Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN
P.I: Professor William K. Durfee
Co-P.I's: Professors Avram Bar-Cohen, Darrell A. Frohrib, David B. Kittelson,
Susan C. Mantell, Virgil A. Marple, James W. Ramsey, Patrick J. Starr
and Mr. Bruce Van Wyk (FMC / United Defense)
Engineering design is widely recognized as a critical component of an undergraduate engineering curriculum. During the past five years there has been considerable debate on what and how to teach design. We propose to develop a new engineering design curriculum that meets the pedagogical needs of mechanical engineering students. Further, we are in a unique position to develop a curriculum appropriate to the specific needs of the University of Minnesota, but which can also serve as a model for design education at large state university systems.
The work on this project will include (1) developing new courses for the Lower Division, (2) creating an infrastructure system to support the design curriculum, (3) forming links to transfer student feeder schools located in Minnesota, and (4) solidifying ties to local industry.
The expected outcome is a new design program which will excite and motivate students from the moment they enter mechanical engineering and which will provide them with the skills they will need as professional engineers.
When engineering design educators gather to discuss how to teach design, just about the only thing they can agree upon is that there is no single, correct way to teach design. One would expect more unanimity given that design to a large extent defines an engineer and that design has been taught to engineering students for generations. Further, the importance of design education is codified by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) which requires a comprehensive design curriculum for program accreditation.
The debate is fueled by the perception that methods of teaching design which may have worked in the past are no longer appropriate for the current era of intense global competition, pressure to be first to market and increased emphasis on quality that dictates the success of modern products (Dixon 1991a,b; Durfee 1994; National Research Council, 1991). Industry has also become increasingly uncomfortable with how designers are being educated. Most do not call for additional training in specific technical skills, but rather for a broadening of the scope of education and in particular the scope of design education. Learning the technical details is not enough. The new product design leader must not only be technically competent, but must also be able to define the needs of the customer, assimilate and manage the large flow of information associated with a project, work in or manage a large team, and above all produce results under the strict deadline of a rapid product design cycle. In general, engineering programs in American universities are not preparing their students to meet these new challenges.
Although most engineering schools recognize the need for excellence in design education, large state universities have specific characteristics which require special attention in creating an appropriate design program. These are: (1) large numbers of students, (2) students entering with a wide diversity of backgrounds, abilities, ages and learning styles, and (3) large numbers of transfer students coming from public 2-year community colleges and 4-year non-specialty colleges. Programs that work in a small, private university often do not scale well to large, public universities.
At the University of Minnesota, we have a typical design program which consists of a single design projects course (commonly known as a senior "capstone" design course) where students work in teams to tackle a problem. Many of the skills we teach in this course would serve our students better if they were introduced earlier in the curriculum, preferably in the freshman or sophomore years. Some of these include working in groups, oral, visual and written communication and handling unstructured problems.
The curriculum is lacking in opportunities for students at any level to experience hands-on design through fabrication, prototyping and test. This important part of engineering education not only brings reality to design, but also serves to motivate students by introducing some of the excitement and utility of mechanical engineering that may be missing in the more traditional engineering science courses.
Other areas in need of improvement include making a commitment to bring design across the curriculum rather than segregating it to the design courses; developing cross-disciplinary design activities with other departments in the engineering school, the business school and the architecture school; increasing involvement by local industry in the design program; and creating facilities for design activities including fabrication and prototyping.
The objectives of this project are to:
(1) Introduce design in the freshman and sophomore (Lower Division) years rather than having the students wait until the senior year for their first experience with unstructured problem solving.
(2) Expose students to "hands-on" design where they create and build.
(3) Integrate instruction in writing, speaking and visualization communication skills that are necessary for success as a professional engineer.
(4) Create a design program infrastructure that lowers the barriers for students getting things done.
(5) Formalize ties to local industries.
