THIGPEN, Lewis & GLAKPE, Emmanuel K.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Howard University, 2300 Sixth Street N. W. Washington, DC 20059
Abstract: In this paper, the authors describe some major cooperative efforts between the department of mechanical engineering at Howard University and industry that have taken place over the last several years. These cooperative activities include visiting faculty from industry and extended visits for faculty to industry, individual faculty research projects supported by industry, collaborative research between faculty in the department and industry and government laboratories, and most importantly, collaborative teaching of our senior capstone design course. The cooperative activities between faculty in the department, industry and government laboratories have led to major innovations and quality improvements in the mechanical engineering curriculum at Howard. Innovations realized in the curriculum and unanticipated side benefits derived from the partnerships are also discussed. This paper further describes, in detail, the role of industry in the capstone design experience for students in mechanical engineering at Howard University. The paper expands on the role of the industrial affiliates, the state of art tools that are available to the students, and most importantly the effect of the partnership on the readiness of our students for professional work and for entry into professional and graduate schools. Finally, the importance of the relationship to the industrial partner and to our program is discussed.
Keywords: collaboration, design, teaching, industry, academics
Cooperative relations between academic programs and industry take many forms, from faculty exchange, simple research programs paid by a company, complex interdisciplinary projects among several universities and companies, to collaborative instructions in the classroom. In an era of global competitiveness and rapidly changing technology, cooperative relationships between academic programs and industry are becoming more important to each in the realization of their missions. Industry needs to keep abreast of latest developments in areas of research that are of strategic interest and to hire workers who have a good understanding of industrial problems. Academics need industry to help support the development of this talent and to help maintain contemporary programs. Collaborations also increase faculty awareness of new important research areas by exposing them to industrial concerns and industry’s approaches to solving engineering problems.
The department of mechanical engineering at Howard University in the College of Engineering, Architecture & Computer Sciences is a small department that offers programs leading to degrees at the bachelors, masters, and doctorate levels. Cooperative activities with industry and government laboratories are important to us in the offering of a contemporary undergraduate program and providing research support for graduate students. Over the last several years, the department has had collaborative relationships with several types of industries. Our relationships have been with both large and small companies from the industrial sectors ranging from information technology, power and energy, automotive manufacturing, chemical manufacturing industries, petroleum industries to large aerospace manufacturing companies. In addition, the department has enjoyed collaborative activities with several government laboratories.
Many companies compete for our students. This gives us an opportunity to relate to people from a variety of industries. The university holds a career fair in October and a host of companies participate to discuss job opportunities in their industries with our students. There is a reception on the evening following the career fair. This provides the faculty an opportunity to interact with industry representatives. In addition, the college of engineering hosts a coop day in the spring. A banquet is held on the evening before interviews take place with students. This banquet also provides another opportunity for faculty to meet with representatives from numerous industries and discuss needs of both academic programs and the industries that are represented. Those are only two of several avenues that provide us with opportunities to discuss cooperative and other relations with industry. Some other avenues include direct solicitation through request for proposals, recommendations by acquaintances, and chance meetings at national and international conferences.
In this paper, we discuss successful cooperative efforts that have had significant impact on our program in mechanical engineering. In the Section Two of this paper, we discuss some of the models in which collaborative efforts have taken place with our program. There, we discuss the areas of cooperation and collaboration. The areas of cooperation include visiting faculty from industry and extended visits of department faculty to industry, sponsored individual faculty research paid by industry, participation in complex collaborative research projects with industry and/or government laboratories, and most importantly, cooperative teaching of our capstone design course. We will expand our discussion of this model in some detail. Section Three discusses some challenges inherent in any collaboration. Collaborations between individuals within the university are difficult because of the personal needs of the individuals concerned and university culture has sanctioned individualism through its policies on promotion and tenure. Cultural differences are particularly important concerns in collaborations between academic and industry. Those are two very different and sometimes competing cultures. Academics have missions based on ideas of free exchange of information and to provide the public with an impartial source of information. This freedom allows the faculty researcher to pursue individual open ended research goals and publish freely. On the other hand, industry focuses on customer needs in a way to maximize profits. Industry research and development actions are driven by profit and they limit their publications in order to maintain competitive positions. In Section Four of this paper we discuss benefits of collaborative relationships between the department and industry. Collaborative relations must provide benefits to all to be successful. Finally, we give some brief concluding remarks.
