Vinod K. Lohani - US grants

This project seeks to initiate collaborative relationships among engineering and educational faculty at Virginia Tech. The goals are to develop a new degree program in education to enable engineering graduates to earn a master's degree while also qualifying for licensure as technology teachers in the Commonwealth of Virginia, to strengthen pedagogy in freshman engineering courses, and to initiate a collaborative aligning the university's activities with those of corporate stakeholders, K-12 educators, and policy makers to strengthen the infusion of engineering content in K-12 programs in Virginia schools.

This project is focusing on creating a cohesive General Engineering and Bioprocess Engineering program built on sound learning theory and pedagogical principles. A theme-based spiral curriculum approach, based on pioneering work of Jerome Bruner, is being adopted for the reforms. This Department-Level Reform project is demonstrating an unprecedented level of collaboration between engineering and education faculty members at Virginia Tech.

This project is reforming the General Engineering and the Bioprocess Engineering program within the Biological Systems Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. The specific objectives are: 1) Reformulating the existing General Engineering and Bioprocess Engineering curricula using theme-based spiral curriculum design and improved pedagogical methods, 2) Training faculty in the use of learning centered pedagogical techniques, 3) Developing a continual assessment plan to measure the impact of the reformulated curricula, faculty improvement activities, and student learning, and 4) Disseminating the results of the curricular reformulation and pedagogical changes to peers within and outside Virginia Tech.

The central idea of the spiral curriculum is that students will pursue their study of diverse engineering topics within the context of one or more organizing themes. Within the Bioprocess curriculum, the theme most relevant and useful is sustainability. By investigating progressively more complex problems situated within this theme, students are able to learn design, systems approach, ethics, and other engineering fundamentals, while emphasizing sustainability. The nature of the spiral concept is that students will constantly be working on the same topic-sustainability-but at progressively higher skill levels, knowledge representation, and commitment.

Psychology - Cognitive (73)

In this collaborative project, the University of Missouri-Columbia, Kansas State, and Virginia Tech are conducting research on case reuse when learning to solve problems in diverse science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Students often attempt to solve problems by applying the lessons learned from previous problem cases. However, they frequently fail to reuse examples appropriately because their retrieval is based on a comparison of the surface features of the problem cases being studied, not their structural features. In order to facilitate the transfer of learning from problems based on structural features, this project is conducting iterative, design-based research on case reuse. This includes testing strategies and materials for enhancing problem-solving instruction in diverse STEM disciplines; developing scalable comprehensive methods for assessing different dimensions of problem-solving performance; creating and testing web-based learning environments for engaging problem solving; and disseminating and implementing these pedagogical innovations in STEM classrooms at four different institutions.

Approximately 3,000 undergraduate students in physics, electrical engineering, and engineering courses at our universities are participating in the project. The project evaluation uses multiple approaches, and draws on both qualitative and quantitative methods, including questionnaires, interviews, evaluator site visit field notes, classroom observation notes, and institutional and course documents. Collectively these methods allow us to measure the effectiveness of problem sets and problem-solving assessment strategies developed in the project, and to compare student outcomes between the experimental and control groups. Materials developed by the project will be made available to undergraduate STEM educators, both as documents and in web-based learning environments that guide implementation of the project's strategies and other materials at other undergraduate institutions. In this way, our research on case reuse will have an impact on the teaching of problem solving across the nation.

EEC-0649070
Tamim Younos

The award provides support for a three-year REU Site at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The REU program will provide an interdisciplinary forum of faculty and students to train future professionals on critical elements of water-based approach to sustainable management of water resources. The activities of the REU Site will include: 1) introduce participants to advanced research topics in an interdisciplinary environment; 2) provide students opportunities to acquire advanced laboratory, field measurement, analytical, and computational skills; 3) stimulate scientific curiosity of participants so that they may pursue an advanced degree in watershed sciences and engineering; and 4) facilitate an environment for intellectual and personal interaction of different academic, social and cultural backgrounds to promote diversity.

This program will facilitate life long learning experiences, and nourish analytical skills and creativity of future engineers and scientist in a diverse environment. Also, it is expected to expand the potential pool of future graduate researchers and professionals in watershed sciences and engineering. At least 60% of the target REU participants will be students who are underrepresented in the areas of watershed sciences and engineering due to their race, ethnicity, gender, financial resources, parent's educational level, and those from smaller colleges/universities who have few research opportunities at their home institutions.

