The pressure on world-wide manufacturing industries to meet tougher demands and regulations has forced companies to focus on improving manufacturing using tools like process automation. This focus requires better-prepared students. The process control course of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez has…

A freely available, easy-to-use Excel spreadsheet for performing linear least-squares fits for (x, y) data with errors in both coordinates is described. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

The increasingly interdisciplinary nature of today's scientific research is leading to the transformation of undergraduate education. In addressing these needs, the University of Houston's College of Technology has developed a new interdisciplinary research-based biotechnology laboratory curriculum. Using the pesticide degrading bacterium,…

Kinesiology departments have recently started to offer allied health education programs to attract additional students to teacher education units (9). Although allied health professions offer increased work opportunities, insufficient enrollment and training of minority students in these academic fields contribute to underrepresentation in the…

This paper explores what work readiness means for two cohorts of graduate engineers, one from a traditional curriculum, the second from a largely project-based curriculum. Professional bodies and employers have defined a set of attributes for engineering graduates so that graduates will be "work ready". Problem-based learning (PBL) is…

Learning science requires higher-level (critical) thinking skills that need to be practiced in science classes. This study tested the effect of exam format on critical-thinking skills. Multiple-choice (MC) testing is common in introductory science courses, and students in these classes tend to associate memorization with MC questions and may not…

This article investigates the mechanisms through which undergraduate research experiences for community college students can have second-order and multiplier effects on other students and home community college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments and thus build STEM pipeline capacity. Focus groups with the science…

This study aims to investigate two expert ecology teachers' ability to attend to essential details in a complex environment during a field excursion, as well as how they teach this ability to their students. In applying a cognitive dual-memory system model for learning, we also suggest a rationale for their behaviour. The model implies two…

The Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program recently released the program guidelines (NSF 09-529) for the next round of the program. There are several changes to the CCLI program and a new program opportunity that invites proposals for projects that would provide leadership and contribute to transforming undergraduate STEM…

Between March 20 and July 8, 2008 (the spring semester of 2008), the authors contacted each of the 763 departments in the US that award at least a bachelor's degree in physics by e-mail, mail, and certified mail. They received responses from 713 departments (93%). This report describes their findings. (Contains 3 tables and 3 figures.)

A simple undergraduate experiment designed to study cooling purely by radiation and cooling by a combination of convection and radiation is described. Results indicate that the contribution from radiative cooling in normal laboratory experiments is more significant than students often realize, even in the case of forced cooling. (Contains 1…

In this paper, we propose a simple method of observing the collision-dominated Child-Langmuir law in the course of an undergraduate laboratory work devoted to studying the properties of gas discharges. To this end we employ the dc gas discharge whose properties are studied in sufficient detail. The undergraduate laboratory work itself is reduced…

Introductory physics labs provide many challenging yet applicable experiments and concepts to the many fields of engineering. One such lab has been developed at West Virginia University that explores resistivities of several different materials and ties this concept into electrical engineering practices and standards. Many students do not realize…

A point mass model of a climber ascending a rock slope is developed. Stability of the climber is defined via the maximum possible friction force exerted by the feet of the climber on rock and the maximum possible force that the hands of the climber can support in a handhold. This model is then generalized to a somewhat more realistic extended mass…

This case recounts the story of a student who gave her cat half of a Tylenol tablet not knowing its potential harmful effects. The cat survives, but the incident motivates the student to learn more about the reaction mechanism underlying the liver toxicity of acetaminophen. The case outlines three possible reaction schemes that would explain the…