A Survey of Types of Industry-Academia Collaboration

Collaborations between industry and academia are, when properly designed and managed, beneficial to both the industry partners and the academic institutions. Such collaborations may take place on both small and large scales, and may involve varying numbers of academic institutions and industry partners. They may also have different purposes, including both research-focused collaborative efforts and programs designed to connect undergraduate students with real-world projects to enhance their education. In this paper, the authors will provide a survey of different models of industry-academia collaboration in engineering and engineering technology. The paper will include both a survey of existing literature on the topic as well as a survey of publicly available information on existing collaborations. While the primary focus is on collaborations within the United States, some literature on international collaborations will also be included in the survey. It will discuss several different collaboration models, and what factors appear to be significant in those collaborations. Finally, it will conclude with recommendations that can be used to study specific aspects of industry-academia collaborations

Returning to Graduate School: Expectations of Success, Values of the Degree, and Managing the Costs

Background Limited research exists on the experiences of engineering returners – those with undergraduate degrees who work for at least five years and return to academia for graduate degrees. Returners bring a different perspective to their graduate studies and postgraduate work than direct‐pathway students but face additional challenges. Purpose Our aim was to understand practitioners' decisions to return to graduate school and complete graduate degrees. Guided by expectancy value theory, we investigated their beliefs about their ability to succeed; the interest, attainment, and utility values returners placed on graduate school; the costs they experienced in returning; and the personal, programmatic, and cultural factors that mitigated these costs. Design/Method We employed a qualitative interpretivist approach to investigate the returning experience through semi‐structured interviews with 10 returners. We analyzed the results deductively, using expectancy value theory to understand participants' expectations of success and the values of those experiences, and inductively, to understand the types of costs that influenced the decision to return and complete graduate school. Results Utility value drove participants' decisions to return and complete graduate programs, and participants had a high expectancy of success in earning their graduate degrees. Four types of costs emerged from analysis of the interviews: intellectual, balance, cultural and environmental, and financial. Participants employed various strategies to mitigate these costs. Conclusions With the results of our study, potential returners can more effectively plan for success in the graduate environment, and universities can develop initiatives to better recruit returners and support their success.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99102/1/jee20012.pd

Engineering Technology Graduate Students: Roles Professional Societies Havein Their Formation

In recent years, there have been several research projects focused on returning graduate students in engineering, those who have significant industry experience before beginning their graduate studies. These projects have focused on both the masters and doctoral levels and have looked at research, coursework, benefits of attending graduate school, and the cost of going back. One of the existing papers has looked at the ways in which professional organizations look on returning students, and how their membership policies affect these students. The issue of how returning students see themselves within professional societies was not addressed. As of yet, none of these studies have focused on returning graduate students in engineering technology. Overall engineering technology students have not been researched in depth, with most engineering technology practitioners and administrators relying on data obtained from populations of engineering and other STEM students. Faculty and staff that have interacted with both engineering technology and engineering populations of students find the differences marked, thus supporting the need for further research to quantify differences and similarities in these populations. This paper will focus on the intersection of the two gaps, focusing on returning graduate engineering technology students, and their view of professional societies. Furthering initial work done on engineering technology student identity, it will look at the identity of graduate engineering technology returners within professional societies. The study was carried out through administration of a survey developed to learn more about engineering technology returners. The survey asks participants about the societies to which they belong, and how they see themselves with those organizations. Grounded theory will be used to analyze the survey data. The flexibility and adaptability of grounded theory generated method provides results that are continuous and nascent. The process is well defined and begins with identification of a substantive area, for this study this is the returning engineering technology graduate student. The survey questions are designed to collect data focused on the two areas of concern and following the survey will be coded as it is collected. As the coding takes place, memos will be made to capture extraneous thoughts and information that was not already designed into the survey questions. The memos will be sorted with the coded data and as themes emerge from the data observations are written and disseminated through this conference paper

How Professional Society Membership is Affected by Returning Student Status

In recent years, several research efforts have aimed to understand the issues surrounding engineering professionals returning to the academic environment for graduate degrees in engineering. This research focuses on a variety of issues: why they return, what they hope to do afterwards, and what their experiences are in the academic environment. While those are important issues, interaction with professional societies while in the workplace and pursuing graduate work are also of concern. Many engineering professionals, both in industry and in academia, value activities with these organizations while advancing in membership levels as they advance through their careers. Advancement may be complicated when a professional society member returns to school for full time study; they often find themselves choosing between paying the higher dues of a professional or returning to student status. We discuss the options available in a sampling of different professional engineering societies, including several engineering disciplinary societies and interdisciplinary societies focused on underrepresented minorities within engineering. The intent is to examine the differences, and highlight successful policies for use by professional societies and other organizations serving the returning student population

Development of an Online Course in Research for Undergraduate Students

This Work in Progress paper will cover the development of an online course in research practices for undergraduate students. Active participation in research is an important part of experiential learning, which can help to prepare students for careers in a variety of settings including industrial R&D departments, academia, and government research labs. Undergraduate students’ research experiences may be limited in their value, however, by the learning curve students face as they begin to conduct research. The quality of their training may also be limited, with some receiving excellent training and orientation from a strong research lab or faculty mentor, and others receiving little guidance. In order to better prepare undergraduate students for research, faculty members in different departments at a midwestern STEM-focused University received an internal grant to develop a class in research for undergraduates. This class, which is designed to be offered online either for cohorts or for individual students as an independent study, contains information and resources on a diverse range of issues such as motivation for research, research ethics, planning a research project, conducting literature searches, experimental procedures, keeping lab documentation for various types of projects, data analysis, technical writing, intellectual property, and issues relevant to scoping out one’s own research project. This paper will give the background for the course development, evaluation of the required content and decisions on structure and format, and describe the various modules in the course. It will also describe the future plans for deployment, evaluation, and continuous improvement of the course, and suggest ways in which it could benefit a wide range of undergraduate students in different disciplines

Coupling and Controllability in Optimal Design and Control.

