NAJAFI, Fazil T., SUBRAMANIAN, Rajarajan & PATHOMVANICH, Sutharin
Department of Civil Engineering, 345 Weil Hall, P.O. Box 116580, Gainesville, FL 32611-2450, Phone: Office: (352) 392-1033, Fax: (352) 392-3394, fnaja@ce.ufl.edu, http://www.ce.ufl.edu/~fnaja/
Abstract: Each semester thousands of engineering graduates are looking for job opportunities. The educational institutions are aggressively assisting these graduates toward their search for employment opportunities. The responsibility of an engineering educational program is to prepare students to deal with responsibilities involving planning, design, construction and maintenance of their built environment. Furthermore engineers are involved daily in marketing, economic activities, materials and product life cycle. To succeed in these professional activities, they require both strong theoretical base and practical hands-on experience. Industry and government involvement in engineering education has tremendous potential to facilitate current trends in engineering education, enhance teaching quality, meet the needs of their graduates and their employers and provide future job opportunities for students. Educators should be in contact with private firms and governmental organizations ”Building Partnership” to develop educational courses for the benefits of all parties involved. In this paper we will present cases illustrating the importance of partnership in enhancing the quality of research and teaching. Partnership between universities and industries/governments will satisfy both engineering faculty members and students in their future career needs.
The partnership also enhances the quality of institutional research, enables high-quality faculty and their students to interact more often with industry/government. The partnership further assists the design of new curricula and academic programs to respond to the needs of industry and government. The educational institutions and the industries/governments working in partnership can create an enduring foundation for student’s development and life long learning. The participation of industries/governments brings together a special set of forces on the engineering program to form a leading edge in engineering program. This paper will tackle the ”partnership issues in light of current trends in engineering education with full objective to enhance teaching quality and students career needs”.
Keywords: partnership, ties, engineering education, quality graduates
The changing face of today’s world, which is quickly shifting to a world-wide economy, many challenges exists for American institutions of higher learning and industries. During the past 20 years, a great deal of effort has been made to improve the quality of students graduating from engineering schools in the United States. It has been well recognized that for United States Industry to remain competitive it is important that our scientists and engineers receive the best possible education and that a partnership needs to be developed between the universities, industry, and Federal and State governments if this is to be accomplished. Thus many state governments have been placing more resources into state governed universities in many states that promote closer ties between universities and industry. The university will seek companies willing to join in developing additions to the education of engineers that would broaden the range of skills acquired by the student. The partnership program will provide opportunities for the student to integrate knowledge and experience across a wider range than is possible as learning is instructed (1). Moreover, it also benefits the company itself. The companies will have an opportunity to participate in the design and implementation of the education program. In this study, few case studies are discussed illustrating the importance of partnership in enhancing the quality of research and teaching.
Upon the call of President of United State’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology issued a Presidential Review Directive in September 1996, directing the National Science and Technology Council(NSTC) to review the government-university partnership in research and associated educational activities, and to recommend ways to strengthen it. A multiagency Task Force carried out the review under the auspices of the NSTC Committee on Science. The Task Force considered the views of universities, university associations, and the Federal research agencies regarding the issues they considered most pressing. The NSTC recognizes that the partnership is sound and continues to serve the nation in important ways. The NSTC found out a number of areas in which the partnership can be strengthened and will take action in several areas. The objective of this review is to better understand the government-university partnership in research and associated educational activities, and to identify issues requiring action or further study.
This study explains the partnership program by Washington State University, Pullman with John Fluke Manufacturing Company. The project's objectives are maintaining and improving the recognized strength of the programs, producing quality graduates with emphasis on the B.S. Degree level, exposing all students to opportunities in the industry, responding to specific needs of sponsoring companies and maintaining a close University/Industry interaction.
The relationship between industry and educational institution can be strongly enhanced by personnel interactions. This may involve a faculty member spending a certain amount of time in industry. Hence a faculty member from the Department spent the summer as an employee of the Manufacturing Company. This ended up in a joint research project and the establishment of a research facility in the Department.
Another way of interaction is that of presentation of seminars by the teaching faculty to the industry and the presentations of seminars by industry professionals to students and the teaching faculty at the University. This has become especially important with the recent changes in accreditation guidelines that require the students be exposed to the practical aspects of the engineering profession such as ethics in the workplace, competitiveness, reliability, quality control, liability etc. These topics can usually be covered more realistically by professionals those are currently working in industry.
Washington State University makes use of industry to provide useful and practical design projects for the students to work on. Industry is required to define the project and explain its objectives and to provide any necessary expenses for special equipment and parts. The John Fluke Company has provided a number of projects for the senior design course in electrical engineering.
Other activities include guest lectures by Company Senior Management personnel given to undergraduate and graduate students. Topics cover a wide variety of issues facing U.S. Corporations that new engineers will have the challenge and opportunity to contribute to. Together with guest lectures, technical seminars by key company personnel give ”real world” examples of the most recent techniques employed in the state-of-the-art products.
