DETAILED COMMENTS BY ADVISORY COUNCIL

MINUTES

BIOSYSTEMS AND AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING

INDUSTRY ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETING

Wednesday May 27, 1998

ATTENDANCE - excluding Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty

Mark Lamb, Deere and Co.

Rickey Heflin, Waldon Mfg.

Kelvin Self, Charles Machine Works

Ron Morgan

Sheri Smithey, Nestle Corp.

Ken Mouldenhauer, Excell Corp.

David Somerlot, Cargill, Inc.

Cassie Eigenmann, DICKEY-john Corp.

Flint Holbrook, Woolpert Engineering

Mitch Griffin, CH2MHill

Scott Henderson, US Army Corps of Engineers

Larry Caldwell, USDA NRCS

Harold Springer, Oklahoma Water Resources Board

Blaine Reeley, Envirotech Engineering

Otto Loewer, University of Arkansas

MEETING CONTENT

The meeting focused on common requirements for All Biosystems Engineers. The intent was to address two questions:

1. With regard to Criteria 3 (see attachment 4) of the ABET Engineering Criteria 2000, what common requirements do employers have for all Biosystems Engineers

With regard to Criteria 3 of the ABET Engineering Criteria 2000, how should outcomes be measured

MEETING SUMMARY

A welcome was delivered by Deans Curl, Thompson, and Hummer as well as Dr. Barfield. After the welcome, a presentation was given summarizing ABET 2000 criteria, and the current core curriculum.

An initial general discussion was held focused on assessment and an exchange of views regarding components of engineering education. Detailed summaries of the comments are given in the Attachment 1. The following general conclusions were made about the discussion:

The importance of social and communications skills was discussed at length. There was a general was consensus that some of our current social science, humanities, and components within our design courses should focus directly on training in social interaction and team building.

Some description was given of U of Arkansas and U of Arizona CIVEN ABET 2000 processes.

Employers depend on ABET accreditation or a schools reputation to assure that technical engineering training is adequate. In job interviews, industry focus is on measuring social and communications capabilities.

Employers are carefully looking at extracurricular experience, i.e. work experience, professional society activity, leadership, etc.

International experience is not regarded with the same high priority as "team work" capability/competency.

Some participants supported requiring FE as an assessment measure.

Appeared to be consensus that Product Performance Mapping (Matrix approach) is desirable for both planning and assessment. In this approach, ABET 2000 criterion are mapped to curricular components. This approach could also be used to map constituents requirements against ABET Criteria (Arizona approach). An example is given in Attachment 3.

During the last half of the discussion, discipline specific groups were identified (E&NR, BM and FE) and specific requirements for each discipline area were discussed, with the expectation that we could later discern the common curriculum requirements.

Reports were received on the deliberations of the groups. There was a significant focus on course level requirements (in absence of a list of non-course related requirements). A list of critical competencies for each group is given in Attachment 2.

The Council discussed the recommendations of each group. In general, it appeared that a smaller BAE core was being recommended with more specialization, although there was some desire for a well-rounded approach. A need for broadness to be able to pass PE was recognized.

Some concern was expressed about Engineering Economy and it's narrow focus on time series computation. There is a need to be able to interpret P&L statements, understand product costing, and have better understanding of the economics of business decision making.

The Committee was given 45 minutes to deliberate in private and make recommendations. They recommended:

	Item	Completion Target
1.	Minutes in 2-4 weeks.	15 June 98
2.	Use IAC Core competency list and respond with a workplan.	1 October 98
3.	Status Report to IAC
4.	IAC Review / Teleconference - Comments to Faculty
5.	1999 Assessment - Workplan review w/Independent Moderator)

Each individual had the opportunity to comment to the group with summary comments.

