Professor Ron Barr (center), accepts Best Paper award from (left) Dr. Kenneth Van Treuren of Baylor University, Program Chair of the ASEE Gulf-Southwest Region and (right) Dr. Patrick Carriere, of Southern University and A & M College, Awards Committee Chair of the ASEE Gulf-Southwest Region.
Dr. Ronald Barr received First-Place for the Best Paper Award presented at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Gulf-Southwest Section Annual Meeting, held at Baylor University on March 19-20, 2009. The title of the paper was named "A Focus on the Scholarship of Engineering Education." Download the paper (432kb PDF file).
The Award and Purpose of the Organiza0tion
The paper was rated best faculty paper, out of 45 presented, at the 2009 Gulf-Southwest regional conference. The best faculty paper winners from each of the regional meetings then present at the National ASEE Conference, usually the following year, for a national-level award. ASEE was founded in 1893 as a society for promoting engineering education in America. It accomplishes this mainly through meetings, publications, and awards. The current membership in ASEE is over 12,000 professional members, the majority of whom are engineering faculty.
Abstract
The paper promotes the scholarship of engineering education and how faculty can focus on improving teaching methods in the classroom. The paper first summarizes discussions on the topic that were held at regional ASEE meetings across the country during a "Year of Dialog." It appears that the "Scholarship of Engineering Education" has several important domains in which faculty must focus their attention:
- What to teach
- How to teach it
- How students learn
- How to assess it.
The paper encourages faculty to investigate and adopt best practices in engineering teaching that have been presented in the educational research literature. The paper defines excellence in engineering scholarship using a four-tier model that spans from proven excellence in classroom (level 1) to an accomplished member of the engineering educational research community (level 4).
Ronald Barr, Biographical Sketch
Dr. Ronald E. Barr is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught since 1978. He previously taught at Texas A and M University. He received both his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Marquette University in 1969 and 1975, respectively. His research interests are in Biosignal Analysis, Biomechanics, and Engineering Computer Graphics. Barr is a recipient of the ASEE Chester F. Carlson Award, the Orthogonal Medal, the UT Dads' Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship, and the Engineering Design Graphics (EDG) Distinguished Service Award. Barr is a Fellow of ASEE and served as ASEE President from 2005-2006. He is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in the state of Texas.