(6) Include the public two and four-year general and community colleges located around the state of Minnesota that supply us with transfer students in the curriculum development efforts so that students entering our program as juniors will have already had the appropriate Lower Division design background.
(7) Pay particular attention to methods for delivering a quality design education to large numbers of students in a cost effective manner that makes efficient use of declining academic resources.
(8) Develop syllabi and design curriculum notes for dissemination of our activities and results to interested institutions.
To implement our design program objectives, we will (1) develop specific new courses, (2) institute design across the curriculum, (3) plan a new design space and (4) create new links to local industry. Of most importance are courses which incorporate design into the curriculum of beginning students. This serves a dual purpose of creating an early link between engineering analysis and the creation of useful products and services and of motivating and exciting students about mechanical engineering. The latter purpose is essential if we wish to retain students. Currently, first year students see the field through traditional, lecture-based physics, mathematics and chemistry courses. In parallel, we would like them to experience the art and excitement of creating original designs as well as introduce specific engineering skills and tools students will use throughout their program and careers.
The link between analysis and design will be emphasized to provide relevance and motivation for the later engineering science courses. Students will be expected to be proficient in the analysis of the physical principles which drive the design at a level appropriate to their background (concurrent courses in elementary physics and calculus). They will be introduced to spreadsheets and simple simulation tools so that their designs are based on optimizing tradeoffs through analysis and predicting performance through simulation.
Effective engineering communication will be a major component of the course which will also replace our existing "Engineering Graphics" course. Communication is used in the broad sense because we will teach and expect the students to become proficient in visual, oral and written communication. The visual communication component will include perspective drawing, rapid sketching and formal mechanical drafting using computer-based solid-modeling (at the U of M, we use Pro/ENGINEER). This would be a drastic change from our existing graphics course where students learn traditional orthographic projection and drafting conventions using boards and T-squares. In contrast, the ability to rapidly sketch an idea coupled with some knowledge of modern computer design documentation tools is closer to what engineers in industry are required to do. Oral communication skills will be built through formal and informal presentations while written communication will be covered though formal and informal exercises that cover a wide variety of written forms, from informal e-mail messages and design notebook entries to formal design reports.
The project P.I. taught a pilot version of such a communications course in Fall 1994 which was met with some success. It will be even better when coupled to design so that students draw, write and talk about their own designs or about products which they take apart. Work to develop the writing portion of the course will be conducted as part of an internal U of M grant proposal to develop a department-wide writing program for Mechanical Engineering (Durfee et al, 1995).
Experimental versions of one quarter Lower Division courses with essentially the same goals have met with some success at Howard University (Reiss et al, 1993) and the University of Washington (Calkins, 1993), both members of the NSF ECSEL Engineering Coalition. Further, the new E4 program at Drexel places all entering engineering students in a full year course with activities similar to those proposed above. One of the results of the work proposed here is to see if this approach will work at a large, public university.
Students will also learn by taking apart existing products. The study of existing designs is a rich resource for learning about materials, structures, machine elements, assembly, manufacturing and cost (Sheppard 1993; Gabriele, 1994). In the pilot course mentioned above, the P.I. had good success with a video cassette "takeapart" exercise where students dissect a cassette and then write, draw and talk about function, materials and assembly; and with another exercise where students pick a common product of their own choosing such as a retractable pen, combination lock or fishing reel, take it apart and then create a "How Things Work" page of text and graphics.
Learning to use engineering tools and resources will be woven throughout the course. Students will be introduced to computer applications for writing (word processors, page layout), design documentation (Pro/Engineer) and analysis (spreadsheets). They will become proficient in e-mail and information gathering over the Internet (Gopher and the World Wide Web), will learn hyper-text by creating their own Web home page. They will receive instruction in how to use library resources to solve design problems, how to search parts catalogs and how to use a fax machine to get additional information. Students will receive sufficient training to feel comfortable around basic machine tools including drill presses, lathes and milling machines as well as methods for creating "look and feel" models out of foam-core, cardboard and carved foam; all with the intent of increasing student confidence in fabricating prototypes.