In mechanical engineering at Howard University, we want to educate engineers who can adapt and function in industry immediately after graduation. To that end our program has linked academic work with life in industry and government laboratories through cooperative efforts. At the graduate level we form collaborative research relations to assure that our research is relevant to the needs of industry. Most importantly, at the undergraduate level we have formed a cooperative relationship with industry in teaching design that has a very significant impact on undergraduate education. In this section of this paper, we briefly discuss some cooperative models that have helped to advance our programs’ educational objectives.
Visiting Scholars from Industry: companies frequently find it beneficial to support their scientists and engineers to visit Howard University for an extended stay. These scholars are provided with offices and are able to teach courses, audit courses, use library facilities, computer facilities, faxes, copy services and most importantly, they are able to interact with all faculty at the university. These extended visits provide a sabbatical for engineers from industry. At Howard these visiting scholars have developed laboratory courses using state-of-art technology and they have trained faculty and technicians in the use of this new technology. One course, Microprocessor Applications, developed by a visiting faculty became part of a new option that was introduced into our program. Visiting scholars have also taught courses to faculty and graduate students. Because of our location we have also developed collaborative teaching and research relations with researchers at government laboratories. One researcher and paid part-time Instructor not only collaborated with department faculty, but he also developed collaborations with researchers at other institutions and Industry Research Laboratories. In addition, he supported and directed graduate research.
Extended Faculty Visits to Industry: these visits have been of varying duration from a couple of weeks, a summer, to a years’ sabbatical and should be encouraged and supported, particularly by small engineering programs. One of the authors of this paper spent the last year on a sabbatical at a national laboratory. Our faculty visits industry and national laboratories to get acquainted with industrial problems, to acquire knowledge about new technology that could be used in curriculum development and to develop opportunities for future collaborations. The department encouraged one faculty member to take an extended visit to industry and to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to learn about modern manufacturing techniques. With the knowledge gained, the faculty member led efforts in curriculum development and developed the most popular technical option in our program. This faculty member also made valuable contacts at NIST and his students were able to use equipment at NIST for their graduate research.
Sponsored Individual Research: this category represents some areas of the research of individual faculty paid for by industry through a research contract. The work statement lays out what was expected from the university and what shall be provided by industry. Our experience in this area has been that of mutual benefits to each of the participants. These contracts have been in the areas where our faculty had the expertise and industry needed answers to short term problems but did not have the equipment or the expertise available to devote their time to the problem. These research collaborations have provided support for our faculty and graduate students and we believe that they provide a framework for future collaboration and faculty consulting.
We present three examples of successful collaborations in research here. Examples include the testing of materials using equipment that the industry researchers did not have at their disposal. The department had the equipment and the ability to carry out the research in a short time period. The researchers from industry provided the test specimens and graduate students’ carried out the test program under the supervision of the faculty advisor. All prepare the final report and jointly publish the results in scholarly journals. Another example involves a company that needed a dynamic three-dimensional finite element analysis of a structure. The group working on this problem had only one engineer capable of doing this study and his time was devoted to another important problem. The last example deals with a company that had a major problem in the area of dynamics and controls. The company did not have expertise in that area. The mechanical engineering department had a faculty with an international reputation in that area. These individual research problems do create problems due to time constraints and contract negotiations. We discuss some of these difficulties in Section Three of this paper.
Complex Collaborative Research Programs: we have participated in complex collaborative research programs involving several universities and industry and with researchers at government laboratories. These collaborative research relations have had significant impact on graduate education in our program. They not only provided support for faculty and students but they also provided opportunities for graduate students to perform research experiments at the facilities of others and collaborate with their researchers. In addition, these collaborative research relations allowed the department to upgrade its own research facilities through research grants. The department has been able to develop two state-of-art laboratories through a combination of cooperative research grants and industrial foundation grants.
Cooperative Teaching of Senior Design: this is our most successful and important area of collaboration. Our philosophy in the conduct of the year long undergraduate senior capstone design course is to provide the opportunity for students to work on a project with engineers from industry who are actively engaged in the search for design solution. This philosophy is carried out through a collaborative teaching effort with practicing engineers from industry. The department has been fortunate to obtain industrial partners to support its goals and commit to long-term support. We strive for a long-term cooperation relation of five years or more.
Experienced engineers supply a design project and interact with students and faculty on campus and at the industrial site. The engineers are appointed to our faculty without compensation. The faculty appointments’ allow them to participate in all phases of instructions. A full-time faculty member is assigned to coordinate the day to day activities of the course. Department faculty reviews candidate design projects proposed by industry and makes selections based on the merits of the projects. The selection process takes place in the summer in order to give the engineers from industry time to prepare the project for presentation to the students. Industry representatives make a formal presentation of the design project to the students and give them a specification manual that describes the project objectives and structure, an explanation of hardware functions, and a review of project tasks. Industry plays the role of a customer in need of a design to meet desired specifications. Teams of students act as companies that will submit proposals in response to a request for proposal.