This project examines creativity in a series of activities involving the use of IT in a freshmen engineering course sequence spread across two semesters. The technology we will focus on primarily is pen-based direct input computers or Tablet PCs. The fundamental idea behind this study is to understand how students engage in creativity within the constraints of engineering design activities (EDA). EDAs are bound by design guidelines and limitations of space, time, material resources, and use of specific technologies, forcing students to be inventive and creative in accomplishing their goals, whether with artifacts or with people. The study will consider how students ?make do? and what role does technology play, and how creative practices develop over time. The project uses a longitudinal study comprising of an ethnographic field study component and laboratory based studies of interaction, spread over 18 months. Rather than relying solely on pre-designed instruments that measure creativity, the project assesses creativity contextually to try and understand the full spectrum of creative practices. In addition to serving as data, the video records collected during the study will also serve as the basis for building a digital video case library to teach creativity to undergraduate and graduate students.

GILEE: Graduate Interdisciplinary Liberal Engineering Ethics

In this project, a team of engineering science, engineering, humanities and
business educators is developing a graduate interdisciplinary liberal engineering ethics curriculum, known as GILEE. It addresses how issues of engineering ethics and cultural identities are necessarily intertwined within a globalized workplace and has a four-prong approach: 1) develop a course for graduate students and seniors interested in transitioning to graduate school, which will consist of various ethics training modules; 2) conduct a two-track summer training workshop, one for students and the other for faculty; 3) establish a seminar series in which scholars, practitioners, and senior graduate students speak on matters related to engineering ethics; and 4) include ethical issues in the Ph.D. preliminary examination and require graduate students to present ethics learning modules as part of the examination. The team includes partners from Virginia Tech, North Carolina A&T State University, and University of Illinois at Chicago. Test institutions include Politecnico di Milano, Italy and Jadavpur University, India. The evaluation and assessment plan includes both formative and summative evaluations.

The GILEE curriculum is grounded in the relevant research literatures of engineering education, science and technology studies, philosophy, and business management and builds a community of graduate students from engineering, humanities, and business who better understand each other's disciplines and are thus better prepared to be productive and collaborative members of an increasingly diverse society and its workforce.

Broader impacts are both national and international for graduate students in science and engineering. It offers a method to integrate mentoring programs, infrastructure development, faculty capacity building, and graduate-student involvement in program development.

This Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering program entitled, Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education: A Spiral Curriculum Approach, at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, under the direction of Dr. Ishwar Puri will create a nanotechnology curriculum based on the well-established spiral theory that instructs undergraduate engineering students in current and emerging topics in nanotechnology, thus enhancing their scientific literacy and helping prepare the nanotechnology workforce of tomorrow. To accomplish this goal a collaborative effort will be undertaken between the Engineering Education (EngE) and Engineering Science and Mechanics (ESM) Departments within the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech in collaboration with its Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science to develop and integrate multiple nanotechnology-based learning modules and courses into the first year General Engineering (GE) and sophomore through senior ESM curricula using a spiral approach. This approach will expose all engineering undergraduates in the nation's seventh largest engineering program to basic fundamentals of nanotechnology including its ethical considerations. The nanotechnology option within the ESM program will provide opportunities for advanced nanotechnology research and instruction.

The proposal for this award was received in response to the Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering Program Solicitation (NSF 07-554), and is being funded by the Directorate for Engineering (ENG), Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC).

TECHNICAL SUMMARY:
The goal of this 3-year NSF/REU Site is to train 10 REU Fellows each summer using 10-week long interdisciplinary research projects in water sciences. These research projects are directed by experts representing a diverse group of academic disciplines including engineering, geosciences, biology, crop and soil environmental sciences, and industrial design at Virginia Tech. The REU Fellows will have opportunities for professional development and interdisciplinary cohort experiences through weekly seminars, field trips, multiple oral presentations, weekly reflection papers, and an end-of-program research paper. Examples of seminar topics include professional ethics, why research and how to do research, panel discussion with graduate students, and use of emerging technologies like nanotechnology in water research. In addition, they will have opportunities for social interactions that will enhance personal and professional bonding among themselves and with the faculty and graduate student mentors. The Site organizers have already graduated 56 REU Fellows in prior two cycles during 2007-09 and 2011-13 and all components of the program have been thoroughly assessed by experts in academic assessment.

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY:
The Site organizers have been successful in recruiting about 60% of REU Fellows from various underrepresented groups including women in prior two cycles. This practice will be continued in this cycle with additional focus on recruitment from groups representing various ethnic minorities and from institutions with limited research opportunities. Funds are allocated for students' stipend, housing, travel, and meals for enabling their participation. Students from various science and engineering disciplines will work collaboratively over a 10-week period to learn about the interdisciplinary nature of water research. An external expert who has been leading the assessment work in prior two cycles will continue to assess the effectiveness of the REU program. The Site will further expand the pool of future researchers in water sciences who will contribute in addressing water related national and international challenges. Results of survey of our graduates from prior two cycles indicate that 68% of respondents plan to obtain a graduate degree (24% PhD and 44% Master?s) and 80% respondents will pursue a research career in engineering and science in the future.

Funding support provided by the EEC division of the National Science Foundation is sincerely acknowledged.

