Education

Engineering design is a fundamental problem-solving model used by the discipline. Effective problem-solving requires the ability to find and incorporate quality information sources. To teach courses in this area effectively, educators need to understand the information needs of engineers and engineering students and their information gathering habits. This book provides essential guidance for engineering faculty and librarians wishing to better integrate information competencies into their curricular offerings. The treatment of the subject matter is pragmatic, accessible, and engaging. Rather than focusing on specific resources or interfaces, the book adopts a process-driven approach that outlasts changing information technologies. After several chapters introducing the conceptual underpinnings of the book, a sequence of shorter contributions go into more detail about specific steps in the design process and the information needs for those steps. While they are based on the latest research and theory, the emphasis of the chapters is on usable knowledge. Designed to be accessible, they also include illustrative examples drawn from specific engineering sub-disciplines to show how the core concepts can be applied in those situations. Part 1: Making the Case for Integrated Information in Engineering Design: Information Literary and Lifelong Learning (Michael Fosmire); Multiple Perspectives on Engineering Design (David Radcliffe); Ways that Engineers Use Design Information (Michael Fosmire); Ethical Information Use and Engineering (Megan Sapp Nelson); Information-Rich Engineering Design: A Model (David Radcliffe). Part 2: Pedagogical Advice on How to Implement in Courses: Build a Firm Foundation: Managing Project Information Effectively and Efficiently (Jon Jeffryes); Find the Real Need: Understanding the Task (Megan Sapp Nelson); Scout the Lay of the Land: Exploring the Broader Context of a Project (Amy Van Epps and Monica Cardella); Draw on Existing Knowledge: Taking Advantage of What is Already Known (Jim Clarke); Make Dependable Decisions: Using Trustworthy Information Wisely (Jeremy Garritano); Make It Real: Finding the Most Suitable Materials and Components (Jay Bhatt); Make It Safe and Legal: Meeting Standards, Codes, and Regulations (Bonnie Osif); Get Your Message Across: The Art of Sharing Information (Patrice Buzzanell and Carla Zoltowski); Reflect and Learn: Extracting New Design and Process Knowledge (David Radcliffe); Preparing Students to be Informed Designers: Assessing and Scaffolding Information Literacy (Senay Purzer and Ruth Wertz).

In this book, nine thought-leaders engage with some of the hottest moral issues in science and ethics. Based on talks originally given at the annual “Purdue Lectures in Ethics, Policy, and Science,” the chapters explore interconnections between the three areas in an engaging and accessible way. Addressing a mixed public audience, the authors go beyond dry theory to explore some of the difficult moral questions that face scientists and policy-makers every day. The introduction presents a theoretical framework for the book, defining the term “bioethics” as extending well beyond human well-being to wider relations between humans, nonhuman animals, the environment, and biotechnologies. Three sections then explore the complex relationship between moral value, scientific knowledge, and policy making. The first section starts with thoughts on nonhuman animal pain and moves to a discussion of animal understanding. The second section explores climate change and the impact of “green” nanotechnology on environmental concerns. The final section begins with dialog about ethical issues in nanotechnology, moves to an exploration of bio-banks (a technology with broad potential medical and environmental impact), and ends with a survey of the impact of biotechnologies on (synthetic) life itself.   Contents: Part 1: Animals: Moral agency, moral considerability, and consciousness (Daniel Kelly) and From minds to minding (Mark Bernstein); Animal Pain: What is it and why does it matter? (Bernard Rollin). Part 2: Environment: The future of environmental ethics (Holmes Rolston III); Climate change, human rights, and the trillionth ton of carbon (Henry Shue); Ethics, environment, and nanotechnology (Barbara Karn). Part 3: Biotechnologies: Nanotechnologies: Science and society (James Leary); Ethical issues in constructing and using bio-banks (Eric Meslin); Synthetic life: A new industrial revolution (Gregory Kaebnick).   

This book lists the work and contributions of thousands of people from many countries, representing numerous fields of endeavor, over many centuries. This work contains the necrologies (names, dates, and a brief biography) up to the year 2000 of people involved in engineering and invention literature. This book is a must for reference collections and those in the media who cover the field of engineering advancement.

This coffee-table book uses color photographs and captions to tell the story of the first one hundred years of the Purdue University School of Chemical Engineering. Formed four years after a chemical engineering curriculum was established at the University, the School grew rapidly in size and reputation. It was a leader in encouraging women and minority students to become engineers, and it produced many substantial scientific contributions. The School continues to provide expertise and solutions to the “grand challenge” problems that the world faces today, whether in energy, nanotechnology, biotechnology, health care, or advanced materials. Among its thirty faculty members, five are members of the National Academy of Engineering.

On Christmas Day in 1854, teachers and advocates of education came together to form the Indiana State Teachers Association. At that time, many Hoosiers did not embrace the concept of "free education," instead believing that schools ought to be funded by those who were being educated. Immediately after ISTA's founding, its members began their advocacy of education, especially free public education for all children. Over the next 150 years, members of the Association stood ready to advance the cause of education. This advancement was neither steady nor easy. The Association endured many crises, some financial and in organizational. Pushed at times by charismatic leaders and driven at other times by the winds of cultural change, the Association was, and still is, an organization of individuals. The history of ISTA is divided into three eras. The first period deals with the defining of the Association and chronicles its quest for universal public education, and its efforts to establish professional standards and secure benefits for teachers. Although this group of educators was a loosely knit association of individuals, they were able to accomplish much. Next the Association became "professional" with a paid staff instead of volunteers, only to be faced with the crisis of the Great Depression. Robert H. Wyatt, a progressive educator, was selected to lead this organization as the depression ended, and he embraced education as a means for social change. Wyatt persistently lobbied legislators for increased funding, which included federal aid for education, although it was a radical idea at the time. Under his direction, ISTA soon became a powerful lobbying group. The final period looks at the Association as it was transformed into a union while still maintaining its success as a lobbying organization. Various issues were key during this period - unification, collective bargaining, rebuilding and refocusing.

