice self-discipline and motivation. Work to build engineering identity, a sense of belonging, and community among students, faculty, and staff.
What are we at ASEE doing to weave students in? Speaking to the Engineering Societies Education Roundtable Pathways Task Force about ways that engineering professional organizations can support this effort. Partnering with the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance to hold a listening session to collect student voices on these issues. Cohosting an NSF-funded NAE-ASEE conference to develop a framework of evidence-based programs for recruiting, admitting, and onboarding engineering students as well as providing skills-development training for students. Pursuing additional funding to help institutions implement this framework. Enlisting engineering schools to adopt evidence-based programs to admit, retain, and graduate a more diverse cohort of engineering students. To support these efforts or stay informed, contact me at carpenter@campbell.edu.
Jenna P. Carpenter is President of ASEE.
This letter is adapted from Carpenter’s speech at the 2022 ASEE Annual Conference in June. Go to https://bit.ly/3Rx7rwt to access a video of the speech.
2022 ASEE Annual Conference Highlights
After gathering virtually for the past two years, ASEE Annual Conference attendees joyfully reunited in person at the Minneapolis Convention Center for an exhilarating series of in-person workshops, paper presentations, and fellowship. Here are some memorable moments. 1) Jodi Benson, chief innovation, technology, and quality officer at General Mills, kicked off the Annual Conference with an inspiring keynote speech at the Monday Plenary. 2) A dazzling display greeted attendees at the Exhibit Hall’s opening reception. 3) The Taste of Minneapolis featured great weather, food, music, and henna body art. 4) Bina Venkataraman, a US journalist, author, and science and technology policy expert, led Tuesday’s Plenary session. 5) Focus on Exhibits sessions gave attendees and exhibitors a chance to talk shop while showcasing new products. 6) Multiple workshops included interactive, hands-on activities. 7) Betul Bilgin was among the NSF grantees to present at the annual poster session. 8) and 9) Attendees contributed musings and artwork to ASEE’s Living Wall and Social Justice Wall, which commemorated and honored George Floyd’s legacy in Minneapolis. 10) ASEE’s inaugural Student Showcase was a huge success, drawing more than 100 projects by students from grade school to college. 11) Incoming ASEE President Jenna Carpenter received the gavel from President Adrienne Minerick and recognized her work and service at the President’s Farewell Reception. Catch more inspiring events next June in Baltimore, as we celebrate ASEE’s 130th year of advancing excellence and equity in engineering and technology education!
All images are copyright ASEE unless otherwise noted.
Image courtesy of Eva Miller
Image courtesy of Mary Lord
An Accidental Pioneer
ASEE’s teacher of the year leverages tech ‘experiments’ to boost learning, engagement, and equity.
By Mary Lord
He developed Cal Poly Pomona’s first massive open online course (MOOC), produced podcasts before they became commonplace, and created videos that have transformed learning for a diverse undergraduate population in both his own and his colleagues’ classes. Such instructional innovations have earned Paul Nissenson stellar evaluations and professional honors. Don’t look for computer science expertise on his accolade-studded CV, however. “My knowledge of technology is confined to what’s useful in education,” explains Nissenson, professor and associate chair of mechanical engineering and ASEE’s 2022 Outstanding Teaching Award recipient.
Little in Nissenson’s Southern California upbringing pointed to a trailblazing career in engineering education. An avid reader, runner, and high school valedictorian, he enjoyed helping muddled classmates in math and science. Yet at the University of California Irvine, where he majored in physics, he “could never imagine” becoming a professor like his “amazing and brilliant” instructors. “How can I ever be as smart as them?” he recalls wondering.
After earning a BS in 2003, Nissenson started graduate studies in mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Irvine more “because it was the next thing to do” than to fulfill any academic ambitions. His adviser pivoted him toward a PhD—and engineering education—by creating teaching and training opportunities beyond the “ineffective” half-day workshop for TAs while guiding his investigations in aerosols, computer modeling, and air quality.
“I could do the research, but what got me through was knowing that I had a shot at teaching,” reflects Nissenson. He honed his skills (and confidence) by attending various faculty members’ classes—a practice he continues—and soon could pinpoint what he’d do differently, such as enlarging fonts so that slides were legible from the back seats. He also noted student reactions during lectures and recorded himself to identify and correct any “mannerisms.”
Nissenson spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Irvine before following his heart in 2011 to Cal Poly Pomona, a public institution with 6,600 engineering students, where he could pursue his passion for teaching undergraduates. Encouraged by his “very supportive” department chair and a university-wide promotion and tenure policy that prioritized excellent teaching, Nissenson began experimenting with digital systems. His aim: leverage technology to boost engagement and provide “as many opportunities to learn as possible” for students who often skip or come to class tired or distracted by work and family issues.