This project is investigating how remote access to real-time environmental data impacts students' motivation and cognition about environmental awareness. This project, which is a partnership between Virginia Tech (VT) and Virginia Western Community College (VWCC), investigates student motivation using the expectancy-value theory of motivation. It primarily investigates the impact of the lab on students' problem solving skills using the phenomenology approach. The research results guide the development and implementation of sustainability learning modules into undergraduate curricula. The project uses a remote lab, called LabVIEW Enabled Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS), that has the capability to sense, store, and transmit real-time weather data, as well as water quality and quantity data from the Stroubles Creek that flows through the Virginia Tech campus. The project is developing and implementing LEWAS-based learning modules for a freshman engineering course at both VT and VWCC and a senior level hydrology course. Project activities include unique curriculum development, implementation, and assessment activities at three academic levels.

This collaborative project between a 4-year and a 2-year institution introduces students at various academic levels to critical issues involved in finding solutions to one of the top two Grand Challenges (i.e., provide access to clean water) of the National Academy of Engineering. The hands-on water sustainability experiences have the potential to attract students into the engineering profession from a broad section of society.

In this SaTC-EDU project at Virginia Tech, faculty members and graduate students in the Engineering Education, Computer Science (CS), Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and the Hume Center for National Security and Technology in College of Engineering are collaborating to develop and implement a unique curriculum delivery model in cybersecurity into the CS and ECE curricula using Jerome Bruner's spiral theory approach. A theme of software security for cyber applications is chosen to develop and implement cybersecurity learning activities across several required courses in CS and computer engineering curricula impacting more than 300 students each year. Investigators are also conducting cybersecurity learning research using a mixed methods research design.

Two research questions are being investigated: (i) How effective are the spiral theory-based learning levels in enhancing students' core knowledge and skills in cybersecurity?, and (ii) How does students' motivation vary across gender, ethnic backgrounds, academic levels, and disciplines when participating in the cybersecurity learning levels? This research contributes in identifying characteristics of cybersecurity learners and developing education and training programs targeted at engaging a broad range of students (e.g., students from various ethnic backgrounds) in STEM education, particularly in cybersecurity. The investigators plan to conduct a workshop at the site of Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) to share results with national and international educators.

This I-Corps L project will examine the potential of environmental monitoring modules informed by high frequency water and weather data from a small urban watershed for 9-12th-grade students. The Learning Enhanced Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS) is a real-time, high frequency (1-3 min.) water and weather monitoring system and its cyberlearning system is called the Online Watershed Learning System (OWLS). Through early 2016, the LEWAS/OWLS-based learning modules have been used in at least 17 different undergraduate university courses in engineering, sciences and industrial design, one graduate hydrology course across four universities in three countries and four first-year engineering courses across two community colleges (Virginia Western and John Tyler) in Virginia. The LEWAS/OWLS has also been used in: one high school course, an NSF-supported Chautauqua Professional Development Short Course Series and interactive touchscreen displays available to the public on the Virginia Tech campus.

This I-Corps L project builds upon the outcomes of prior successful NSF grants in which the investigators have demonstrated successful implementation of the LEWAS/OWLS-based learning modules into various courses. This research, using the theoretical framework of situated learning, has shown that use of the OWLS as a remote lab within hybrid instruction increases students' learning of environmental monitoring concepts and motivation. The team proposes to investigate potential customer interest in incorporating the LEWAS/OWLS-based modules into 9-12 grade instruction. The expectation is that incorporation of these modules that combine the idea of understanding, evaluating, creating, and managing environmental (water quality and quantity and weather) data through computation will lead to wide-scale adoption of a cyberlearning approach for developing skills among 9-12th-grade students in environmental monitoring and computational thinking.

To "Provide Access to Clean Water" is one of the 14 Grand Challenges identified by the National Academy of Engineering. A recent United Nations report projects that virtually every nation will face a water supply problem within the next 20 years. A key component to any solution to address water-related challenges is to educate our youth about the interdisciplinary aspects of water research to make them aware of water-related issues; and to train them as future professionals who will develop appropriate solutions to meet these challenges. This Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering and Computer Science Site, entitled Water ECubeG (Engineering, Ecology, Environment, Geosciences) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VT) is targeted at developing a model 6-week professional development program to engage grades 9-12 STEM teachers and community college faculty in Southwest Virginia in interdisciplinary water research. Successful implementation of this RET Site will result in the development of innovative learning modules that will motivate students in grades 9-12 and community colleges to pursue the breadth of water related STEM careers. The proposed region for teacher recruitment will enable many teachers to educate a diverse group of students throughout Southwest Virginia serving high-need rural and urban student populations. The Site's focus on interdisciplinary water research will enable early exposure of future scientists and engineers to critical issues for solving complex water problems such as pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. The goal of this Site is consistent with the priorities identified by the Virginia Governor's office and upon successful completion this Site will serve as an excellent model for teacher and student training in interdisciplinary water research elsewhere.