In contrast to the traditional lecture-based courses which comprise the rest of a Lower Division student's curriculum, "Introduction to Design" will rely on cooperative learning principles (Johnson et al, 1991) where students play an active role in classroom activities. There will be a mix of individual and group tasks, but rarely will the visitor see a professor lecturing on the blackboard in front of a passive class. Group design tasks will commence on day one when students will form teams and have a day or two to create an original design, which some years may be an innovative Lego structure and other years may be an original rap song.
Because we have a commuter campus with many students working part-time or with family care duties, we will explore the use of e-mail and, conference calls and low-cost video conferencing solutions to practice "design-at-a-distance". Establishing electronic links between members of a student design team, engineers at sponsoring companies and even students at other institutions around the state should increase the efficiency of the team.
We have found that companies are generally eager to participate in design classes because they can benefit from the student-developed ideas and concepts of design projects they sponsor, can increase their ties to university faculty and faculty research and have better opportunities for recruiting our top students. With the Design Partners Program, we intend to codify this relationship.
It is appropriate to conduct this study in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota for several reasons, some of which will be elaborated upon in this section. First, the department is committed to implementing a major curriculum reform over the next several years. Part of this entails a restructuring of the design program to strengthen its purpose and focus. Second, the department is large which means we can address the issue of delivering design courses efficiently to optimize available resources. Third, our students come with a wide range of abilities, backgrounds, work experiences and ages which means that we must create programs that reach a diverse population with many learning styles. Fourth, we have a large number of transfer students from throughout the state of Minnesota which means we can tackle the challenge of Lower Division linkages to make it easier for students to change schools. Fifth, and most important, we have a faculty that is and historically has been committed to design. Support for design comes from all divisions in the department, which means that it is feasible to create and implement a design program that cuts across the entire curriculum. As the flagship higher education institution in the state of Minnesota, we have an obligation to its citizens and to local industry to produce well-educated engineers. Further, we must do this in an era of declining state financial support for academic resources.
The clear challenge for curriculum reform is to develop an implementation plan that does not increase faculty teaching burden and does not call for new recurring costs, while at the same time meets the needs of large numbers of students. The University of Minnesota is a good place to try these experiments because its size and fiscal constraints are very different from smaller, private universities.
Adding new design courses to the curriculum without increasing faculty size will work because advantage will be taken of economies of scale, and considerable effort will be spent on developing self-help instructional materials and instituting cooperative learning strategies for group members to learn from each other. For example an Internet WEB-based shop and fabrication tutorial will be created to make it easier for large numbers of students to construct prototypes. Placing these materials on the WEB means they are readily accessible through any computer with an Internet connection without needing special video equipment or a CD-ROM. Plus, only a single copy need be maintained for updates. Given that the cost of disk storage is decreasing and the speed of network communication is increasing, we feel that the WEB is an exciting and appropriate medium for instruction and information transfer to large numbers of students. Likewise, although we do not advocate any reduction in direct student-faculty contact, the use of e-mail can allow faculty to efficiently answer the questions of many more students than one-on-one office hours.
To ease the load on our shops, we will experiment with take-home toolkits that each student can check out at the start of the quarter. Our hope is that through the concept of "distributed shops", many construction and dissection activities can take place where the students live rather than in the shops so that courses which require prototyping need not be all that different from traditional problem-set based courses. To make the department shops more accessible to students, we will institute a training and program to "license" students shop supervisors so that shop hours can be extended into the evenings and weekends when project deadlines are near.
Because faculty numbers are limited and we will ultimately have large numbers of design groups that need advising, through the Design Partners Program we will encourage companies to provide occasional release time to engineers who wish to help staff our design courses. Also, we plan to identify recently retired engineers in the Twin Cities area who may also wish to volunteer. Because non-faculty course staff require some training before they can effectively handle the responsibilities of being a project team advisor, as part of the proposed work we will develop the curriculum for a one or two day summer workshops to train company engineers, retired volunteers, TAs and new faculty who will be involved in the design program during the following academic year.