“Things could have gone horribly wrong,” underscores Nissenson. Every project risked sapping time and budgets, flopping with students, or torpedoing his tenure prospects. Even successful initiatives—like the popular Introduction to Excel VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) Programming MOOC that Nissenson developed and delivered for $10,000, a fraction of what universities typically invest—had to improve achievement or he ended them.
So far, Nissenson’s experiments have borne fruit. An early venture—making Khan Academy–style video tutorials and recording lectures on Camtasia—enabled him to flip two core courses, introductory programming and fluid mechanics, from lectures to problem-solving and discussion sessions. Drop/fail/withdraw rates plunged to 11 percent in the new format versus 34 percent in traditional lecture sections; course evaluations rose; and costs fell as an e-book and online assessments replaced textbooks.
The interactive format made alumnus John Kest love attending class. His grades improved and without “the stress of taking notes” he could pay better attention. The process of “struggling to figure things out on my own first before asking for help relates the most to what I do now,” the petroleum engineer wrote in supporting Nissenson’s award nomination.
Technology also advances Nissenson’s quest to “eliminate wasted time.” He uses the department’s GroupMe chat app and Discord server, which he oversees, to communicate daily with hundreds of students. Likewise, his podcast, The Engineering Student Experience, sprang from his desire to efficiently field students’ frequently asked questions about college, grad school, and careers. Nissenson says he selects episode topics—ranging from being an engineering transfer student to engineering in large warehouses—because he’s “often just generally curious.”
Nissenson’s impact extends beyond his classroom. In addition to organizing engineering faculty development events, he played a lead role in developing his department’s ME Online library, www.cpp.edu/meonline, a free educational resource with more than 600 videos that has attracted over 12 million views. He also has held leadership roles in ASEE’s Pacific Southwest Section since 2014, serving as its 2018–19 chair.
A global audience could benefit from Nissenson’s latest collaboration: working with faculty from across campus to beef up their online repository of video tutorials with additional topics to reach educators and students everywhere. As he exhorted when accepting ASEE’s award, “the technology is begging us to experiment.”
Watch a clip of Nissenson accepting ASEE’s 2022 Outstanding Teaching Award at the 2022 Annual Conference.
Call for Papers
ASEE’s 2023 Annual Conference will be held in Baltimore, Maryland, June 25–28.
The Society’s divisions are “publish to present.” All papers must be submitted for peer review in order to be presented at the Conference and subsequently published in the proceedings.
The submission process is as follows:
- All authors must submit an abstract of their papers to be reviewed and evaluated.
- Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper draft to be reviewed by three engineering educators.
- A draft may be accepted as submitted, accepted with minor or major changes, or rejected.
- Successful review and acceptance of the full paper draft will allow a final paper to be presented at the Annual Conference.
- Exceptions to the “publish to present” requirement include invited speakers and panels.
Abstract submissions have been extended to November 30, 2022.
For more information, go to the 2023 Annual Conference page. Questions? Please contact the ASEE Conferences staff.
CoNECD Registration Open
ASEE’s Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity (CoNECD) conference is the only such event dedicated to all the diverse groups that comprise the engineering and computing workforce.
The 2023 conference will take place February 26–28 in New Orleans. Registration is now open.
The vision of the CoNECD (pronounced “connected”) conference is to provide a forum for exploring current research and practices to enhance diversity and inclusion of all underrepresented populations in the engineering and computing professions.
CoNECD includes women; individuals of diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds as well as varied gender identities and expressions; the LGBTQ+ community; people with disabilities; veterans; and first-generation college students.
Constitutional Amendment on 2023 Ballot
ASEE’s 2023 Election Ballot will ask members to vote on a change to the Society’s constitution in addition to candidates for seats on the Board of Directors. The amendment, which would eliminate the ASEE Projects Board, has the support of the Board of Directors. The ballot will state:
The ASEE Board of Directors requests your support to eliminate the Projects Board. If you approve, Article III, Section 14, of the ASEE Constitution will be removed. That section currently reads as follows:
Section 14.
The Society shall have a Projects Board named by the Board of Directors. The Vice President External Relations shall serve as the Chair of the Projects Board. The terms of the members of the Projects Board shall be at the discretion of the Board of Directors. The bylaws of the Projects Board shall be provided by the Board of Directors.
JUSTIFICATION
The Project Board’s purpose is to oversee and assist ASEE in the pursuit of grants and contracts. Given the flexibility accorded grants, historically the Projects Board has been most concerned about contracts, due to the legal obligations they impose on ASEE.
