2003 Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Institute
Final Report
October 2003
Milivoje Kostic
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Web: www.kostic.niu.edu ; email: kostic@niu.edu ; Tel. 753-9975
Post-Institute Activities
After participation at the Institute my objectives have been to continue enhancing my awareness of the multicultural issues, learning and implementing diverse activities to transform or at least enhance all courses I will teach in the future, with ultimate objective to improve teaching and learning environment and outcoms. Specifically, I am posting information about multicultural activities and their importance for effective teaching and learning on my Web site:
www.kostic.niu.edu/diversity-multiculture
I am also including relevant links to other resources, and multicultural issues will be integrated in my every future-course syllabus. In addition, I am interacting with my colleagues and students to enhance awareness about diversities in nature and society, and need for mutual understanding and coexistence for the benefit of all.
Since I was scheduled, in Summer 2003, to teach MEE 390, which is an experimental design course, I was planning to introduce and integrate multicultural activities in this course first. Regrettably, due to low summer enrolment and budget constraints, the course was cancelled. I am on sabbatical this Fall 2003 semester, but will be teaching MEE 390 course in Spring 2004, and will be implementing multicultural issues in the course syllabus, as well as in my other two courses next semester. Since MEE 390 covers experimental design, including standards and ethics, and has individual student projects, it would be possible to emphasize multicultural issues, needs and benefits, including women and minorities’ contributions to engineering, and their importance as consumers of engineering services and products, as well as decision makers. Also, I may assign related individual projects to those students interested in multicultural issues in engineering.
Specific Courses to Be Transformed
I have been teaching a number of courses (all listed below, but UEET 101) that may be suitable for inclusion of multicultural activities. Even though every course may be transformed to include multicultural content and/or activities to some extend, in order to enhance learning, some engineering courses are more suitable than others. Specifically, introductory courses which covers general issues related to engineering history and discovery, and engineering design, are more suitable than other courses. In my opinion, the following courses lend themselves to effective integration of multicultural issues:
· UEET 101 Introduction to Engineering (gen.ed., approx. enrolment 350/2-offering/year).
· MEE 200 Energy and The Environment (gen.ed., approx. enrolment 15/offering/year, in-development).
· MEE 390 Experimental Methods in Mechanical Engineering I (approx. enrolment 60/2-offering/year).
· MEE 452 Design of Thermal Systems (approx. enrolment 20/offering/year).
· MEE 481 Engineering Design Seminar (approx. enrolment 60/2-offering/year).
· MEE 482 Senior Mechanical Engineering Design Project (approx. enrolment 60/2-offering/year).
When I am assigned to teach the above courses, I would like to introduce and integrate multicultural issues in their content and/or activities. Also, I could help develop typical learning materials for UEET 101, which is a general education course, taught by several instructors and administered by one instructor-of-record. Particular topics of interest that I would like to develop may be:
(1) Compilation of Multicultural Engineering Internet Resources;
(2) Women and Minorities in Engineering History; and
(3) Engineering Design to Accommodate Multicultural Needs.
If course content is not suitable for addressing gender equity and multicultural issues, course activities can be used as a mechanism for addressing these issues. Course activities can include carefully designed in-class and outside class activities, homework assignments, tests, team projects, laboratory exercises, and presentations by successful women and minority speakers. For in-class and outside class activities there are a variety of cooperative learning techniques available, which can promote respect among students for other cultures, opposite gender, and individual differences in learning.
Specific Issues to Be Explored
One of the common misconceptions among science and engineering faculty is that the content of our courses is not suited for addressing multicultural issues. However, course content can be explored from several angles:
· source and origin of inventions,
· design considerations based on gender/age/culture, etc.,
· application issues based on gender/age/culture, etc.,
· facts and statistics based on gender/age/culture, etc.
Motivation and Background
In last several years I have been focusing on engineering education in addition (and instead) on engineering itself, including participation in 2003 Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Institute at Northern Illinois University.
In contrast to physical exactness (and thus simplification) of engineering principles, there is a complexity of individual learning, the latter being dependent on wide spectrum of diverse issues, very much dependent on multitude of cultural backgrounds of students-learners and instructors-teachers. While being focused (and often obsesses) with engineering physical principles, we (teachers) are not fully aware or have not given due priority to multicultural (thus other important) educational issues. After all, it is not about us teachers to show how we understand engineering principles, but how the students could relate and comprehend them, thus be interested and enthusiastic, and then learn and appreciate engineering discipline.
The lack of awareness of importance to understand and integrate multicultural issues in engineering curriculum is a reason for both, perception that engineering is a difficult field (which is actually not), and very low participation of women and other minorities as compared to their respective representation in general population. Furthermore, with advancement of society and living standard (in good part accomplished by engineering activities) the engineering designs and products are more-and-more intended for general public as opposed to early contributions to governments and reach minority of the population. Therefore, it is important that engineers be recruited and be retained from general population and diverse cultural spectrum, in order to best satisfy needs for diverse services and products of multicultural society and the world. This will open up equal opportunities in engineering to all, including women and minorities, and at the same time will help to remove predicted shortages of engineers in the future. There is no doubt that understanding and integrating multicultural issues in engineering should start in engineering education, and will be equally beneficial to all.
Transformation Outcomes
The following specific outcomes and impacts are expected from participation in 2003 Summer Institute and transformation of MEE 390 Spring 2004 course, as well as other courses in the future. This is even more important, since there are virtually little or no multicultural content or visible activities in Mechanical Engineering curriculum, and except for the pioneering effort by Professor Murali Krishnamurthi, the same is probably true for College of Engineering and Engineering Technology.:
· Personal learning and multicultural transformation during participation in all MCTI activities and life-long learning from other colleagues and their experiences. Strong contributing factor was that MCTI participants were from different disciplines, different gender, different culture, different age, etc.
· Introducing and integrating multicultural content and activities and MEE 390 Spring 2004 course, and in other courses later.
· Assigning individual experimental design projects with multicultural content and activities to selected students.
· Evaluating impact and educational benefits of multicultural content and activities in engineering courses.
· The assessment surveys to evaluate students appreciation of gender equity and multicultural issues.
· Promoting multicultural content, activities and resources in selected courses and posting learning material on my personal, Departmental and College Web sites.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my thanks to the Provost’s Task Force on Multicultural Curriculum Transformation for selecting me to participate in the 2003 Summer Institute, as well as to all presenters and participants, who shared their expertise and experiences, thus comprehending my beliefs in importance of diversity and multiculture for betterment of quality of life, productivity and standard of living, and ultimately improve happiness of individuals and harmony of whole society.
Related and useful Links:
NIU Provost’s Task Force on Multicultural Curriculum Transformation
Resources for Minorities in Science, Mathematics and Engineering
Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering
M.Kostic's General Syllabus Info