Another difference from private colleges is that many of our students do not start college when they are 18 and finish four years later. Instead, they work, join the Coop program and take leaves of absence for financial or family reasons. Our new program must be careful to accommodate these non-traditional students who often take five or six years to receive their bachelors degree. For example, if we extend the senior design course to 20 weeks, it must have the flexibility to handle students in the Coop program who work at their companies every other quarter. The preponderance of non-traditional students coupled with minimal on-campus dormitories means that most students commute, another common feature of state universities. Take-home toolkits, e-mail and Internet information transfer should help to accommodate these students as well.
Attracting Native Americans to Mechanical Engineering presents a different challenge because many do not even enroll at the University. Here, we intend to work closely with the postsecondary institutions in northern Minnesota (for example, Bemidji State College) which serve the Native American community. By placing introductory design courses in the local colleges, we can possibly convince more Native Americans to choose to pursue a full engineering education at the University.
The Institute of Technology and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota has the capability and commitment to conduct the proposed work. The P.I. and co-P.I.'s of this proposal comprise the department Design Studies Committee which has spent the past two years considering changes in the design curriculum and have recommended the program described in this proposal. The core program is in line with the recommendations made by a department committee which reviewed the entire undergraduate curriculum and suggested that new required design courses could be placed into the curriculum by shrinking the current 24 credit Coherent Elective requirement. (Ibele et al, 1994). At the Fall 94 Department of Mechanical Engineering Department Retreat, the Committee's proposals were endorsed in principle by the faculty, but with the clear message that the changes must not increase faculty workload. The work outlined here represents the next step of implementation and has the full support of the Dean of Engineering, the Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department and the Mechanical Engineering department faculty.
The co-Principle Investigators are all members of the department Design Studies Committee which has one representative from each of the five department divisions. Two of the Committee members are division heads (Bar-Cohen and Kittelson) and one is the Associate Head of the Department (Ramsey). One is an upper level manager at a local company (Van Wyk). The Design Studies Committee will constitute the working group for guiding the activities proposed here and will meet on a regular basis to ensure steady progress and effective oversight.
Funds for two Design Program Graduate Teaching Assistants are requested. They will undertake a number of activities related to developing the design program, as well as assist in the teaching of pilot courses. For example, they will develop the Web-based training material on using shop tools and will supervise the tool kits and design supplies used by the students in their building projects.
Professor Woodie Flowers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been retained as a consultant to help provide direction to the project and to serve as an independent, outside evaluator of the project's progress. Professor Flowers is known nationwide for his innovations in design teaching and will bring valuable ideas and thoughtful assessment to the project.
Year 1 Detailed project planning. Program mission statement drafted and circulated for faculty approval in FQ. Base-level survey and focus group conducted with first-year student cohort. Survey of recent graduates designed and implemented. Pilot version of freshman 2-quarter design course taught either FQ-WQ or WQ-SQ (target enrollment is 15-25, core instruction staff is project P.I. and two design program TAs). At end of course, portfolios and classroom assessment activities evaluated and students surveyed. Consultant reviews results from pilot course. Second focus group with students in the course. Results of pilot brought before the department faculty for comments. Planning started for Design Partners Program. Web-based tutorial information developed. Attend October FIPSE meeting. Attend ASEE summer meeting.
Year 2 Design Partners Program initiated. Pilot of 20-week senior design course run either FQ-WQ or WQ-SQ. Proposed required curriculum changes brought before the department faculty for discussion and (hopefully) approval. Another pilot of first-year design course run with modifications as dictated by evaluation results. Work with engineering science course instructors to increase design exercises in traditional courses. Begin work with transfer student feeder colleges to implement versions of Lower Division design locally. Assessment of first-year and senior year pilots using portfolios, classroom assessment and surveys. Finalize plans for Design Space and coordinate with construction plans for new Mechanical Engineering Building Wing. Attend October FIPSE meeting. Results presented at ASEE summer meeting.
