When I was in undergrad, I had the privilege of studying abroad and taking a course (STS 323 – World Population and Food Prospects) with Dr. Bob Patterson. Dr. Patterson is an amazing professor with more life experience than most professors in his department combined. He is beloved by current students and alumni, and he […]
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Did Engineers Even Have Empathy in the First Place?
Reading Dr. Henry’s article this week about medical students losing their empathy struck a chord with me. I vividly remember the night last semester during the small group I lead with my church when one of the medical students spoke up with a prayer request. He was on his ob-gyn rotation and had just that […]
Continue ReadingPost 5: “Inter” the New University Era
There is no question – we live in an intersectional, interconnected, interdisciplinary world; nothing is separate from anything else, everything is intertwined. This truism confronts our current approach to higher education, especially in engineering. My own experience in engineering was focused almost exclusively on learning theory and design practice. I learned how to design reinforced […]
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What is Critical Pedagogy?
Critical Pedagogy is provoking thought by engaging with each other, which promotes a collaborative and problem-solving learning environment and encourages a critical reflection of one’s own learning experience. Group 3, engaging in critical pedagogy in class this week (thank you Dr. Ewing for the photo!) To our group, critical pedagogy means: Learning is based in […]
Continue ReadingWhy Giving Day Shouldn’t Be So Dreaded
Your phone rings… it’s that number… The one that you saved in your phone as “*insert your undergrad institution here*” with a cash bag emoji next to it. You’ve gotten the emails from every conceivable department that could be asking you for money (from your own department to the athletics program to the academic/student affairs […]
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The Flip Side of Flipped Classrooms
My freshman year in college, I decided to take a SCALE-UP class to fulfill one of my physics requirements. SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies) is a flipped class style that was developed in the NC State Physics Department. I was familiar with this teaching style, since my physics course in high school […]
Continue ReadingPost 4: Technology and Innovation in Academia
It seems as though most courses now-a-days are offered online. I even took a few online courses when I was in undergrad. These weren’t for my major, but were for general education requirements like Intro to Geology, Engineering Economics, or Oceanography. These classes were pretty typical online classes, and most undergrads neglected them (since all […]
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Admissions Privilege: Shocked But Not Surprised
A quick summary of what I’ve been seeing on Twitter for the past few days: Everyone is talking about this college admissions scandal (even in the NC State sports world, since Wake Forest was involved and they’re right down the road). It’s not surprising that we’ve resorted to memes to respond to this news coming […]
Continue ReadingA Victory for Open Access
This morning, while browsing through the Chronicle, I saw an article about the University of California System canceling its Elsevier subscriptions. One quote from the article stuck out to me: An Elsevier spokesman said the company had put forward a proposal that met the system’s request, including an option that would allow researchers to choose […]
Continue ReadingPost 3: Open Access: Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Where (location, organization, university, etc.) is the journal from? This journal originates from OMICS International, which is an organization established in 2007 to provide open access to research. OMICS has over 700 peer-reviewed, open access journals in the “clinical, medical, pharmaceutical, life sciences, business, engineering, and techology” fields [1]. What are the purpose, goals, scope, […]
Continue ReadingThe Carolina Way: To Seem Rather Than To Be
Last week when we blogged about ethics, I’ll admit that I was looking forward to it because of the links on Canvas. As an NC State alum and lifelong Wolfpack fan, I have very strong, totally unbiased feelings about UNC’s academic integrity issues over the past few decades. For those unfamiliar with the story, multiple […]
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You Can’t Always “Marie Kondo” Your Education
When I was a junior in civil engineering, I decided to take Reinforced Concrete Design. When we got to class the first day, I checked the part of the syllabus that tells you how your final grade will be calculated and saw: Midterm: 45% Final Exam: 55% At this point in my college career, it […]
Continue ReadingPost 2: Publish or Perish? Is It Worth It?
Last semester, I took Engineering Ethics and the Public with Dr. Marc Edwards. As part of that class, we had to read and write a book report about an ethical violation. The book I read, Plastic Fantastic, detailed the scientific misconduct of physicist Jan Hendrik Schon, who worked at Bell Labs. Schon committed major scientific fraud […]
Continue ReadingRacism, Yearbooks, and the Modern University
This week has been a total mess for Virginia politics. All three members of the executive branch and other prominent political figures are embroiled in scandals, most of which involve photos from their university days of them dressed in blackface. While these images are offensive, their existence shouldn’t be surprising, according to some scholars. As […]
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How do you anti-teach anti-learners?
This week, our reading discussed embracing change and allowing students to learn through play and imagination. The whole theory of anti-teaching seems to center around inspiring students to ask good questions instead of conveying useful information. It seems, though, that our education system has produced students who ask only the worst question: “do we need […]
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