Engineering Projects In Community Service Research Articles

Capstone Design in Engineering Community Engagement Course

Community engagement is a growing area of attention within civil engineering education due to student interest and evidence of its benefits in supporting learning outcomes, among other factors. At Purdue University, a large curricular community-engaged design program, Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS), has partnered with Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA) to give students academic credit for international civil engineering projects. EPICS and EWB-USA align in their utilization of multi-year partnerships between communities and vertically-integrated student project teams. The EPICS EWB-USA course section served as the capstone experience environment for a team of senior design students from the Division of Environmental and Ecological Engineering in the 2019–2020 academic year. This paper provides a case study to illustrate how to meet the new ABET Criterion 3 (student outcomes), in the broad space of civil engineering and related fields, with experiences that incorporate community-engaged learning. The pedagogical techniques and assessment methods utilized to support the development and measurement of the student’s outcomes are described. Discussion is presented on the interplay of course components and specific student learning outcomes. We believe this example can serve as a reference for others working to integrate senior design and community-engaged engineering design, to support student learning outcomes as well as positive community partnerships and impact.

Impact of Service Learning in Engineering Education – A Case Study

In the 21st Century, significant number of students have access to the tools for digital learning and spending most of their time on the internet and other social media platforms. Our college core philosophy is “Doing Engineering” rather than just studying engineering. In this context, EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service), UBA (Unnat Bharat Abhiyan), EWB (Engineers without Borders), GCSP (Grand Challenges Scholar Program) have been introduced to promote the learning through service. The above service learning which encourages students to work with local communities. and NGOs. real-time problem faced by the communities are identified by following design thinking approach. EPICS originated from Purdue University, USA. HITAM has been sprinting the EPICS program for the past five years. All freshmen engineering students enroll into EPICS Program as a mandatory course. To work on the realtime problems, multidisciplinary teams are formed for doing the community-based projects to enhance communication skills, technical knowledge, teamwork, presenting skills, and other traits along with progress in data analysis which will be unfolded in this paper. Forming the multidisciplinary teams in the beginning of the process has become a hindrance because students are separated discipline wise in the classrooms. To overcome this setback, a google form is created which consists of questions about interesting areas, technical knowledge and circulated among all the students for recording responses and area of interest. Subsequently, a meeting is called for all students and kindled their design thinking activity among the multidisciplinary teams as well. A strict line structure is followed to adapt design thinking methodology for implementing the EPICS course in the curriculum. Keywords— EPICS; UBA; EWB; GCSP; Interdisciplinary

Working Out the Kinks: Creating Solutions to Assist Health Care Workers to Take Vital Signs Through Effective Cable Management

EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) is a service-learning design program run through Purdue University. It strives to teach students design skills through providing solutions for individuals, communities, and organizations in the surrounding area while mirroring engineering industry standards. BME (Bio-medical Engineering) is a team within EPICS that strives to serve community partners through biomedical applications. Members of a health care team often spend valuable time organizing cables associated with machines used to take patients’ vital signs. Due to time constraints and the fast-paced work environment, these cables may be mismanaged and damaged. The BME team is working on a solution to ensure that relevant cords will be easily managed, damage will be minimized, and most importantly, health care professionals’ time will be saved.

Co-Designing the Future With Public Interest Technology

This special issue is dedicated to the theme of public interest technology (PIT) <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[1]</xref> . PIT acknowledges that technological potential can be harnessed to satisfy the needs of civil society. In other words, technology can be seen as a public good that can benefit all, through an open democratic system of governance, with open data initiatives, open technologies, and open systems/ecosystems designed for the collective good, as defined by respective communities that will be utilizing them. Just like in the established field of public interest law (PIL) <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[2]</xref> , <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[3]</xref> and public interest journalism (PIJ) <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[4]</xref> , we can consider potential fields around the idea of PIT <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref5" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[5]</xref> , <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[6]</xref> , such as public interest co-design (PITco), even public interest engagement (PITengage) or public interest consulting (PIC). For decades, public interest engineers (PIEs) have volunteered their time to collaborate in meaningful participative engagements. These engineers have self-organized some impressive collectives including Engineers Without Borders, ASCE Disaster Assistance Volunteer Program, Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, Architecture for Humanity, Bridges to Prosperity, Bridging the Gap Africa, Engineers for a Sustainable World, GISCorps, Habitat for Humanity, National Engineering Projects in Community Service, just to name a few. These collectives and initiatives call attention to the primary role of a PIT practitioner. That is, the importance of PIT practitioners serving as transdisciplinary intermediaries between the community and the STEM disciplines and technical teams, emphasizing the importance of justice, equity, and inclusion in the design and deployment of new technologies <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[7]</xref> that allow for positive social transformation and empowerment <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref8" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[8]</xref> .