Year 3 If faculty have approved curriculum changes, teach first-year design course to all entering Lower Division students and 20-week senior design course to all students. Continue with assessment plan, now using the results from two years of pilots and one of full implementation to track changes in time. Survey students who took the first year pilot course two years earlier and compare results with those who did not. Continue to work with feeder schools to implement new programs. Continue to grow Design Partners Program. Continue to implement design across the curriculum. Attend October FIPSE meeting. Results presented at ASEE summer meeting. Write final FIPSE report.
A formal assessment plan is integral to this study and will follow the methodology outlined in Erwin (1991). The first step in the plan is to define the mission statement for the design program as a whole and for each course within the design program. The statement will be no more than one or two sentences and will be circulated for approval by the faculty during the first quarter of project work.
The second step will be to develop a set of specific outcome objectives for each course and major activity in the proposed plan. For courses, these will include subject material objectives, developmental objectives following the cognitive outcome taxonomy of Bloom (1956), and skills objectives. For activities such as the Design Partners Program, the objectives will keyed to quantitative outcomes such as number of companies in the Program and qualitative outcomes such as the impact of industry sponsored projects on student learning. Some objectives will be relatively abstract (e.g. "develop ability to handle open-ended design problems"), while others will be mundane and down-to-earth (e.g. "learn how to use the design catalog collection").
The act of writing objectives serves to clarify the program and to publicize the program's purpose to all stakeholders which includes faculty, students, administrators and local companies. Further, as recommended by others who have gone through the process (Cavallaro, J. et al, 1995; Forsberg, C. et al, 1995), pruning to a core set of four to six objectives for each course or activity, emphasizes the critical elements of the program. If objectives are allowed to proliferate beyond a manageable number, the overall merit of a program becomes impossible to measure.
Once objectives are written, specific outcomes can be generated with relative ease. For example, if the objective is for students to have the ability to express their design ideas through rapid sketching, an outcome might be that they can sketch simple forms in 2-point perspective. Once the outcomes are defined, particular measurement methods can be selected to assess whether the objective tied to the outcome has been met. The assessment methods we plan to use include portfolios, classroom activities, focus groups, surveys and academic performance data.
The measure of success will be whether the objectives have been met which in turn should answer whether the program has had its intended positive benefit on our students.
Classroom assessment activities will be integrated into the new courses to provide immediate feedback on student achievement and instruction quality. Appropriate methods from Angelo and Cross (1993) will be selected for use. Although classroom assessment methods are most useful for on-line course corrections to optimize teaching methodology, results will be summarized qualitatively for use in assessing the program as a whole.
Focus groups (Krueger, 1994) will be used as a means for gathering student opinions about their mechanical engineering experiences and specific courses. Four focus groups with 8 to 10 participants will be held each year, two for students enrolled in experimental courses and two for students who are not. At least one of the focus groups will be held early in the Fall Quarter with first year students to gather information from new students. We will train and use mature students as focus group facilitators having experienced the inhibition that occurs when group interviews are conducted by faculty teaching the courses or by administrative staff. Raw data from the focus group will be collected by student scribes and analyzed by the project staff to determine primary and secondary student needs and reactions using the methods outlined in Ulrich and Eppinger (1994).
Surveys of students and alumni will be used to gather factual and attitudinal information about the design program (Erwin, 1991). Surveys are useful because they can provide quantitative information that can be compared between subject samples and across time. For example, we will survey recent alumni who have gone through the current design program, and latter survey those who have gone through the pilot new program to see if the changes made a difference in their workplace skills and careers. For each survey, we hope to get a sample size of 50 to 100.