Over the past few years, ASEE has worked to increase the number of grants it manages (principally with the National Science Foundation) and decrease the number of contracts it manages (principally with the Department of Defense and individual military services). This trend has accelerated during Dr. Jacqueline El-Sayed’s term as Managing Director of Professional Services and the Society’s first Chief Academic Officer.
Because of the waning number of government contracts, the ASEE Board of Directors believes that there is no longer a continuing need for the Projects Board. In lieu of the Projects Board, the ASEE Executive Committee will review all future contract proposals. As is the current practice, 1) the Vice President External Relations will continue to convene ad hoc Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) for human-subject reviews, as needed, for all future grant and contract proposals, and 2) regular reports on all ASEE grant activities will continue to be given at meetings of the ASEE Board of Directors.
Members will vote online from mid-January to mid-February. Members who would prefer a paper ballot may send a request to Sylvie Nguyen-Fawley, ASEE senior assistant board secretary, at s.nguyen-fawley@asee.org.
Awards for Prism
ASEE’s art and editorial teams continued their award winning streak in 2021–2022:
APEX Awards for Publication Excellence
David McNeill, Environment—Energy (Feature Writing), “Fukushima 10 Years Later.” March/April 2021
Francis Igot, Design and Illustration—Covers, “Road Map for Recovery.” May 2021
The 28th Annual Communicator Awards
Award of Excellence:
Jennifer Pocock, Writing—Feature, “Wisdom of the Ages.” January 2021
Beryl Lieff Benderly and Yara Palin, Writing—Feature, “Viral Load.” May 2021
Thomas K. Grose, Writing—Feature, “Sure Shots.” May 2021
Deborah Lee Rose, Writing—Feature, “Window on Our World.” November 2020
Francis Igot, Design—Cover, “Road Map for Recovery.” May 2021
Francis Igot, Design—Cover, “I-Way Robbery.” September 2021
ASEE Art Department, Design—Full Issue, “Fallout.” March/April 2021
Awards of Distinction:
Prism Contributors and ASEE Editorial Department, Writing—Full Issue, “Fallout.” March/April 2021
Toni Rigolosi, Design—Infographic, “Community College Paths to ET Bachelor’s Degrees.” November/December 2021
Toni Rigolosi, Design—Feature, “Sure Shots.” May 2021
AM&P Network EXCEL Awards
Bronze:
David McNeill, Magazines—Feature Article, “Fukushima 10 Years Later: Engineering a Recovery.” March/April 2021
In Memoriam
ASEE mourns the passing in July of longtime member James “Jim” Stice. The University of Texas at Austin professor emeritus of chemical engineering was 93.
Stice joined ASEE in 1961 and became a Fellow in 1987. Over the years, he earned such accolades as the Society’s Chester F. Carlson Award for Innovation in Engineering Education (1984); Distinguished Service Award (1997); Benjamin Garver Lamme Award (2010); and Lifetime Achievement Award (2014). He was also an ASEE Centennial Medallion recipient (1993).
The Society member received his bachelor’s of science in chemical engineering from University of Arkansas. Stice attended the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago for his master’s and PhD degrees. Between his graduate degrees, he worked in industry but fell in love with teaching.
Stice joined the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville faculty and then, after moving to Austin, started at the University of Texas (UT). He remained there until his retirement in 1996. As his obituary notes, “His interest in each student, his wit, and his teaching methods made him a very popular teacher.”
At UT, Stice became the first head of the school’s Center for Teaching Effectiveness and helped train teaching assistants and professors. In 1995, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of University of Arkansas. In 2005, he was inducted into the inaugural class of the Arkansas Academy of Chemical Engineers.
Stice loved traveling the world, and he visited 30 US national parks. He also enjoyed stamp collecting, cats, crossword puzzles, and martinis.
Society Partners With the Association of African Universities
In July, ASEE signed a five-year memorandum of understanding with the Association of African Universities to become the AAU’s North American STEM office. This MoU formalizes the Society as one of AAU’s nodal US offices.
The AAU comprises more than 400 higher learning institutions across the linguistic and geographic divides of Africa. The organization endeavors to raise the quality of higher education in Africa and strengthen its contribution to Africa’s development by fostering collaboration among its member institutions; providing support to their core functions of teaching, learning, research, and community engagement; and facilitating critical reflection on, and consensus-building around, issues affecting higher education and the development of Africa.
