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ASEE Midwest Conference Held on the K-State Salina Campus

K-State Salina hosted the 2013 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Midwest Section Conference on its campus September 18-20.

The ASEE Midwest Section is open to all colleges and universities within the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma interested in the engineering and engineering technology education.  The conference allowed faculty from the different schools to network and share the latest trends in engineering education.

The conference was attended by more than 80 registrants from a total of seven states and one presenter from China.  Thirty five papers were accepted into the conference proceedings.  The conference also hosted a poster session for graduate and undergraduate students, prompting them to write a paper with an accompanying poster to describe a research or design project.  Seven graduate posters and seven undergraduate posters were accepted for the conference.

K-State Salina faculty members who presented papers were: Dr. Saeed Khan and former faculty Lee Gatton: “University and Small Business Collaboration for Undergraduate Research Projects in Healthcare Robotics;” Dr. Rick Zajac: “Mentoring Middle School NXT Robotics: Math Development as a Primary Design Constraint;” Julia Morse: “Encouraging an Engineering Mindset Amid Skill Practice in the Freshman Manufacturing Processes Lab;” and Tom Mertz: “Teaching and Assessing Quality and Continuous Improvement.” Winning the 2nd Place Best Paper Award were Dr. Fred Guzek, Kathy Brockway, Troy Brockway, and Sue Guzek: Broadening STEM Student’s Perspectives, and Recruiting with Blended Learning and Study Abroad.  In the student poster session, the 1st Place Undergraduate Poster Award went to Adam Svobota and Steven Colgrove: Collaborative Software.  Both are May 2013 graduates from the Computer Systems option in Engineering Technology.  Their software project allowed two or more users on different computers to share a specific window on a screen.  This provided each user with a unique mouse pointer visible on all the users’ screen with real- time updates of the window as each user made changes.

The conference featured two plenary sessions.  The first featured K-State faculty including moderator Bill Genereux with Dr. Becky DeGreef, Greg Stephens, Dr. Jung Oh, Dr. Jennifer Davis, and Dr. Fred Guzek in a panel presentation: “Teaching Diversity in STEM Curriculums.” The conference keynote speaker was Dr. Noel Schulz.  Her topic was “Continued Opportunities to Increase the Number of Women and Minorities in STEM.”  Dr. Schulz is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)Power and Energy Society President (2012-2013), Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Programs, Paslay Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Kansas State University Manhattan.  In addition, Dr. Schulz is married to Kirk Schulz, President at Kansas State University and serves as First Lady.

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