Over a three-year period this RET Site will offer an intensive summer interdisciplinary water research experience to a total of 30 STEM precollege teachers and community college faculty. The specific objectives are to: (1) Develop and implement a 6-week research experience program for RET Site participants involving hands-on learning experiences in engineering, ecology, environment, and geosciences, (2) Develop and implement a professional development program for teachers, (3) Guide RET Site participants in developing and implementing STEM-based interdisciplinary water research learning modules for their curricula, and (4) Establish a community of teachers mentored in interdisciplinary water research for support, collaboration, and dissemination of Site activities to a larger group of teachers. Annual workshops will be held by RET alumni to educate and motivate additional 9-12 STEM teachers and community college faculty. RET participants will present their work at K-12 and Community College conferences. The project outcomes will be published through the TeachEngineering digital library.

This IRES program will offer water engineering research experiences to civil and environmental engineering students who are making the transition from undergraduate-to-graduate study. Participants will conduct research within one of the leading water engineering units in the world, in some of the finest labs globally, and within extremely complex environments. They will tackle one of three environmental fluid mechanics project areas using field measurements, physical modeling, and numerical methods: 1) Coastal hazard mitigation ecosystem services; 2) Contaminant remediation; and 3) River bed destruction. Each of these areas connect to ongoing research at the University of Queensland sponsored by major government, nonprofit, and industry agencies.

As the strain on water resources and ecosystems intensifies, it is becoming increasingly important to educate engineers to be ready to face complex issues related to water monitoring and management that stretch across national boundaries. The field of water engineering requires a broader educational approach beyond traditional curricula, as today's water engineers face challenging and interdisciplinary issues that combine concepts and methods beyond existing theories and data and instead require a research focus. In addition to the water engineering research component, this IRES program will make important contributions to water engineering education more broadly, as it will produce research focused on how to enhance the education of water engineers and how and why students develop in these kinds of international research experiences.

Bats are capable of swift, autonomous navigation through complex, natural environments - a feat that cannot be replicated by engineers at present. The central hypothesis behind this research is that system-level synergies between sensing, mobility, and control functions are critical factors behind achieving these unmatched capabilities of bats. To understand how these system-level synergies arise in nature, participating students will be advised by faculty teams spanning six departments to conduct interdisciplinary research projects centered on one of the following topics: acoustical scene statistics of natural bat habitats, dynamic biosonar sensing, maneuvering flight, neural control, physiological basis of sound emission and reception. All student projects will be based in the Shandong University - Virginia Tech International Laboratory in China.

The educational outcomes of the project will be undergraduate and graduate students with interdisciplinary skills between biology and engineering that will allow them to interpret biological functions from an engineering perspective and within their respective biological contexts. Furthermore, the IRES trainees will acquire intercultural competencies to work effectively in international teams. The project's scientific outcomes will enable engineers to design better integrated autonomous systems, e.g., self-navigating drones, that will have bat-like capabilities to deal with natural, unconstrained environments, such dense vegetation.

This three year renewal of a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site Program, Interdisciplinary Water Science and Engineering, at Virginia Tech, offers an interdisciplinary research experience to a diverse cohort of students on projects leading to sustainable management of water resources in an interdisciplinary environment. New features of this renewal program include an international component in India and collaboration of some of the REU scholars with VT RET Site participants. The Site will expand the pool of future researchers in water science who will address one of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges, (i.e. provide access to clean water).

VT will host 10 REU scholars over a 10-week summer program where they will be provided with a high-quality learning environment that: 1) stimulates their scientific curiosity in interdisciplinary water research and motivates them to pursue advanced degrees in water sciences and engineering; 2) trains them to communicate scientific information through research papers, seminars, and presentations; and 3) facilitates their social, intellectual, and professional growth. Twelve faculty mentors from diverse academic disciplines will direct REU scholars research.

This grant will provide funding for 30 people, many of which are from under-represented groups, the opportunity to attend a workshop on Bioinspiration and Biodiversity in Brunei, Borneo, 16-22 December 2019. Participants will attend plenary lectures on emerging topics in this area, participate in road mapping exercises, and conduct field work in the rich and diverse environment of Brunei, Borneo. There will be plenary lectures in emerging topics such as specimen digitization, data analytics, computational analysis of biological functions, and bioinspired robotics. Road mapping exercises will be conducted in the areas of foundations, digitization, data analytics, hardware paradigms, interdisciplinary education, and team building and research program development. The workshop will also include related field studies.

This workshop will provide an excellent opportunity for US researchers to form collaborations with some of the foremost biodiversity experts in Southeast Asia. Early career researchers will be trained at this workshop and will have outstanding networking opportunities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.