ATTACHMENT 1. DETAILED COMMENTS BY ADVISORY COUNCIL
TOPIC	COMMENT	COMMENTER
No. Credit Hours	Opposed to yielding to pressure to reduce credit hrs. to 124	Morgan
Engineering Core	Opposed to reducing below 18 hour engineering science core	Morgan
Humanities and Social Sciences	Social skills are critical. Need emphasis on team building-psychology, and decision making. Need understanding of behavioral sciences.	Lamb
Communications Skills	Critical skill for engineering Industry assumes that ABET graduates have adequate technical skills. Interviewees are screened on communication skills through oral evaluations. Engineers for first five years focus on technical skills. After that, success is based on communications skills Need to look for courses to provide practice in communications skills. Need to look for extracurricular activities and speaking experience for our students.	Reely Morgan Caldwell Unknown Unknown
Extracurricular Activities	Excel looks for extracurricular activities as evidence of ability to apply social skills. We should spend more time on the informal social aspects	Moldenhauer Loewer
Capstone Course	Needs to be broadened beyond engineering. Need to add other disciplines to design courses. Teach teamwork, grade on teamwork, and ask team members to evaluate team participation, instruction time devoted to ethics/professionalism.	Caldwell Unknown
Professionalism	Involve students early in professional societies	Morgan
International Experience	Look for international experience and foreign language. Foreign language needed as elective.	Smithey Unknown
Internships	Very important source of employees. Want technical skills.	Eigenmann
ABET 2000	Need documentation that is soft. Have to draw inferences from weak data. Have to collect data for a predefined inference. Recommends that we document everything. Need to not have open ended data collection, but focused on an end. Reviewer role is more personality based in current scheme. Arkansas assessed core by asking advisory council. We should look at ABET as an opportunity rather than minimum hurdle. Need to identify three things; what, who and how. What is products, who are the customers, and how is how are we doing. Students are products and customers. Who do we poll – industries with repeated recruiting history Government Performance Review Act requires answering question: How did we improve product. Need to consider costs of meeting standards. There is a point of diminishing returns. Need to devote a full time person to quality assurance. May have to disengage goals of quality in order to meet goals of meeting ABET 2000. Logistics of both must be handled. Can’t improve what you cannot measure. Can’t improve unless you find a defect. Need to define product. What does it look like?	Loewer Morgan Not Recorded Caldwell Morgan Reely & unidentified person Morgan Morgan
Assessment Material Needed for Next Meeting	Engineering electives by options including course descriptions. List of graduates by options and first employment. FE results, national, OSU, state, and department. Current outcomes assessment with 2 SD subtracted. Interview students/former students two years out. Former students passing PE. Employer questionnaires/survey. Typical ABET course materials with evaluation form. Product performance map for each course. (See attached table) Some evaluation of data presented. General criteria to evaluate instructors.	Everyone
Team Building Skills	Current team building & communications skills are pretty raw in undergraduates. Important in capstone course. Team building exercises in freshman year.	Unknown Unknown
Assessment (general)	Assessment should include scores, evaluation, exit interviews. Need to be able to hear bad news as well as good news. Is our goal accreditation or improvement? Need comparative measures. Not achieving quality by lowering standards. Need heavy involvement of all faculty. FE could be used as an assessment. A critical competency is preparing students to do a critical evaluation. Exit interviews are low cost. We need to document the process that will cause improvements in program. Committee would like to see student evaluations. Assessment needs to occur from the point of view of the instructors, students, and employers. Matrix approach is possibly best for this. Gets third party view incorporated. Process follow through is needed.	Reely Unknown

ATTACHMENT 2.

LISTING OF CRITICAL COMPETENCIES BY OPTION AREA
BIOMECHANICAL OPTION
Product definition: Strong mechanical design with strong understanding of how that interacts with biomaterials.

Marriage of electronics to machines
General computer programming language
CAD-Need general drawing skills and standard drawing practices
Electromagnetism and light
Soils
Complete 18hr engineering science core including materials
Consider Chemistry 1515 as an option
Background in manufacturing processes. Consider courses which include sheet metal, casting, machining, casting, processing. Internship at the shop level.
Interaction between machines and biomaterials.
Basic power principles such as torque curve interpretation. Not much depth in combustion.
Digital controls
Design course work to include understanding of field-testing, product definition, marketing, and cost analysis.
International experience not as critical as full spectrum in product design.
Interface level electronics and sensors (more desirable than current depth in automatic controls)
C++ for programming. Consider incorporation in controls.
Structural design.
Ag machine concepts. Not so critical as fundamental properties of machines.
Comparative cost analysis

ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES (Focused last two years of program)

Total 18 hr engineering science core.
Question value of introduction to machine design
Areas not adequately addressed
Animal wastes
Surveying
Concrete/asphalt design
GIS mapping and field measurements
Surface water hydrology
Hydraulics/Open Channel/Pipes
Groundwater hydrology
Irrigation

Water quality

FOOD AND BIOPROCESSING

Total 18 hr engineering science core except materials science
Two chemistry and 1 physics course
Department core course in S&W resource engineering not recommended. An environmental engineering course would be better
Add a course plant science or meat science
As an alternative to full organic chemistry, include ½ food chemistry and ½ organic chemistry. Current biomolecules course could suffice.
Need a food machinery course
Hydraulics and pneumatics
General Mechanical Engineering Course
Team building and project management should be added or integrated.

ATTACHMENT 3. Ronnie Morgan’s Product Performance Map
Capability/Competency	Extra Activities	General Education	Math	Physics	Chemistry	Biology	Engr Sc Core**	Program Specific Courses**
1. Knowledge Base
2. Design/conduct experiments
3. Data analysis/interpret
4. Design of process/system components.
5. Modern engineering techniques/tools.
6. Problem solving
Teamwork Interpersonal Interdisciplinary
8. Professionalism & Ethics
9. Communication
10. Societal impact
11. Lifelong learning
** These areas would be further broken down by individual courses

ATTACHMENT 4.

ABET ENGINEERING CRITERIA 2000, BASIC LEVEL ACCREDITATION CRITERIA

Criterion 3. Program Outcomes and Assessment

Engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have

(a) an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering
(b) an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data
(c) an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs
(d) an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams
(e) an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems
(f) an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility
(g) an ability to communicate effectively
(h) the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context
(i) a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning
(j) a knowledge of contemporary issues
(k) an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice.