Dr. Andrew Biaglow

Professor of Chemical Engineering

United States Military Academy

“Can Students Identify Engineering Problems ”

 The ability to identify an engineering problem is an important skill that has been identified by ABET as part of its accreditation criteria.   Specifically, student outcome (e) in Criterion 3 requires the ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems.  A great deal has been written about how engineers formulate and solve problems, but very little information is available on how engineers identify problems, even less on how this skill is assessed.  For the most part, engineering programs focus on assessing formulation and solution, and assume that identification is a natural part of that process.  In this paper, we discuss a test that we have developed to directly assess our student's ability to identify engineering problems.    The results show that our students possess the ability to a degree, and that this ability develops with the amount of student experience.  Furthermore, by comparing the test results from those of the students to those obtained form more experienced engineers, we are able to directly assess the degree to which our students have developed the ability. 

Special Seminar

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

10:30 a.m. in PHYS 298