Student enrollment and academic performance data will be collected continuously and compared between students who are in the pilot courses and those who are not. Essentially, this means tracking course grades and grade point averages for the students. We will also track quantitative measures such as decreasing number of transfer students who have to take remedial courses once enrolled at the university, or an increased number of Native American students or measures of student-faculty ratios to assess teaching efficiency are relatively simple to implement. Because it will take some time for the curriculum changes to be put in place and because it takes four years for students to go through the entire new curriculum, there will be some delay before complete survey and academic performance evaluation data will be available.
Cost effectiveness data will be collected for each pilot course taught and each infrastructure activity (e.g. the Design Space and the Design Partners Program) undertaken. Cost per student as measured in faculty and TA hours and supplies purchased for prototyping projects will be compared to existing lecture and lab courses. Projections will be made for how costs will scale as larger number of students go through the program.
If the number of students in a pilot course is small (e.g. 20), then no sampling is required and portfolios and surveys of the entire class can be evaluated. For students not in the pilot courses or when large numbers take the new courses, random sampling of the cohort will be used to end up with a manageable size for portfolio assessment, while full sampling will be used for surveys.
Grade point average data will be used with caution because if students in pilot courses are volunteers, they typically are the ones who are brighter and more interested in their education (Erwin 1991) and might be additionally motivated by the newness of the experiment (McKeachie, 1994).
There are several ways in which the project results will be disseminated. First and foremost, there is a commitment among the Department of Mechanical Engineering faculty to make the design program changes a permanent part of the required curriculum if the pilots should prove successful. This will automatically add validity to the experiments and will increase interest from the outside.
Second, within our own institution, we will begin discussions with the other engineering departments to determine which parts of the new curriculum are suitable for transfer. This activity has the support of the Engineering Dean and follows the work of a recent Institute of Technology Lower Division curriculum committee which recommended the inclusion of new design-oriented courses in the Lower Division program.
Third, we will coordinate with the Synthesis Coalition schools, the NSF Engineering Education Coalition which is specifically charged with rapid dissemination of new ideas in design teaching. A letter of support from Professor Larry Leifer, Stanford P.I. in the Synthesis Coalition is attached and we will work most closely with Stanford to disseminate our ideas and progress.
Fourth, we will keep the institutions that have a specific interest in our evolving program appraised of results and evaluations. Letters from key faculty at several of these institutions are attached. One is from Professor Gary Kinzel of Ohio State which is part of the NSF Gateway Coalition which is charged with increasing design activities. We will coordinate closely with Ohio State as our work progresses.
Fifth, we will make the results of as many of our activities as possible available over the Web, including philosophy, course materials (the same ones used by the students) and assessment results. Dissemination via the Web is rapidly becoming the standard way to let program plans and activities be known by others all over the world.
Sixth, we will present our results at the ASEE (American Society of Engineering Educators) annual conference. Although this is a relatively passive dissemination activity, the ASEE conference is the place most educators turn to for news and documentation of curriculum reform nationwide.
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WILLIAM K. DURFEE
CURRICULUM VITAE (Abbreviated)
February, 1995
Associate Professor and Director of Design Education
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Minnesota
111 Church Street S.E.
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0111
tel: (612) 625-0099
fax: (612) 624-1398
e-mail: wkdurfee@maroon.tc.umn.edu
PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS
Design and applied controls. Biomechanics and neuromuscular physiology of human movement. Electrical stimulation of paralyzed muscles to return function to the spinal cord injured. Design of smart machines. Real-time digital control of dynamic systems. Product design. Human-machine interactions. Design education.
EDUCATION:
Ph.D., 1985, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering. Advisor: Dr. Michael J. Rosen. Thesis title: "Task Control with an Electrically Stimulated Antagonist Muscle Pair"
MSME, 1981, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA, Department of Mechanical Engineering. Thesis: "Functional Muscle Recruitment by Electrical Stimulation of Afferent Nerves".
A.B., 1976, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, Division of Engineering and Applied Physics.