Animals in Schools explores important questions in the field of critical animal studies and education by close examination of a wide range of educational situations and classroom activities. How are human- animal relations expressed and discussed in school? How do teachers and students develop strategies to handle ethical conflicts arising from the ascribed position of animals as accessible to human control, use, and killing? How do schools deal with topics such as zoos, hunting, and meat consumption? These are questions that have profound implications for education and society. They are graphically described, discussed, and rendered problematic based on detailed ethnographic research and are analyzed by means of a synthesis of perspectives from critical theory, gender, and postcolonial thought.

Reading about leadership is like walking through dense forest. The literature goes in so many different directions, a person can become lost. As a result, leadership studies struggles for academic credibility while it tries to bring some kind of order to this fascinating, complex, and important social phenomenon. Let Nathan Harter be your guide. As an Associate Professor of Organizational Leadership, he has found it helpful to orient students using the metaphor of a forest, where you can follow the streams down toward analysis or climb the peaks toward synthesis. The book reveals itself to be a work of philosophy. Specifically, it relies on Pragmatism to resolve thorny theoretical issues, since leadership studies must be eminently practical. The reader acquires analytical skills along the way, while touring different paths of the forest. This book targets an emergent market comprised of scholars and educators, as well as the libraries that serve them. People come to study leadership from different disciplines and expect to find an integrated, theoretical treatment of the subject. Despite the growing popularity of leadership programs, however, theoretical works are rare. As a few post-secondary programs introduce graduate programs in leadership, this book could also serve as their textbook.

In the early 1900s, Mary Matthews and Lella Gaddis forged trails for women at Purdue University and throughout Indiana. Mary was the first dean of the School of Home Economics. Lella was Indiana’s first state leader of Home Demonstration. In 1914, Mary hired Lella to organize Purdue’s new Home Economics Extension Service. According to those who knew them, Lella was a “sparkler” who traveled the state instructing rural women about nutrition, hygiene, safe water, childcare, and more. “Reserved” Mary established Purdue’s School of Home Economics, created Indiana’s first nursery school, and authored a popular textbook. Both women used their natural talents and connections to achieve their goals in spite of a male-dominated society. As a land grant institution, Purdue University has always been very connected to the American countryside. Based on extensive oral history and archival research, this book sheds new light on the important role female staff and faculty played in improving the quality of life for rural women during the first half of the twentieth century. It is also a fascinating story, engagingly told, of two very different personalities united in a common goal.

In 1991, Lawrence Grossman wrote that "a new political system is taking shape in the United States. As we approach the twenty-first century, America is turning into an electronic republic, a democratic system that is vastly increasing the people's day-to-day influence on decisions of state." Grossman's forecast implied a sea change in the way citizens would interact with, and participate in, their representative government; a revamping of the way Americans would 'do' citizenship. Harnessing the power of technology to promote the ideal of democracy that first pulsed through our nation over 230 years ago may be a feasible achievement in a technocratic age, but whether technology can help achieve a revolution as seismic as the political one that our founding fathers initiated may be a practical impossibility. Fusing the power of technology and democratic ideals opens opportunities for greater access to information and offers a medium for people to be heard and express their voice with dissemination to the masses through digital tools, such as blogs, podcasts, and wikis. Indeed, the emergence of the Internet as a nearly ubiquitous element of American society has brought about new opportunities to enhance citizen engagement in democratic politics and to increase the level of civic engagement among American citizens. Despite such rhetoric, however, research has indicated that Grossman's "electronic republic" has, for the most part, failed to come to fruition

Engineering in a Land-Grant Context is volume of well-crafted essays considers the federal government's first foray into higher education by examining engineering education at the nation's land-grant universities over the past 140 years. The authors demonstrate how that history has framed the present and suggest how it is likely to influence the foreseeable future. The expert contributors, all of whom have studied and written prominently on the history of engineering education, concentrate on revealing the critical trends and major events of this 140 year history. Treating their essays as symptomatic and symbolic of the larger issues, they create a volume accessible to engineers, historians and the interested lay readers. Three central themes and important topics are outlined and explored. Each is locked in time. The first, integration of engineers and engineering education within the newly created and not yet defined land-grant colleges, was particularly important in the initial half-century of land-grant university development; while the second, the forces external to the college and the state that help direct the course of engineering education, is especially appropriate in the half century after World War I. The third, the conscious reformulation of the land-grant ideal, stands as testimony to the introspection and assessment of the last several decades.

Over the last ten years, Purdue University has undertaken a culture-change initiative. With leadership changes imminent at Purdue University in spring 2007, it seemed wise to document this effort to increase the awareness, knowledge, and skills of faculty and staff in the many areas of diversity. This work focuses on the faculty and staff in the colleges and schools of the University. The data for this report were gathered by the researcher and author of this document, who interviewed key informants and examined documents, archives, and websites during spring 2007. What is reported here does not represent the history of diversity at Purdue: There is a long history of recruiting and retaining underrepresented minority students and women (in the more technical fields) that is not covered here. There is also ongoing training and intervention work in the administrative side of the University and in the support units. This report describes work with faculty and staff in the colleges and schools to change the academic culture so that students, whatever their diversity and gender, will feel welcomed, supported, and included. It begins with the narrative of the ten-year development of this diversity initiative, which includes data on changes that have occurred in the academic culture at Purdue. A section on change in universities and the concepts that underlie the change process concludes the discussion.