The agreement with ASEE will help the two organizations build synergies and amplify the contribution of the higher education sectors to socio-economic development in both Africa and North America. In pursuit of this agenda, AAU and ASEE will work together in the next five years on academic mobility, commissioned joint research, staff and institutional capacity building, resource mobilization, and infrastructure development. The two institutions will undertake various research projects and disseminate educational information and scientific research findings through workshops, conferences, seminars, and multimedia channels.
ASEE will also provide office space, where the coordination of the AAU’s STEM-related activities and engagements in North America will be carried out for the mutual benefit of AAU members in Africa and universities in the US.
According to the secretary-general of the Association of African Universities, Olusola Oyewole, “this collaboration between the AAU and ASEE is envisaged to have wider and far-reaching impact for faculty, students, networks, and broadly higher education institutions in both Africa and North America. The AAU remains committed to forging strategic partnerships, such as this current partnership with ASEE, to attain its target of strengthening African higher education institutions.”
The agreement marks an alignment between the mutual interests of the two organizations to advance collaboration and interactions for the mutual benefit of North American and African faculty, students, and staff in STEM disciplines.
Learn more at www.asee.org/AAU and https://aau.org.
ASEE Achieves Key Priorities in Science and Technology Legislation
By Miriam Quintal and Amanda Bruno
On August 9, President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS+), a long-awaited competitiveness and innovation package that is one of the most comprehensive in decades. The bill passed with bipartisan support, receiving votes in favor from almost all Democrats, 15 Republican senators, and 24 Republican House members. CHIPS+ includes many policy provisions that ASEE championed and helped shape.
The legislation authorizes approximately $102 billion to advance major research and workforce initiatives at the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); creates a new national bioeconomy research and development initiative; and establishes regional technology hubs at the Department of Commerce (DOC). In addition, the bill appropriates $54 billion in funding for semiconductor research and development, manufacturing, tax incentives, and workforce development, as well as advanced wireless innovation infrastructure and development. The authorized provisions did not come with appropriations, and thus funding will need to come through regular appropriations or other special funding vehicles.
CHIPS+ authorizes $81 billion for NSF over five years, growing annual authorized funding to $19 billion in fiscal year 2027. As ASEE advocated, the House and Senate struck a balance between their visions of how much funding should be authorized for the recently established Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) versus the rest of NSF. Input from both chambers was also incorporated into the topics the new Directorate should concentrate on. TIP will focus both on 10 key technology areas of national security relevance, as proposed by the Senate, and national, societal, and geostrategic challenges proposed by the House.
ASEE’s advocacy influenced authorization of several new programs, such as one to boost recruitment, retention, and advancement of underrepresented minority faculty modeled on the NSF ADVANCE program; capacity-building programs for minority-serving institutions; grants to study workforce pathways and needs at four-year institutions; new centers to scale STEM education innovations in formal and informal learning settings; grants to study rural STEM education challenges; and a new National Science Corps for master teachers.
The legislation also includes strong support for NSF graduate fellowships and traineeships; new requirements for graduate mentoring plans in all proposals; expansion of the Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program; the codification of the newly named Eddie Bernice Johnson NSF INCLUDES Initiative, which supports large-scale partnerships to broaden participation in STEM; and provisions to support caregivers and combat sexual harassment in STEM.
The bill also includes new requirements to increase research accessibility, accountability, and security, such as new gift reporting requirements for institutions; authorization of a new National Secure Data Service; new agency requirements on NSF and DOE to maintain tools and processes for managing research security threats; and a requirement for NSF to work with an independent organization to identify key technology areas that may lead to the development of controlled unclassified or classified information.
ASEE was active in advocacy on this legislation over the past two and a half years, including engagements with numerous congressional member offices through Capitol Hill Days during the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Engineering Deans Public Policy Colloquiums; early meetings of engineering deans with key committee staff go as far back as the initial drafting of the component legislation in 2020. The Society endorsed several individual bills that ultimately made it into the legislation and shared conference priorities with House and Senate leadership as well as all 26 Senate and 81 House conferees multiple times throughout the conferencing process. ASEE additionally spearheaded a multi-organization letter in support of immigration provisions that would have made it easier for international students to achieve green card status after receiving an advanced degree from a US institution. While the letter rallied community support, with 33 other professional societies and institutions signing on, ultimately the effort to include the provision in final legislation was unsuccessful. ASEE continues to seek other avenues to expand green card access for advanced degree holders.
Going forward, ASEE will champion funding for the authorized provisions in the CHIPS and Science Act and work to ensure that these initiatives are established over the next several years.
Miriam Quintal and Amanda Bruno are ASEE’s Washington representatives at government relations firm Lewis-Burke Associates, LLC. Access Lewis-Burke’s full analysis of the legislation.