Project Info

How do engineering students view biology?

While biology is becoming more and more integrated into engineering curricula, there may be a mismatch between how engineering students’ perceive biology and how it actually is used by engineers. In this project, we will attempt to determine how engineering students perceive biology and to uncover the reasons for why they hold these perceptions. This can lead to changes in how biology courses are taught to engineers.

More Information

N/A

Grand Engineering Challenge: Not applicable

Student Preparation

Qualifications

-Proficiency with excel
-Basic understanding of statistics
-Ability to program in R is a plus
-Willingness to explore social science and education research

Time Commitment

20 hours/month

Skills/Techniques Gained

Students will learn how to:
– design educational research studies
– search for and interpret educational literature
– enter data and store data appropriately
– analyze data with excel and R
– summarize and present results both orally and in writing

Mentoring Plan

At the start of the project, the student and Dr. Shaffer will share expectations for what each of them want out of the mentoring relationship. There will be weekly meetings, at which time research-course-life balance will be discussed, in addition to the progress on the research project. More formal mid-term and end-of-semester discussions will take place to ensure that goals and expectations are being met and that all is going well with the research experience.