EMPLOYMENT:
Associate Professor and Director of Design Education, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 1993-present.
Brit and Alex d'Arbeloff Associate Professor of Engineering Design, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1991-1993.
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1990-1991.
W. M. Keck Foundation Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1986-1988.
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1985-1990.
Durfee CV, Page 2
Research Assistant, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1978-1985.
Project Engineer, Harvard-MIT Rehabilitation Engineering Center, Cambridge, MA, 1976-1978.
Laboratory Supervisor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1976.
AWARDS
J.P. Den Hartog Distinguished Educator Award, 1993.
Graduate Student Council Teaching Award, 1993.
Brit and Alex d'Arbeloff Chair in Engineering Design, 1991-1993.
Graduate Student Council Teaching Award, 1990.
W. M. Keck Foundation Chair in Biomedical Engineering, 1986-1988.
Whitaker Doctoral Fellowship, l982-l984.
NIH National Research Service Award, l979-1981.
NIGMS Biomedical Engineering Fellowship, l979.
PATENTS
U.S. 4,095,l39 (l978). A microprocessor based theatre lighting control system.
PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
Rehabilitation Engineering Society of North America (RESNA)
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)
Product Design and Management Association (PDMA)
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Manuscript reviews for IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control, IEEE Control Systems Magazine, Assistive Technology, Journal of Engineering Education. Book reviews in the area of control systems. Proposal and program reviews for NIH, NSF, NIDRR, Whitaker Foundation, Spinal Cord Research Foundation, Canadian Medical Research Council. Guest Editor, Special Issue of Assistive Technology on Functional Electrical Stimulation. Steering Committee for 1988, 1991 and 1994 Neural Prostheses: Motor Systems Conference. Session organizer for American Control Conferences. Chairman, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Chapter, IEEE Boston Section. Vice-Chair, Engineering Foundation Conferences Committee.
CONSULTING EXPERIENCE
Cognition, Inc., Burlington MA, 1985-1986.
Riley, Burke, and Donahue, Boston MA, 1986-1987.
Texas Instruments, Dallas TX, 1986-1987.
The Tussauds Group, London, 1992.
Product Genesis, Cambridge MA, 1992.
Exos, Woburn MA, 1992-1993.
M. Stageberg, Esq, Shorewood MN 1994.
Fire Department, Minneapolis MN 1994-present.
Durfee CV, Page 3
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Introduction to System Dynamics, Control System Principles Introduction to Design, Analysis and Design of Digital Control Systems (created new laboratory), Designing Smart Machines (created new course and new laboratory), Introduction to Industrial Design (created new course), Design Morphology, Engineering Communications (created new course), New Product Design and Development (created new course).
PUBLICATIONS (Design Education Only)
Durfee, W. Designing smart machines: teaching mechatronics to mechanical engineers through a project-based, creative design course, Mechatronics (special issue on mechatronics education), In Press, 1995.
Erdman, A. and W. Durfee, Pac-Man, calluses and the undergraduate engineering design student, Educators' Tech Exchange, Spring 1995.
Durfee, W., Engineering education gets real, Technology Review, Feb/Mar 1994.
Durfee, W., Teaching ME's to use microprocessors, Mechanical Engineering, 74-76, April 1994.
Durfee, W. The MIT New Products Program. Proceedings of the 1993 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, 1993. (Winner, Best Paper Award)
Durfee, W. Teaching microprocessors to mechanical engineers: lessons from a project-based, creative design course. Winter Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Paper number 93-WA/DSC-8, 1993.
Durfee, W., M. Wall, D. Rowell, and F. Abbott, Interactive software for dynamic system modeling using linear graphs, IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 11(4):60-66, 1991.
Durfee, W. VISDYCON: VISual DYnamics and CONtrol. Proceedings of the 1991 IFAC Conference on Advances in Control Education, pp 128-131, Boston, 1991.