Retrospective Analysis of Participatory Decision-Making in a Park's Construction in Lafayette, Indiana

The Creative Park project has been an ongoing collaboration between Purdue Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS), Faith Community Development Corporation, and the residents of Lincoln Neighborhood in Lafayette, Indiana. It was initiated by Faith in 2017 as an open-ended attempt to increase local children’s interactions with creative and complex thinking as well as decreasing time spent indoors at the Hartford Hub. Through several iterations of designs, an interdisciplinary team with one consistent member has developed a plan to build a treehouse-themed park to be constructed in spring 2020. Throughout this time two major themes have arisen: that the collaboration with Lincoln residents is both complex and important to maintain the nature of the project, and the park project has connections to feelings of inequality, stagnation, and colonization for the neighborhood that are underdiscussed. Almost all interactions between EPICS and Lincoln residents is facilitated through a neighborhood meeting group that was resurrected in fall 2016, a semester before the project began. This limits the scope of discussion of the project as only regular attendees can participate and is likely to skew perceived opinion because of the demographic differences between the neighborhood and meeting group. Lincoln is considered one of the poorest neighborhoods in Lafayette as well as being predominately black compared to adjacent neighborhoods. Discussions in the meeting group acknowledge lack of income growth compared to Wabash neighborhood, continued neglect by the City of Lafayette, and decisions by powerful forces resulting in maintenance of the status quo. The Creative Park itself hopes to provide an asset to the community according to their desires without requiring investment of funds by residents. Whether this primary goal will be a success is yet to be determined, but the relationship between EPICS and the community has already been cemented over the last four years.

Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) in High Schools: Subtle but Potentially Important Student Gains Detected from Human-Centered Curriculum Design

A major goal in Engineering training in the U.S. is to continue to both grow and diversify the field. Project- and service-based forms of experiential, problem-based learning are often implemented with this as a goal, and Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) High is one of the more well-regarded and widely implemented. Yet, the evidence based on if and how participation in such programs shapes student intentions and commitment to STEM pathways is currently limited, most especially for pre-college programming. This study asks: How do high school students’ engineering mindsets and their views of engineering/engineers change as they participate in project–service learning (as implemented through an EPICS High curriculum)? This study employed a mixed method design, combining pre- and post-test survey data that were collected from 259 matched students (63% minority, 43% women) enrolling in EPICS High (total of 536 completed pre-tests, 375 completed post-tests) alongside systematic ethnographic analysis of participant observation data conducted in the same 13 socioeconomically diverse schools over a two-year period. Statistical analyses showed that participants score highly on engineering-related concepts and attitudes at both pre- and post-test. These did not change significantly as a result of participation. However, we detected nuanced but potentially important changes in student perspectives and meaning, such as shifting perceptions of engineering and gaining key transversal skills. The value of participation to participants was connected to changes in the meaning of commitments to pursue engineering/STEM.

An EPICS Adventure: Bringing Telephone and Internet Service to the Amazon

For Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) in IEEE Project Leader Brenda Vilas Boas, a project bringing telephony and Internet service to the Amazon rainforest is having a two-way impact: not only will the communities there have better communication with each other, but the rest of the world will be able to learn more about their culture too. Outside of their municipality, nobody really knows when they have their festivals, what they do to make a living, or other specifics about these communities' cultures, so there will be an opportunity for them to share that with all of us, Vilas Boas explains.

