Reappointment Seminar for John Mah and Kathryn Wingate
Tuesday, Dec. 1 from 4:30 - 5:45 p.m.
Zoom Webinar - Pre-Registration Required
John Mah
Embracing Chaos – Empirical Lessons in Open-Ended Lab Development in UG Aerospace
Abstract: It would be wrong to call open-ended learning environments a new push in engineering education; however, often the exploration of this subject centers around the implementation of senior capstone courses and not the implementation in smaller, lab based assessments aimed at lower-level undergraduates. Over the course of six years both at the University of Colorado Boulder and at the U.S. Air Force Academy, I have been involved in the development and execution of an open-ended glider design lab focused on freshmen and sophomore level undergraduates. Through multiple iterations, many mistakes, and some successes, this experience has provided me a perspective on the value and pitfalls of implementing open-ended labs at the early UG level in aerospace. This seminar is aimed at sharing those empirical lessons while also discussing future application and potential growth in open-ended labs within an UG aerospace curriculum.
Bio: John Mah is currently an instructor in the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences department at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). Prior to his time at CU, he spent 20 years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and received his BS in aeronautical engineering from the US Air Force Academy (USAFA) in ’98 and his MS in aeronautical engineering from Stanford in ’99. He has 6 years of teaching experience at the undergraduate level in aerospace engineering (CU and USAFA) and 10 years as an instructor in intelligence operations and air tactics in the Air Force. Additionally, he served as the Deputy Director of the Aeronautics Lab at USAFA for two years. At CU, John has taught GEEN 1400, ASEN 2002, ASEN 2004, and ASEN 3128 as well as being a project advisor in ASEN 4018/4028.
Kathryn Wingate
Mapping Student Progression through Engineering Curricula
Abstract: In the past decade US enrollment in STEM degrees has steadily increased while engineering departments have made a concerted effort to incorporate open-ended laboratories and project based learning courses into their curriculum. Further, in the past 20 years tuition at public national universities has increased 212%, resulting in intense pressure on students to complete rigorous engineering degrees in minimum time. These constraints put a high strain on both department and student resources, making it critical to understand how curriculum design and implementation impacts faculty load and student success. In this seminar, I discuss studies on how students matriculate through engineering curricula, specifically mapping points of struggle (receiving a DWF in a course), and examining underlying factors in this struggle (pre-requisite courses, high school courses). Further, I investigate the path students take after struggle: are students able to recover, and what does this recovery look like in terms of repeated course grades, final GPA, and time to graduation? Finally, I examine how increasing curriculum flexibility impacts both teaching coverage and student progress.
Bio: Kathryn Wingate is currently an instructor in the Ann and HJ Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences department at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she teaches material science, statics, and senior projects, and researches engineering curricula. Prior to joining CU, she worked at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems as a materials scientist on a number of DoD satellite programs. She has a PhD in mechanical engineering from CU Boulder, with a focus on materials science and tissue engineering. From 2013 to 2018 she worked as an instructor in the GW Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, teaching component and senior design courses.