Engineering Education
Bridges and More takes the reader from the early years of Civil Engineering when Purdue’s campus consisted of a smattering of red brick buildings surrounded by grassy meadows and roads flanked by white, wooden fences to today’s state-of-the-art facilities such as the Bowen Laboratory for Large-Scale Civil Engineering Research and the online hub for the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES).
The highly illustrated book touches on major milestones in Purdue Civil Engineering history from Road School, to the Ross Summer Surveying Camp, to Purdue’s involvement in world landmarks such as the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Tower of Pisa. Often, Purdue Civil Engineers are public servants, evolving research that helps to prevent disasters like building collapses and bridge failures.
Bridges and More honors Purdue’s School of Civil Engineering with historic images and an appealing account of 125 years of education, research and a profession that is, as the title suggests, about so much more than bridges.
An increasing number of researchers and educators in the field of engineering wish to integrate considerations of social justice into their work and practice. In this volume, an international team of authors, from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, invite scholars to think and teach in new ways that acknowledge the social, as well as technical, impact engineering can have on our world and that open possibilities for social justice movements to help shape engineering/technology. The book examines three areas of an engineering academic’s professional role: teaching, research, and community engagement. Some of the authors have created classes to help students think through their roles as engineering practitioners in a changing society, and present case studies here. They also explore questions of access to engineering education. Other contributors are focusing their research on improving the lives of the marginalized and powerless. Yet others are engaging local groups and exploring ways in which universities might serve their communities and in which academic institutions can themselves be more socially just. The contributors take a broad social and ecological justice perspective to critique existing practices and explore alternatives. The result is a handbook for all scholars of engineering who think beyond the technical elements of their field, and an essential reader for anyone who believes in the transformative power of the discipline.
The frontmatter including Table of Contents, can be downloaded as PDF here.
You can also watch an interview about the book with editor, Alice Pawley, broadcast on WBAA Public Radio on February 5, 2012.
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).
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.
Enabling American Innovation traces engineers' struggle to win intellectual, financial, and organizational recognition within the National Science Foundation. The tools and arguments of this struggle altered over time, but engineers continued to assert the value of their contribution, usually measured in comparative budgetary terms, and philosophical debates as they were played out through organizational manipulation
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.
This volume addresses the challenges faced by value-added networking and innovation, both for firms' strategies and public policies in a context increasingly influenced by dynamics of interacting networks that underlie knowledge, creation, diffusion, and utilization. Part one deals with national institutions and policies to support science, networking, and innovation, ranging from legislation affecting university business relationships, national support systems for high-technology firms, to systems through which country brands can be developed. Part two addresses the need for value-added learning by local and regional governments concerning the building of an innovation system and the adoption of new ICT applications in cities. Part three focuses on firms, their management and strategies, and their performance in terms of innovativeness and growth.