Training Students for Critical Thinking in an Electrical Engineering Core Course

Analysis and Design of Control Systems is a core course in most Electrical Engineering programs in the United States. This course is the first course that provides a systemic view of engineering designs and links classroom knowledge to real-world applications. Training students for critical thinking (CT) skills in this class is essential to their career success. However, a high D and F grades and withdraw (DFW) rate has been observed in this course for years. The goal of this study is to redesign the course components to integrate critical thinking training into classroom activities and reform students’ habits in problem-solving. The new course components include a series of lectures on cognition, critical thinking, examples of famous engineering projects with critical thinking, and decomposition of critical thinking skills in classroom examples. Evaluation of the new course module was conducted based on critical thinking assessment test, two student surveys through the semester, three classroom observations, and students’ performance comparing against an untrained control group in the previous semester. Our results illustrated an effective way to improve critical thinking with this training module.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Plasmonic angular momentum on metal-dielectric nano-wedges in a sectorial indefinite metamaterial

We present an analytical study to the structure-modulated plasmonic angular momentum trapped on periodic metal-dielectric nano-wedges in the core region of a sectorial indefinite metamaterial. Employing a transfer-matrix calculation and a conformal-mapping technique, our theory is capable of dealing with realistic configurations of arbitrary sector numbers and rounded wedge tips. We demonstrate that in the deep-subwavelength regime strong electric field carrying high azimuthal variation can exist within only ten-nanometer length scale close to the structural center, and is naturally bounded by a characteristic radius of the order of hundred-nanometer away from the center. These extreme confining properties suggest that the structure under investigation may be superior to the conventional metal-dielectric waveguides or cavities in terms of nanoscale photonic manipulation.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure

Moving off the farm: Land institutions to facilitate structural transformation and agricultural productivity growth in China

Agriculture has made major contributions to China's economic growth and poverty reduction, but the literature has rarely focused on the institutional factors that might underpin such structural transformation and productivity. This paper aims to fill that gap. Drawing on an 8-year panel of 1,200 households in six key provinces, it explores the impact of government land reallocations and formal land-use certificates on agricultural productivity growth, as well as the likelihood of households to exit from agriculture or send family members to the non-farm sector. It finds that land tenure insecurity, measured by the history of past land reallocations, discourages households from quitting agriculture. The recognitionof land rights through formal certificates encourages the temporary migration of rural labor. Both factors have a large impact on productivity (at about 30 percent each), mainly by encouraging market-based land transfers. A sustained increase in non-agricultural opportunities will likely reinforce the importance of secure land tenure, which is a precondition for successful structural transformation and continued economic attractiveness of rural areas.Labor Policies,Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Growth,Rural Poverty Reduction