Research Foci:
The Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education brings together a team of scholars with diverse backgrounds and disciplines from five campuses: Colorado School of Mines, Howard University, Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Washington, the lead institution. The Center also works with a broad array of affiliates, including the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) and Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network (WEPAN) at the national level.
The work of the Center is embodied in five overarching goals:
- Understand and enhance the engineering student learning experience
- Integrate the needs of diverse faculty and diverse students into engineering education
- Strengthen the engineering education research base
- Expand the community of leaders in engineering education
- Promote effective teaching for current and future faculty
These five goals are being realized through the interaction of three interdependent research focus areas called elements. The three elements are: Scholarship on Learning Engineering (SoL), Scholarship on Teaching Engineering (SoT), and Institute for Scholarship on Engineering Education (ISEE).
The primary goal of the Scholarship on Learning Engineering (SoL) element is to gain significant insight into the learning of engineering across diverse student populations and environments. Researchers will conduct in-depth longitudinal studies of engineering students' educational experiences and transitions to the workplace, with emphasis on the challenges students face and how they handle those challenges. These longitudinal studies (collectively named the Academic Pathways Study) will be conducted at Colorado School of Mines, Howard University, Stanford University and University of Washington and will be followed with surveys of student experiences at a broader set of collaborating institutions. The team will also conduct a set of "targeted studies" to investigate core components of engineering knowledge and practice. The broad scope of research will offer many opportunities for NAE fellows to participate in the activities of the Scholarship element.
The mission of the Scholarship on Teaching Engineering (SoT) element is to enhance the effectiveness of strategies used to help educators improve their teaching. The Scholarship on Teaching team is committed to the use of scholarly approaches to define this design challenge and to evaluate proposed solutions. Specifically, the Scholarship on Teaching element seeks to a) understand how current and future engineering educators make teaching-related decisions, b) demonstrate how a decision making perspective and knowledge about engineering educator decision making can be used to enhance teaching, and c) design and rigorously evaluate a program in which engineering graduate students engage in teaching portfolio development as a means of preparing for the teaching responsibilities of a faculty career. These goals are instantiated in two threads of activity, the Studies of Engineering Educator Decisions (SEED) and the Engineering Teaching Portfolio Program (ETPP). NAE fellows could collaborate with SoT scholars in any of the projects.
The objective of the Institute for Scholarship on Engineering Education (ISEE) element is to cultivate, foster, and sustain a national community of engineering education scholars through annual occurrences of the Institute for Scholarship on Engineering Education. Year-long Institutes will be hosted on three CAEE campuses: University of Washington (2004-05), Stanford University (2005-06), and Howard University (2006-07). The goals of each Institute are to 1) formulate principles and models for advancing the engineering education infrastructure and 2) cultivate a diverse community of future leaders and change agents in the scholarship of engineering education. Each Institute is comprised of five cyclic activities: recruiting and selecting Scholars, launching the experience with an intensive Summer Summit, Scholars conducting year long research studies, a culminating Leadership Summit, and adapting the design to the next host campus. NAE fellows could collaborate with the CAEE Institute in two ways. First, there are opportunities to participate in an Institute as a Scholar. Second, there are opportunities to study the Institute to investigate what aspects of the Institute contribute to the success and challenges for Institute Scholars.
Contact Information:
Cindy Atman
CAEE Director,
CAEE, Box 352180
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
Voice 206-616-2171
Email atman@engr.washington.edu