Integrating ‘Engineering Projects in Community Service’ into engineering curricula to develop graduate attributes

There has been a shift towards the acceptance of community engagement and service-learning as a pedagogical tool in the fields of engineering, engineering technology and the built environment. The Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) was implemented at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment and this article shares the best practices and lessons learned as the program developed. As EPICS-in-IEEE requires, the partners included UJ students and faculty members, a non-governmental organization (NGO), Engineers without Borders-UJ, and secondary school learners (the pre-university component) from UJ Metropolitan Academy. The EPICS-in-IEEE technical design and development phase was constituted and used as a guideline. The results of this project demonstrated at least six positive implications: university final-year/capstone engineering design projects and exit-level outcomes were achieved; participants worked as a team on engineering-related projects for a local NGO and its community; the project prepared engineering graduates for the professional world; the initiative took the engineering, engineering technology and built environment disciplines to the community through the “social innovation” EPICS-in-IEEE concept; and the UJ value system was instilled while achieving technical/professional outcomes in preparing students for careers in the private, public and non-profit sectors.&#x0D; How to cite this article:&#x0D; HOOSAIN, Mohamed Sameer; SINHA, Saurabh. Integrating ‘Engineering Projects in Community Service’ into engineering curricula to develop graduate attributes. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, v. 2, n. 1, p. 60-75, Apr. 2018. Available at: http://sotl-south-journal.net/?journal=sotls&amp;page=article&amp;op=view&amp;path%5B%5D=22&#x0D; &#x0D; This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Changing Lives in EPICS Fashion

Founded at Purdue University in 1995, Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) in IEEE empowers teams of university and high school students to collaborate on socially innovative projects that will have a lasting impact on local humanitarian organizations and community members. Not only does this program give students a unique platform to experience a career in the engineering field, which many of them are already pursuing, but it also enables them to develop and broaden their technical skills to address critical community issues while transforming lives.

Service Learning Course in the Engineering Curriculum:EPICS

In the quest for approaches to recreate real configuration experiences in our classrooms, the model of community service learning is frequently ignored within educational curriculum. It is, however, a powerful model for learning the engineering design process. SR Engineering College introduced the EPICS - Engineering Projects in Community Service as an elective course in the curriculum. This academic credit based course is highlighted with its objectives and some projects are illustrated to give complete awareness about the course modules. The projects selected illustrate: mechanical, civil, electrical, hardware and software design in the context of service learning. A discussion of how the Program Objectives align with the National Board of Accreditation's Outcome Based Education (NBA's OBE) criteria is also included.

Reducing Landfill Waste: Implementation and Optimization of a Vermicomposting System

John Hemmerling, a senior in chemical engineering and project leader, Jeremy Pan, a sophomore in computer science, and Sahil Bhalla and Karan Kedia, both freshman in fi rst-year engineering, are a team of four students participating in the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) Environmental Improvement Initiatives (EII). In this article they describe how they are investigating waste generation reduction at the Retrofi t Net-Zero Energy Water and Waste (ReNEWW) house in West Lafayette, Indiana, in conjunction with Whirlpool Corporation. Their work is intended to provide guidance to households on implementing vermicomposting systems so food waste can be diverted from our landfi lls.

Preparing Engineers for the Workplace through Service Learning: Perceptions of EPICS Alumni

AbstractBackgroundService‐learning programs that emphasize engineering design have been posited to bolster the professional preparedness of engineering alumni. However, we know little about how such programs actually prepare engineers for the workplace. Nor does prior literature fully explain how characteristics of these programs affect professional preparation.PurposeThis study investigates how alumni perceive the impact of one service‐learning program, Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS), in preparing them for the workplace. We seek to provide empirical and theoretical foundations about how this program affected the alumni's perceptions of how they were prepared for professional practice.Design/MethodThis investigation was an embedded, sequential mixed‐methods study, which began by administering a survey to 523 participants. On the basis of survey responses, we interviewed 27 participants and conducted a thematic analysis of transcripts to describe how participants related their EPICS experiences to the workplace.ResultsThe findings describe how alumni perceived the role of EPICS in preparing them for the workplace. The thematic analysis reveals how alumni perceived the nature of their preparation through three themes: EPICS was a bridge from education to practice, EPICS provided a means for gaining workplace experience, and EPICS developed a variety of professional skills.ConclusionsGrounded in alumni perspectives, this study demonstrates a strong link between participating in service‐learning activities and navigating the complexity of the workplace. Finally, we identify three key characteristics of EPICS that are transferable to other institutions.

