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3. Faculty
Pages 44-69

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From page 44...
... The high student:faculty ratios and the number of unfilled but authorized faculty positions have not been uniform in all engineering disciplines. The 1982-1983 surveys by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology {ABETI show ratios as high as 25: 1 to 30:1 in such fields as aeronautical, chemical, and electrical engineering, and 11:1 in agricultural engineering, with an average of 22.25 to 1 in all departments of member schools.
From page 45...
... Increased student:faculty ratios have also increased the amount of time needed by full-time faculty members to advise students. This is caused partly by the greater numbers of students they teach, but also partly by the use of adjunct faculty: while adjunct faculty are available to teach courses, they often are not available to answer student questions, and they usually play little or no role as academic advisers.
From page 46...
... A Role forEducational Technology Clearly, new technology offers some promise ~1~ of making more efficient use of the human capital engaged in teaching engineering and `2J of improving the effectiveness of engineering courses. New uses of the computer in interactive teaching and the sharing of courses by video and satellite transmission promise to relieve engineering faculty from much routine classroom teaching.
From page 47...
... The Panel on Undergraduate Engineering Education recommends that engineering schools not only examine and use strategies that will maintain quality under the pressure of the demand for quantity, but that theyalsoplan for the long term to maintain elasticityin the system by encouraging flexibilityin faculty and other educational resources. Difficulties in Maintaining Faculty Versatility Maintaining the versatility of engineering faculty is an important long-term problem for universities.
From page 48...
... However, few universities take specific steps to support this aspect of faculty and institutional development, which means that in addition to their heavy teaching and advising responsibilities, most engineering faculty are expected to take full responsibility for their own continued professional development. Not only are they expected to accomplish research and scholarly activity, but they are also expected to raise the funds for their activities and those of their graduate students, including funds for professional travel, equipment, and other research expenses.
From page 49...
... During its visits to engineering schools, ABET might also raise the question of what is being done to prepare for the promise of the future. The Panel on Undergraduate Engineering Education recommends that, since the ability of engineering education to adapt to change depends on encouragement and toleration of curricular and faculty flexibility, shared teaching across departmental boundaries should be encouraged.
From page 50...
... The pressure of tenure and the strictures of departmental boundaries coupled with the demands of professional specialization all work against the movement of faculty into areas where there are high student:faculty ratios. In departments that have particularly high student:faculty ratios, team teaching by departmental faculty and engineering faculty from outside those departments could both alleviate the high ratios and help transfer some of the emerging technologies to less crowded departments.
From page 51...
... For some institutions, this may be a valid assumption. If a university has vital ongoing research programs and strong graduate courses in most of the important and emerging fields and if the faculty have the time and the opportunity to include these activities as part of their normal work load, then they should be able to remain current as educators and as researchers.
From page 52...
... A Role forAccreditation The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology could play a helpful role in the area of faculty development. Recognizing that the continued vitality of undergraduate engineering programs requires a more formal approach to continued professional development of engineering faculty, ABET might gather data on existing mechanisms for professional development, on how many faculty are involved in these programs each year, and on what professional activities are supported.
From page 53...
... The last two categories are particularly pertinent to this study on engineering education. Current Practice Part-time and adjunct faculty have been widely used during the recent period of faculty shortages.
From page 54...
... The Panel on Undergraduate Engineering Education recommends that colleges of engineeringidentifyand utilize facultyother than those in tenure tracks military retirees, persons reentering or shifting careers, adjunct faculty, and other professionally qualified persons, with orwithoutPh.D.s, who welcome short-term contracts or second careers. Colleges of engineering and professional societies shoul~promote the use of Professors of ProfessionalPractice.
From page 55...
... Moreover, experience shows that, with free choice, at least half of the members of the freshman class change their intended major subject. Such restriction imposes the added educational disadvantage of prematurely narrowing the scope of engineering education.
From page 56...
... Though our knowledge of students' disciplinary preferences and our understanding of criteria for selection of the best candidates is incomplete, the problem of overenrollment must be dealt with aggressively while it continues to be studied. The Role of Women and Minorities Minority and women engineering faculty have an important contribution to make to the solution of the current faculty shortage, to the
From page 57...
... The small number of minority and women faculty in engineering schools is due in part to their historically small number available for faculty positions and in part to the relative invisibility of professionals in these groups. If they are to become members of university faculties, active efforts to search out women and minorities for faculty positions are required.
From page 58...
... Because of their special status, women and minority faculty are often overloaded with committee assignments: They serve on departmental committees, university committees, search committees, personnel committees, thesis committees, outside committees, professional society committees, and so on. Department heads often do not give adequate career counseling with regard to the priorities in accepting or declining committee assignments.
From page 59...
... Much information in this paragraph and the rest of this section is from Baldwin and Down (1981) , which concentrates on instructional television.
From page 60...
... When self-paced instruction E.g., the Personalized System of Instruction APSIS, " the Keller Plan" J is mediated by instructional television jITV) or any other E-T, it should include the following components: 1.
From page 61...
... The Appalachian Community Service Network uses satellite transmission to offer college courses and adult education in more than 2.5 million homes. AMCEE can distribute videotaped courses to engineers throughout the nation.
From page 62...
... And the very best programs unlike the best human teachers can be replicated inexpensively and distributed widely. Uses of Video-Based E-T While the applications of instructional television are as varied as human ingenuity permits, the basic applications parallel instructional activities: lectures, demonstrations, laboratory work, tutoring, reviewing, off-campus teaching, presentations and critiques, and job placement interviews and career guidance.
From page 63...
... and documentary information about the profession can also encourage students to investigate careers in engineering. Audio-Based E-T Audiocassettes have prompted the eerie image of a classroom with a cassette player on the teacher's desk facing a room full of corresponding cassette recorders, but the idea also suggests that students and teachers alike are at home with at least one medium of educational technology.
From page 64...
... Software development requires large expenditures of money and faculty time, and dissemination of hardware is limited. To overcome such barriers, CONDUIT, a nonprofit university consortium, has established a national clearinghouse for microcomputer-l~ased instructional materials to collect and evaluate instructional programs and to disseminate information about them {Grayson, 1982:15~.
From page 65...
... Another flexible use of CAI that is especially important for the education of engineers is interactive graphics for computer-aided design/ computer-aided manufacturing CAD/CAM design applications. Interactive graphics offers pedagogical and industrial advantages that are particularly helpful to human intervention in complex designs.
From page 66...
... Simulation is certain to play an important role in engineering education of the future {Alameda, 1983: 107J. Many people question whether the benefits of the undergraduate laboratory justify the effort required of both students and faculty they describe undergraduate laboratory work as an infinite sink for time and effort and some look to the computer as a substitute that will make the work more manageable.
From page 67...
... Each center offers 20 training programs of one to five days on three videodisc players, remote control units, TV monitors, audiocassette recorders, and surrogate computer terminals for completing student exercises. During the first year of operation of this program {1980)
From page 68...
... Such an approach is essential, since the costs associated with implementing educational technology will be exceptionally high. The Panel on Undergraduate Engineering Education recommends that the engineering profession undertake a comprehensive studyan cl immediately implement its findings- about how to make educational technology more efficient and how to improve both the process of education and the reaming experience.
From page 69...
... 1983. "A Micrc~computer-Aided Chemical Engineering Lab, " in The Undergraduate Engineering Laboratory (New York: Engineering FoundationJ.


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