Session: 09-03-01: General Topics on Engineering Education

Paper Number: 113587

113587 - "Rules and Procedures in Academia: Do They Help or Hurt? " 

Many rules and procedural guidelines are used in the governance of engineering programs.   As faculty members, who are products of this system, we have come to accept as well as impose these rules without assessing them critically.   In this era of flexible learning resources, and with all the efforts being made towards inclusivity and acknowledgement of different learning styles, perhaps time has come to take a critical look at some of these rules.   The origin of many rules can be traced back to government regulations and standards, requirements imposed by accrediting agencies, and procedures set up by the college or university to help with systematic handling of students.   Many of these have been historically accepted policies that were put in place at a time when the student population was quite different from now.   It was from a time when the students were overwhelmingly male, less racially or ethnically diverse, came from families that had a tradition of attending college and did not all have to work while going to school.

 

It is becoming more and more clear that some of these rules that are imposed on students were designed not because they helped students learn better but for the ease of handling them.   For example, students need to take a minimum of 12 credits for them to be considered full-time.   This is federally mandated and a student’s financial aid is often tied to this.   Quite often we come across situations where a student who finds certain courses to be extra hard or challenging would actually benefit a lot by taking fewer than 12 credits to focus on doing well in the courses that they are taking.   However, the full-time rule forces them to take more credits and they have a harder time coping with the classes.   It is clearly a situation where the arbitrary nature of this rule comes in the way of student learning and success.  Recently, an accrediting agency-imposed-rule was implemented on our campus.   As per this rule, in an extra hour of recitation for a 3-credit class no new material can be covered, neither can the student be required to attend it and we cannot do any activity that will contribute towards their grade.   As a result of this rule, students who need this recitation help the most  i.e., those who are struggling in the class are the same ones who stop showing up for it, because they get the feeling that the recitation is not important because no grade is assigned to anything we do there.   So essentially this rule ends up hurting the very students who needed the recitation practice in the first place.

In this paper, we have taken a critical look at these and many other rules that we use to process students through our educational system.  Our goal is to assess whether the rules are actually helping the students learn and be successful or are they working as obstacles for the students.  

Presenting Author: Shuvra Das Univ Of Detroit

Presenting Author Biography: Shuvra Das started working at University of Detroit Mercy in January 1994 and is currently Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Over this time, he served in a variety of administrative roles such as Mechanical Engineering Department Chair, Associate Dean for Research and Outreach, and Director of International Programs in the college of Engineering and Science. He has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and Master’s and Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Iowa State University. He was a post-doctoral researcher at University of Notre Dame and worked in industry for several years prior to joining Detroit Mercy.

Dr. Das has taught a variety of courses ranging from freshmen to advanced graduate level such as Mechanics of Materials, Introductory and Advanced Finite Element Method, Engineering Design, Introduction to Mechatronics, Mechatronic Modeling and Simulation, Mathematics for Engineers, Electric Drives and Electromechanical Energy Conversion. He led the effort in the college to start several successful programs: an undergraduate major in Robotics and Mechatronic Systems Engineering, a graduate certificate in Advanced Electric Vehicles, and thriving partnerships for student exchange with several universities in China.

Dr. Das received many awards for teaching and research at Detroit Mercy as well as from organizations outside the university. His areas of research interest are modeling and simulation of multi-disciplinary engineering problems, engineering education, and curriculum reform. He has worked in areas ranging from mechatronics system simulation to multi-physics process simulation using CAE tools such as Finite Elements and Boundary Elements. He has authored or co-authored five published books on these topics.

Authors:

Shuvra Das Univ Of Detroit
Darrell Klinke University of Detroit Mercy
David Pistrui Purdue University
Ron Bonnstetter TTI Success Insights