EPICS: Meeting Outcomes with Multidisciplinary Student Teams

Engineering Projects in Community Service— EPICS — is a service-learning program that wasdeveloped nearly twenty years ago at Purdue University.Under this program, undergraduate students inmultidisciplinary teams earn academic credit for longtermprojects that solve technology-based problems forlocal or global community service organizations. TheEPICS model has been implemented at 23 universities inNorth American and on other continents. With itsemphasis on the start-to-finish design of significantprojects that will be deployed by the communitycustomers, EPICS addresses many of the programoutcomes mandated by ABET and the CEAB and, morebroadly, to meet the Washington Accord graduateattributes. This paper describes the curricular andassessment procedures and documentation that have beendeveloped to enhance and evaluate the students' abilitiesto meet outcomes including functioning onmultidisciplinary teams; communicate effectively; andunderstand the impact of engineering solutions in aglobal and societal context.

Engineering Service-learning : A Model for Preparing Students for Engineering Practice while meeting Needs of the Underserved

Preparing tomorrow's global engineering leaders requires a strong technical foundation as well as a broad set of professional skills. Integrating these into the undergraduate curriculum can be challenging within traditional courses. One approach that has shown success is service-learning, which engages students in meetings needs of local or global communities. An engineering exemplar of service-learning approach is the EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) Program founded at Purdue University and disseminated to more than 20 other universities. This paper describes the EPICS model and how it has been disseminated and discusses data on student perception and learning.

The IEEE EPICS Initiative Unveiled [Continuing Education

IEEE Educational Activities has launched Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS)?a program that enables university and high school students to work on engineering-related projects for local humanitarian organizations. The purpose of this program is to empower Student Branches as well as IEEE Graduates of the Last Decade groups to work with high school students on community-related engineering projects. Through this worldwide expansion, IEEE Educational Activities hopes to build a mechanism to further institutionalize the program within the IEEE by sustaining and disseminating the EPICS model to IEEE Sections around the world.

Engineering Projects in Community Service in IEEE

Engineering Projects in Community Service in IEEE

Two Approaches to Engineering Design: Observations in sTEm Education

A comparative study was conducted to compare two approaches to engineering design curriculum across different schools (inter-school) and across two curricula Project Lead the Way and Engineering Projects in Community Service (inter-curricula). The researchers collected curricula material including handouts, lesson plans, guides, presentation files, design descriptions, problem statements, and support guides. The researchers conducted observations in the classrooms to collect qualitative indicators of engineering/technology reasoning, collect data on the nature of students’ questions, how students define problems, and operate within the constraints of a design problem. Todd R. Kelley, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Technology at Purdue University. He can be reached at trkelley@purdue.edu. Mr. Daniel C. Brenner is a high school teacher at Bartlett High School. He can be reached at brenner_daniel@asdk12.org. Mr. Jon T. Pieper is a graduate student in the Engineering/Technology Education program at Purdue University. He can be reached at jpieper@purdue.edu. 6 JOURNAL OF STEM TEACHER EDUCATION Observational protocol studies were conducted on students participating in Project Lead the Way curriculum programs and with students participating in Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS). Students were asked to work through an ill-defined problem, in this case the problem of creating a new playground for an elementary school. The data from these protocols were analyzed using a coding process; a list of universal technical mental processes (Halfin,1973) and a computer program OPTEMP, (Hill,1997) to accurately record frequency and time of each mental process employed by the students. The data from the protocol results were used to identify common cognitive strategies employed by the students to determine where these students placed greatest emphasis throughout the observational protocol. General findings indicated that participants in the EPICS-High program were more solution-driven problem solvers, where the Project Lead the Way participants were generally problem-driven as defined by Kruger & Cross (2006). Additionally, the participants in both groups had completed advanced courses in mathematics, very little mathematics was employed (less than 3%) to describe constraints of the problem or predict results of proposed solutions. Over half of the students became fixated at some point on the provided picture. (Smith; Ward; & Schumacher, 1993). This study provides important insight about how students solve ill-defined problems, providing vital information for technology education as it seeks to implement engineering design.

A service-learning program for computer science and software engineering

This paper presents a service-learning educational program called EPICS (Engineering Projects In Community Service). It also describes our efforts and experiences from incorporating this program within a Computer Science and Software Engineering curriculum. Our paper concludes by discussing various key challenges and some early lessons learned while crafting such program.