Table 1. Typical schedule of design activities for the academic year
For completeness we show a typical schedule for an academic year in Table 1. The schedule of activities for the spring semester is purposely omitted in order to encourage the student teams to design their own task schedule to meet deadlines imposed by faculty and industry. The engineers from industry visit Howard on a regular schedule to review the design progress through presentations from student teams and to present needed course material on a just-in-time basis. The picture depicted in Figure 1 shows a team of students making a point to reviewers in the design laboratory that is heavily used by all students in the department.
Figure 1. A team of students making a design presentation
There is wide spectrum of collaboration and knowledge sharing during the conduct of this course. Thigpen et. al. (1992) and Thigpen and Glakpe (1999) document details on this cooperative effort.
Cooperative relationships present challenges both within the university program and between members of the partnership. Outlined below are several areas that have presented either challenges or difficulties in our cooperative relations with others.
Contract Negotiations and Invoicing: the deliverables and time deadlines are clearly defined through discussions between faculty and industry contacts. Start dates and dates for progress reports have been agreed upon. Yet, prolonged contract discussions by the legal offices of both institutions delay the start time. Sometimes the delay is such that the scope of work has to be reduced to satisfy time constraints. Delays also create problems for student recruiting because the faculty needs resources to support graduate students at the start of the academic year. In most cases, we have been able to get no cost extensions on our contracts. Invoicing has been a most challenging problem for our researchers. Delays in submitting invoices have led to the cancellation of research contracts for the next fiscal year.
Timing: the faculty needs long term support to carry out their research missions. They commit to support graduate students over long time intervals. On the other hand, industry time frames are very short, six months to a year or less depending on the project.
Organizational Structure and Authority: the organizational structural differences between academia and industry can present some very difficult challenges. Industry is hierachial and usually has a critical mass to support their major projects. On the other hand, students and faculty have free choice. In some cases, we have only one faculty member in our program capable of carrying out the activities of a particular project or who is willing to collaborate with other faculty. That is, the critical mass does not exist. If a faculty member or graduate student does not like a program or project, he can find another. This freedom has presented many difficulties to faculty in the department because a student decided to leave in the middle of the project. We believe that the organizational structure limits our ability to get involved in some possible collaborative projects.
Termination: we believe that all of our contract agreements allow our sponsor to terminate the contract without cause. This certainly creates major difficulties for the faculty researcher and his graduate students because the graduate students may be left without support. This is a particularly important point that is considered in our program because there are no contingency funds available for graduate student support. This point also emphasizes the need for long term commitment in our collaborative teaching of design and a continued search by the department for industry support of our design course.
Our collaborative efforts have provided benefits to all concerned. Industry has been able to get quick results on their projects through our faculty expertise and accessible equipment. Furthermore, cooperation with Historically Black College and Universities provides publicity for the company. Most importantly, the collaborative relationships have provided industry with access to our best students. The major impacts of the partnerships to our program have been in the area of support for both graduate and undergraduate education and to increase the awareness of faculty to industrial concerns. We believe that this awareness impacts on the faculty’s understanding of the need for a dynamic curriculum. The cooperation also provides opportunities for consulting and possible future relationships. We have realized side benefits from our cooperation with industry and government. Two state-of-art laboratories have been developed as a result of these relations. In addition, a new technical option in the program was partially developed through cooperative efforts.
Our program has been engaged in research collaboration with industry for many years under different models. Recently we instituted a new collaborative model in the teaching of senior design. Our collaborations have produced significant benefits for both industry and our program in mechanical engineering and we expect the relationship between our program and industry to grow in the future. The most significant benefit of the relationship to industry is access to our students. The contribution to our program relates to the impact of the partnership on our students’ education. We are realizing our program’s educational objectives through these cooperative efforts. Our students are better prepared to immediately function effectively in any competitive industry.
THIGPEN, L., HOU, C., FAIRCHILD, J, AND NALLENWEG, R. A Successful Capstone Design Course Featuring Industry Involvement. In Creativity, Educating World-Class Engineering. Toledo, Ohio: ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2 1992. 8 p.
THIGPEN, L., AND GLAKPE, E. The Capstone Design Experience in Mechanical Engineering at Howard University. To Appear In Designing the Future of Science & Engineering Education. San Juan, Puerto Rico: 1999 Frontiers in Education Conference, 1999. 5 p.