So-called ‘smart’ products have the potential to improve life dramatically from the smallest scale, such as biological micro-electrical mechanical sensors for health monitoring, to the largest scale, such as electrical grids and transportation networks. All of these technologies require the design of both an artifact and a controller, and one can assert that optimal artifact and controller designs are required in order to realize their full benefit. The problem of combined design of artifact and controller is termed co-design. Coupling between the artifact and controller design problems has been demonstrated to be critical in the co-design of many such systems. It is necessary, then, to be able to identify coupling in these systems and to choose an optimization method that can optimize a coupled system particularly with respect to its controllability. This is the focus of the present dissertation. Relationships are derived between known coupling metrics and the controllability Grammian matrix of the system. These relationships represent a first a priori determination of coupling, namely, assessment of coupling between design and control decisions prior to system optimization. Previous work had focused on coupling metrics that require knowledge of the system optimum to compute coupling strength and choose an appropriate system design method. This dissertation introduces the Control Proxy Function (CPF) concept. A CPF is defined as a measure of the system’s ease of control. CPFs are derived for certain classes of problems, and examples are presented. For a co-design problem with a derived CPF, a sequential system design process can be effected, with the CPF augmenting the original artifact objective function. The optimal design and control problems can then be solved in sequence, while preserving system optimality. Conditions are derived under which the method is effective, and guidelines for the choice of a CPF are provided. The method is demonstrated in the co-design of a MEMS actuator. Results show that this method can be used to co-design systems effectively, allowing a designer to realize system optimal, or near-optimal, results with the simplicity of a sequential design process.Ph.D.Mechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75943/1/dlpeters_1.pd

Drivers of research topic selection for engineering doctoral students

In this study, we explored engineering doctoral students’ motivations for selecting their research topic. The extent to whichindividuals are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated and the autonomy they have to make their own decisions hasimplications for their enjoyment of and success at a particular task. Given the importance of motivation, we sought toaddress a gap in the understanding of how doctoral students in engineering decide on a particular problem to study. Ourfindings are based on interviews with students with varying past educational and professional experiences that enable us tocapture a wide range of motivations for engineering PhD students’ research subject decisions. We found that the majorityof students interviewed reported some form of extrinsic motivation guiding their decision, though these students varied intheir autonomy to select their own topic. Of the students who reported intrinsic motivations for their research topicselection, many had extensive prior work experience that informed their topic choice. Funding played a major role inshaping students’ project decisions, which is reflective of the scale and expense of much of engineering work. However, ourfindings suggest there are a number of opportunities for students to identify research topics in which they personallyperceive as important and interesting

Academic and Industry Collaboration: A Literature Review

As part of a larger project determining best practices for establishing and maintaining effective, sustainable, collaborative relationships between academic and industry professionals, this review will outline the available materials and, conversely, the multiple gaps that exist regarding course content, methods of teaching, and practical experience relating to preparation for careers in engineering and engineering technology. Currently, there is no clear agreement on which principles and practices best enable industrial partners and academic institutions to establish and maintain mutually-beneficial partnerships. In fact, there is no clear definition in the literature of what a mutually-beneficial partnership entails, across the full range of educational, research, and professional development and service activities carried out within the engineering and technical community. The authors of this paper established informally that educators in both engineering and engineering technology are often challenged by this lack of research on sound recommendations regarding collaborative efforts. This paper is intended to be the start of a larger systemic literature review

Professional Women Identify Their Professional and Personal Needs

Professional women in various fields often express issues they encounter in being able to access quality materials to support professional and personal needs, as well as work-life balance. By studying a variety of modes through which these materials are generally obtained, including conference participation, informal communication via social media, and utilization of networking opportunities, several gaps were identified in available support for professionals. Professionals from various backgrounds were also surveyed in order to better identify their needs in terms of career development. Distributed through a variety of social networks including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as the Indiana Secretary for Career Connections and Talent Office newsletter, the survey collected demographic information and requested input on respondents’ preferred method of material delivery, as well as asking additional questions regarding currently-available materials and the specific needs of each respondent. This paper seeks to present findings from the survey, in order to encourage the future development and improve the availability of materials to support professional development for women in engineering

The Changing Role of Professional Societies for Academics

This research paper describes how professional societies provide services to their members with a focus on the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Professional societies fulfill many roles for their members. For underrepresented groups, the different roles become more important. Despite increasing numbers of women and other underrepresented groups in engineering academia, retention rates of women are still below the national average. Professional societies such as the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) may close the retention gap through community building. Not only do professional societies provide opportunities for networking and career building, but they also provide affirmation that there are others in similar roles. Although there are financial and time constraints to becoming active within a professional society not affiliated with one’s technical area, when academics feel that their involvement is valuable to their career development they will invest necessary time and money into the professional society. Similarities exist between how professional societies retain/attract faculty from underrepresented groups and how universities accomplish the same goal. This research paper focuses on how one professional organization, SWE, is providing opportunities to women in academia that include professional development, recognition/awards, networking, leadership development, and career advancement. In the past, SWE has been viewed as a non-technical professional society. However, SWE is uniquely positioned to provide a community that transcends the organizational boundaries by encompassing technical, service, and professional development areas for women in academia that is inclusive, collaborative, and supportive as well as connected to industry, government and academia on multiple levels