Describes the conceptual framework and three core courses of the certificate program in Preventive Engineering and Social Development at the Centre for Technology and Social Development at the University of Toronto. Preventive approaches examine how technology fits into, interacts with, and depends on human life, society, and the biosphere to…

Details a joint project between a university and a community group that involves girls in a one-week science day camp. Discusses how this project could be recreated on any campus with ease and outlines the role of the university in supporting the program. (DDR)

Describes the efforts at Pace University (New York, NY) to develop and refine electronic classrooms. Topics include technology integration; needs assessment; ergonomics and environmental design issues; small-group instruction for faculty training, including cross-departmental partnerships; student feedback; and faculty feedback. (LRW)

Presents results of a campus survey that suggests that many male engineering students have negative attitudes toward women, are generally more confident about their success in engineering, and receive more support from peers and mentors than do women. (Contains 34 references.) (Author/WRM)

A study of black accomplishments in the sciences and engineering examines the history of black doctoral degree attainment in various subspecialties, particularly in comparison to United States citizens overall, and documents distribution of salaries by field and level of highest degree. Also documented are the baccalaureate origins of black…

Discusses the importance of faculty mentors in the persistence and success of black doctoral students in the sciences and engineering, and describes individual cases in which this relationship has been crucial. Issues discussed include student feelings of isolation, color issues in the mentoring relationship, and the need for more black women…

In engineering education, creativity and communication processes have become necessary in complex structures such as technological networks and virtual reality. A new sociotechnical approach describes the engineering profession in aspects other than technology such as tasks, views, organization structures, and cooperation. Describes a…

Describes a project that surveyed a stratified sample of college seniors who took the Graduate Record Examinations General Test in 1990 and who were majoring in natural sciences, mathematics, computer sciences, and engineering. Women earned lower test scores than men and rated many of their abilities lower. Differences among ethnic groups were…

Three American Indian college graduates describe how they benefitted from the "INROADS to the Stars Scholarship" program. A multi-year scholarship and summer internship program, INROADS places talented minority group students in internships with global corporations and provides leadership training. Students must major in geophysics,…

Summarizes the views of a sample of primary and high school teachers on the application of gene technology to human medicine. In general, high school teachers are more positive about these developments than primary teachers, and both groups of teachers are more positive than interested lay publics. Highlights ways in which this topic can be…

This article presents evidence that maths diagnostic assessments, consequent individualized learning programmes and face-to-face maths study support can combine to significantly increase maths related module pass rates and scores for undergraduate engineering students. It is argued that simply having a quiet, relaxed, supported study area,…

Student evaluation of instruction in college and university courses has been a routine and mandatory part of undergraduate and graduate education for some time. A major shortcoming of the process is that it often relies exclusively on the opinions or qualitative judgments of students rather than the learning or transfer of knowledge that takes…

There is a growing demand for admissions tutors in UK universities to use more rigorous and systematic decision-making methods in recruitment processes. A key barrier to achieving this goal is the lack of a coherent and definitive body of knowledge upon which such methods can be built. The yardstick used for the majority of applicants is A2-level…

The Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach enables the student to construct knowledge in his/her own way. Piaget, the founder of constructivism, saw the development of intelligence as a process involving the relationship between brain maturity and individual experience. The technology PBL (TPBL) approach confronts the student with a personal…

The Virtual Grand Tour (VGT) is a paradigm for integrating a presentation of an overview of a larger subject with the possibility of launching at any time an exploratory study of a given sub-topic. The name derives from the paradigm's emulation of those 18th-century travels intended to educate (especially) young, affluent British men; today, with…