There are several advantages to the development of closer ties between universities and industry, and they are listed as follows:
Cleveland State University and the Cleveland Advanced Manufacturing program (CAMP, Inc.), a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) funded Manufacturing Extension Partnership, have formed the Advanced Manufacturing and Learning Center (AMLC). The AMLC helps manufacturers reach and sustain global competitiveness by providing development assistance with product and processes while simultaneously educating and training a world class-manufacturing workforce.
CAMP, Inc. and Cleveland State University created the Advanced Manufacturing and Learning Center (AMLC) in 1984. The AMLC provides students with an early experience in industrial research and development through participation in industrial project teams.
Six success elements of AMLC include:
Engineering Coalition of Schools for Excellence in Education and Leadership (ECSEL), a NSF (National Science Foundation) funded undergraduate engineering education coalition has developed a strong industry tie with a network of industrial partners. The involvement of these industry partners in the ECSEL project has been voluminous and can be summarized as breadth, depth and continuity. Examples of their efforts are supplying projects for interdisciplinary integration of design; offering full partnership services in the planning, development, and implementation of courses; serving on the Industry Advisory Board; hosting tours of manufacturing plants; donation of equipment and software; offering summer co-op opportunities, etc.
The end result of ECSEL’s effort is to inculcate generic manufacturing principles into the curricular and extra-curricular student experience; modernize design/manufacturing undergraduate laboratories; foster linkages with industry on manufacturing projects; and enhance the attraction and retention of engineering students, especially minorities and women. To meet these goals, ECSEL has fostered strong ties with our industry partners. At the coalition level, we established the Industry Advisory Board at the inception of the project. The board includes the six Fortune 500 companies: Abbott Laboratories, AT&T, Boeing, Ford, IBM and Xerox. In addition, member schools in the Coalition are also encouraged to reinforce their ties with local industrial partners (5).
This case describes a mechanism for fostering a partnership between the university and the industrial communities, with the aim of sponsoring undergraduate design projects. Several projects were undertaken in two years period for IBM (International Business Machines), Duke Power Company and Florida Steel Drum Co.
The University and its students benefit from having industry involved in the definition, guidance and evaluation of the student projects, while industry benefits by having the material and intellectual resources of the university involved with relevant problems. This methodical approach contributes to the student’s understanding of the way problems are approached in industry, for example, with a mixed team of engineers, subject constraints imposed by the marketplace, economics and often legal and environmental constraints. The fundamental strategic planning for creating this university/industry partnership grew from the overall goals of the Engineering Education Coalition.
The partnership industry has the task of defining the design problem in a format and time frame to fit an undergraduate team and academic year. The problem should be of relevance and monetary interest to the company. The company is obliged to supervise the project to keep it on track and lead the design team to provide the industry perspective that lies beyond the traditional university laboratory and classroom experience. The company will supply any specialized equipment and technical expertise that is needed to complete the project and help with the evaluation of the design. The companies also make a financial contribution to aid in the creation and maintenance of the design lab.
The University is obliged to give the traditional mentoring and academic evaluation that has always gone on with design projects but will also provide the necessary resources to make the project a success for students and the industrial partner. The utilization of any specialized equipment or space necessary for the project is negotiated at the initiation of the project with the understanding that the prime role of the design team is the education of the students.
The sponsored undergraduate team design experience appears to be a superior model to introduce students to real-world design projects (6).
An undergraduate research project, the determination of thermal properties of food materials, was developed with the help of engineering professional in industry. The objective was to instruct and guide chemical engineering students at the sophomore level in research methodology. The involvement of an industrial partner was found to be a motivating factor by demonstrating to the students that the subject of the research project was significant, and by implying that the subject matter the students were learning could be applied to a ”real world” problem. The incorporation of a class research project at the sophomore level appears to have motivated a number of students to undertake individual research projects as juniors.
Projects intended principally for instruction can be designed with a one-way transfer of information, that is, information from the university to the industry. Participation of industries in such projects is more easily obtained since legal issues such as nondisclosure statements and patent rights are not involved. The nature of undergraduate research as a time-intensive learning experience must be properly communicated to the industrial contact. Research projects in areas of industrial interest, but not urgent need, are amenable to research projects for undergraduate instruction (7).
The partnership experiences from the case studies indicate that it is a very successful approach in enhancing engineering education. The outcome of partnership through the current relationship between industry and the educational institution in shaping engineering education are enumerated. The need for new approaches to the partnership of educational institution with industries will become paramount to insure the United States of having a competitive workforce and continuous supply of well-trained, well-informed technical talent. Introductory and training programs for new employees, in-house courses, on-the-job training, and reimbursement of the educational costs of employees earning degrees or taking non-degree programs are all part of the fabric that weaves together education and industry.