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Educating Future Engineers in the Art of Communication through Presenting

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Effective communication and engineering are not a natural pairing. The incongruence is because engineering students are focused on making, designing and analyzing. Since these are the core functions of the field there is not a direct focus on developing communication skills. This honors thesis explores the role and expectations for…

Effective communication and engineering are not a natural pairing. The incongruence is because engineering students are focused on making, designing and analyzing. Since these are the core functions of the field there is not a direct focus on developing communication skills. This honors thesis explores the role and expectations for student engineers within the undergraduate engineering education experience to present and communicate ideas. The researchers interviewed faculty about their perspective on students' abilities with respect to their presentation skills to inform the design of a workshop series of interventions intended to make engineering students better communicators.
ContributorsAlbin, Joshua Alexander (Co-author) / Brancati, Sara (Co-author) / Lande, Micah (Thesis director) / Martin, Thomas (Committee member) / Industrial, Systems and Operations Engineering Program (Contributor) / Software Engineering (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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A Strategy for Improved Traffic Flow

Description
Commuting is a significant cost in time and in travel expenses for working individuals and a major contributor to emissions in the United States. This project focuses on increasing the efficiency of an intersection through the use of "light metering." Light metering involves a series of lights leading up to…

Commuting is a significant cost in time and in travel expenses for working individuals and a major contributor to emissions in the United States. This project focuses on increasing the efficiency of an intersection through the use of "light metering." Light metering involves a series of lights leading up to an intersection forcing cars to stop further away from the final intersection in smaller queues instead of congregating in a large queue before the final intersection. The simulation software package AnyLogic was used to model a simple two-lane intersection with and without light metering. It was found that light metering almost eliminates start-up delay by preventing a long queue to form in front of the modeled intersection. Shorter queue lengths and reduction in the start-up delays prevents cycle failure and significantly reduces the overall delay for the intersection. However, frequent deceleration and acceleration for a few of the cars occurs before each light meter. This solution significantly reduces the traffic density before the intersection and the overall delay but does not appear to be a better emission alternative due to an increase in acceleration. Further research would need to quantify the difference in emissions for this model compared to a standard intersection.
ContributorsGlavin, Erin (Author) / Pavlic, Theodore (Thesis director) / Sefair, Jorge (Committee member) / Industrial, Systems and Operations Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05