Successes of an Engineering Residential College Program within an Emerging Residential Culture

Boise State University is in the process of transforming from a historically commuter campus into a metropolitan research university which includes a growing residential culture (currently 8% of students live in residence halls). First time, full time freshmen age 18 or younger have increased from 61% of the incoming class in 2000 to 72% of the incoming class in 2008. To support our growing residential culture, University Housing, in cooperation with six academic colleges, began the Residential College (RC) program in 2004. Key among the five current RC communities is the College of Engineering. The Engineering Residential College (ERC) admits first and second year students with declared majors in one of our six undergraduate programs (civil engineering, computer science, construction management, electrical engineering, materials science and engineering, and mechanical engineering) and undeclared engineering. The 2007- 2008 academic year was the first during which an engineering faculty member lived in residence, the Faculty-in-Residence (FiR), with the 26 members of the ERC. The physical structure of the ERC supported collaborative work and study with student community members. Daily interaction of student ERC community members with the FiR and structured activities outside the classroom facilitated learning that enhanced engineering academics. In this paper, we discuss the qualitative life skills and quantitative academic successes of this living-learning community facilitated by a live-in engineering faculty member during the past three semesters and make recommendations for improving the overall ERC experience

Senior Civil Engineering Students’ Views on Sustainability and Resiliency

In recent years, civil engineering education and workforce development have evolved to include a greater emphasis on sustainability and resiliency. Sustainability balances economic, ecological, and societal needs by being responsive to community impact, human health, and the environment. Resilient infrastructure lasts, retaining functional and structural capacity and supporting interconnected transportation, energy, water, and social systems after a distress event. While many undergraduate civil engineering programs address sustainability, it tends to be limited to individual courses, and resiliency concepts are rarely incorporated. To address these shortcomings, we are incorporating sustainability and resiliency conceptual threads and activities throughout our curriculum, from our first-year engineering course through senior design. To understand the effectiveness of this initiative, at the beginning of this project we conducted interviews with senior civil engineering students to collect baseline data on our current students’ views and understanding of sustainability and responsibility. Thematic analysis of these interviews suggests that there is significant variability in students’ understanding of sustainability, with some students recognizing that sustainability involves tradeoffs between economic, environmental, and societal needs, while others tended to conflate sustainability with environmentalism. While students reported encountering sustainability in a portion of their undergraduate courses, they generally did not learn about how sustainability related to much of their technical coursework such as structures, soils, or transportation. Most current students have little conceptual understanding of resiliency which is not surprising given that it is not addressed in any substantial way in our current curriculum. This provides clear evidence of the need for greater exposure to both sustainability and resiliency and understanding the relationship between these practices as part of the undergraduate civil engineering curriculum. By incorporating sustainability and resiliency throughout the undergraduate civil engineering curriculum, students will be better prepared to address these topics as part of their senior design projects, and in their future careers

WIP: Halting Attrition in Civil Engineering Programs Through Lower-Division Engagement Course Implementation