Durfee, W., VISDYCON: VISual DYnamics and CONtrol. in Windows on Athena, 2nd ed., C. Avril ed., MIT, 1991.
Durfee, W., Using Project Athena in the Smart Machine Design course. in Windows on Athena, 2nd ed., C. Avril ed., MIT, 1991.
Salaries
Durfee (P.I.) will devote 0.5 month each summer to the project and will teach pilot versions of new courses in lieu of his normal courses. To pay for this additional teaching load, funds are requested at a level to support a replacement adjunct faculty to take over the teaching of the courses the P.I. would normally handle.
Funds are needed for two design program Teaching Assistants to work on the project. They will be responsible for implementing much of the design infrastructure, including assembling took kits and project supplies for design projects, creating the Web-based shop tutorials and writing documentation.
Fringe Benefits
Fringe benefits are charged on salaries at the normal U of M rates.
Travel
Funds are requested to allow the P.I. to travel to the October FIPSE meeting and the ASEE conference each year, and for the consultant to travel to the U of M once or twice each year. Also, smaller travel costs will be incurred for travel to transfer student feeder colleges within the state of Minnesota.
Material/Supplies/Services
We have budgeted $10,000 each year to purchase materials and supplies associated with the project. One half ($5,000) of that amount is requested from FIPSE, the rest will be covered internally. The breakdown for the first year is as follows:
Take-home toolkits for students to borrow 2,000
Microprocessor development system (3) for 2,000
creating "smart" machine projects in the
first year
Non-renewable supplies for 2,000
"build-from-a-kit" projects (e.g. metal
stock, gears, bearings, electronic
components)
Renewable supplies for student projects 3,000
(e.g. motors, power supplies)
Supplies to create permanent instructional 500
material (e.g. presentation supplies for
material selector guides)
Printing and mailing for surveys 500
Total $10,000
Consultant
Professor Woodie C. Flowers of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT has been retained as a project consultant. His rate is xxxx per day and funds are requested to cover four days of consulting per year.
Publication Costs
Funds are requested to pay for page charges of journals where we will submit articles about the program and for brochure printing costs for advertising the Design Partners Program to local industry.
Indirect Costs
Indirect costs are requested at 8%.
Institutional Cost Sharing
The University of Minnesota will provide indirect cost recovery between the requested rate of 8% and the actual U of M rate of 45%.
One half of the material and supplies cost will be supported by the university.
The university will also contribute 10% of a secretary, including benefits and overhead to work on this project.
Thus, the total institutional cost sharing will be a little over one half of the funds requested from FIPSE.
The following letters of support are attached:
1. Richard J. Goldstein, Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota. Professor Goldstein expresses department support for the project.
2. Woodie Flowers, Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Flowers has agreed to be consultant on this project. A brief CV is appended to his letter.
3. Larry Leifer, Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, Stanford University. Professor Leiffer has long been involved with design education at Stanford and is currently the Director of the Center for Design Research and the Stanford P.I. in the NSF Synthesis Coalition. He will help us in our efforts to disseminate project results.
4. Gary L. Kinzel, Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ohio State University. Ohio State is a large public university which has expressed an interest in our project. It is also a member of the NSF Gateway Coalition.
5. J. Edward Colgate, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University. Professor Colgate is on a committee which is reviewing design education at Northwestern and is interested in keeping abreast of our work.
6. Gary T. Yamaguchi, Assistant Professor, Bioengineering Program, Arizona State University. Professor Yamaguchi teaches design at ASU and wishes to follow our results in coordinating design education at large, state universities.
7. Michael J. Rosen, Director, Rehabilitation Engineering Program and Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee at Memphis. Professor Rosen has had a longstandting involvement in design education, is developing a new program at UT and is interested in our program.
An article written by the P.I. titled "Engineering Education Gets Real" which appeared in the Feb/Mar 1994 issue of Technology Review is attached. It provides a background for why hands-on design and experiential design education is so important.