This work in progress paper will describe how a department of civil engineering has built 1-credit engagement courses into the first two years of a new curriculum design to increase retention rates, create a sense of belonging, showcase civil engineering principles and practicality to non-majors, and begin engaging alumni and local civil engineering professionals. Retention is a core issue for academic departments in the STEM fields. In civil engineering, we have seen a large number of students depart the major each fall and spring semester for various, preventable reasons. This is true for traditional, non-traditional, and transfer students alike. Students have cited a lack of community and support systems as well as a high degree of difficulty in foundational courses without an understanding of how the knowledge gained in these foundational courses will be used in civil engineering specific courses as reasons they have left the program. When students switch majors, they often switch to programs with a lower difficulty level in the required foundational coursework (math, chemistry, physics, etc.). We have also seen them begin to pursue programs where it is simple to see connections between lower division coursework and their intended field of study early in their academic career. Many students initially choose civil engineering as a career path with a limited view of the field’s breadth and interdisciplinary nature which, when not conveyed early, has led to attrition. Students desire a community of peers and faculty and a sense of belonging (Marra et al., 2012) in their major. Belonging can be developed in many ways, but a core piece of belonging is knowing what you belong to. When students understand what they are studying, they can connect their input to an output that reflects their values and self-identity now and in the future (Matusovich, Streveler, and Miller, 2010). A large contributing factor to programs not being able to help students make connections is a lack of major-specific courses available where students can find and spend structured time with peers/faculty in their major during the first two years of academic study. The lower division of a traditional civil engineering curriculum is largely made up of mathematics, physics, and chemistry coursework. At a majority of universities these courses cannot be modified to engage specific majors due to the nature of “service courses” that are taught by centralized departments outside the purview of engineering programs. These courses tend to be very large and students may have a difficult time finding peers from their own major. Students need time to develop a connection to peers as well as to the content of their coursework and neither of these goals are easily met in large-format courses that serve all majors (Hoit & Ohland, 1998). To begin addressing these issues, a new type of 1-credit, non-prerequisite course has been developed. Students in civil engineering will be required to take three Civil Engineering Engagement Courses (CE-EC or phonetically, “seek”) during the first two years of study and these courses aim to develop a sense of community amongst civil engineering students, introduce students to faculty in a non-intimidating fashion, and allow students to explore the different focus areas of civil engineering early in their academic career. Students outside of civil engineering will also be welcome into these courses to gain an understanding of the field and learn about potential interdisciplinary collaborations. Courses will also help students become acquainted with the local area and challenges faced by civil engineering professionals. In order to determine if these courses will help solve some of the ongoing retention and sense of belonging issues experienced by many civil engineering programs, we will look at historical attrition rates going back five years, survey alumni about their experiences, and survey students as they graduate. We will also be looking at internal markers that denote a student is thriving (Schreiner et al., 2012). This will occur in tandem with research determining the overall effectiveness of the full curriculum redesign. Through the implementation of CE-EC courses we anticipate that students, even those who struggle with connection making, will be able to build a connection with peers, faculty, staff, and the civil engineering program in general. We also expect lower attrition rates and possibly a larger student population due to the new visibility civil engineering will have across majors

Community College Instructors’ Perceptions of Constraints and Affordances Related to Teaching Quantitative Biology Skills and Concepts

Quantitative skills are an important competency for undergraduate biology students and should be incorporated early and frequently in an undergraduate&rsquo;s career. Community colleges (CCs) are responsible for teaching introductory biology to a large proportion of biology and prehealth students, and quantitative skills are critical for their careers. However, we know little about the challenges and affordances that CC instructors encounter when incorporating quantitative skills into their courses. To explore this, we interviewed CC biology instructors ( n = 20) about incorporating quantitative biology (QB) instruction into their classes. We used a purposeful sampling approach to recruit instructors who were likely to have tried evidence-based pedagogies and were likely aware of the importance of QB instruction. We used open coding to identify themes related to the affordances to and constraints on teaching QB. Overall, our study participants met with challenges typical of incorporating new material or techniques into any college-level class, including perceptions of student deficits, tension between time to teach quantitative skills and cover biology content, and gaps in teacher professional knowledge (e.g., content and pedagogical content knowledge). We analyze these challenges and offer potential solutions and recommendations for professional development to support QB instruction at CCs.</p

Health vocabulary knowledge among a selected Mexican-American population

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Assessing the Impact of Aviation Environmental Policies on Public Health

Aircraft emissions degrade air quality and cause adverse health effects. Here we quantify the impact of aircraft landing and takeoff emissions on air quality and public health across the contiguous United States. While the approach of using a detailed chemistry-transport model is feasible for specific policy assessments, computational requirements preclude the assessment of a wide range of policy options, quantification of uncertainty, sensitivity studies, or a timely response to policy questions. We therefore develop two surrogate modeling approaches to enable rapid assessment of the impact of aviation emissions scenarios on public health. First, we adapt an existing linearized source–receptor matrix. Second, we perform 25 Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) simulations to populate the emissions scenario space using a design of experiments approach, from which a response surface model is developed and validated. Using a 2005 aircraft emissions inventory and the response surface model developed from CMAQ model simulations, coupled with census data and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration–response functions, we estimate that 210 deaths per year are attributable to aircraft emissions (90% confidence interval: 130–340), with total monetized value across mortality and morbidity of $1.4 billion per year in year 2000 U.S. dollars (90$550 million–$2.8 billion). Finally, we demonstrate the application of the CMAQ-derived surrogate model in a policy context by assessing the health impacts of (i) a possible low sulfur fuel standard, and (ii) a NOx stringency regulatory intervention. Our findings demonstrate the viability of surrogate modeling approaches for health impact assessments in the aviation sector