In 1996, the MIT subject 3.11 Mechanics of Materials in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering began using an experimental new textbook approach, written with a strongly increased emphasis on the materials aspects of the subject. It also included several topics such as finite element methods, fracture mechanics, and statistics that are not included in most traditional Mechanics of Materials texts. These nontraditional aspects were designed to fit the curriculum in Materials Science and Engineering, although admittedly Mechanics instructors in other departments and schools might not find all of them suitable for their own subjects. Further, a number of topics may be of interest in educational curricula and industrial practice outside traditional Mechanics subjects.

One approach to increasing the flexibility and adaptability of this materials-oriented text is to make discrete and coherent portions of it available as stand-alone, web-available modules. Instructors could then pick and choose among topics, and assemble a subject offering in whatever way they choose. It would also be possible for instructors of specialty engineering subjects, for instance bridge or aircraft design, to add modules on mechanics of materials aimed at their own needs.

A series of such modules are now being developed under a National Science Foundation Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) grant aimed at strengthening the links in the engineering curriculum between materials and mechanics. Each module is intended to be capable of standing alone, so that it will usually be unnecessary to work through other modules in order to use any particular one. This approach will be outlined and demonstrated, both as an approach to the specific topic of a mechanics-materials linkage, and as a possibility for more general implementation in distance learning.

The College of Engineering at Boise State University (BSU) is a new program in only its fifth year of existence. Bachelor's degrees in Civil Engineering (CE), Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Mechanical Engineering (ME) are offered with M.S. Degrees in each discipline added this year. The industrial advisory board for the College of Engineering at BSU strongly recommended enhancement of the Materials Science and Engineering (MS&E) offerings at BSU. In response to local industry's desire for an increased level of coursework and research in MS&E, BSU has created a minor in MS&E at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

The MS&E program is designed to meet the following objectives: provide for local industry's need for engineers with a MS&E competency, add depth of understanding of MS&E for undergraduate and graduate students in ECE, ME and CE, prepare undergraduate students for graduate school in MS&E, improve the professional skills of the students especially in the areas of materials processing and materials selection, provide applied coursework for Chemistry, Physics, and Geophysics students, and offer coursework in a format that is convenient for students currently working in local industry.

Formal programs that provide research experiences for teachers (RET) have been in existence for more than 20 years. Currently there are more than 70 formalized Scientific Work Experiences Programs for Teachers (SWEPTs) nationwide. The underlying assumption of most RETs is that these intensive summer work immersion experiences, coupled with appropriate follow-up activities during the school year, expand teachers' professional skills and networks, and thereby improve the performance of their students. Many SWEPTs have collected anecdotal evidence indicating their program's positive impact on teachers. Missing from all SWEPT evaluations is quantitative evidence that teacher participation in these programs affects student interest and performance in the subject taught by the SWEPT teacher. As professional evaluators attest, it is difficult to differentiate the roles of teachers and teaching practices in changing student academic interest and performance from other factors (e.g., curriculum, school administration, non-random assignment of students, etc.).

This study controls for many of these factors by comparing interest and achievement of students in classes of SWEPT teachers with students in classes of comparison teachers in the same school and teaching the same subject. The study's longitudinal design is commensurate with the philosophy and practices of the participating SWEPTs.

Each year, U.S. institutions grant well over 10,000 bachelor's degrees in science and engineering. However, only a small fraction of those students pursue graduate study. Many who do often experience great difficulty partly due to a lack of preparation for research: the nature of research is inherently foreign to those who are accustomed to studying course material and demonstrating their mastery of it by passing an exam. Carefully involving undergraduates in research can be an effective means for inspiring students to pursue graduate study. We have found that one can create a positive research experience for the student by implementing simple techniques. In this presentation, we present these practical techniques which include: Defining a manageable undergraduate research project; marketing the project to undergraduates; enabling effective record keeping in laboratory notebooks; focussing and directing research through efficient experimental designs. Along with these techniques, we will present examples—taken mainly from our Polymer Electronics Laboratory. We will also present the inherent pitfalls associated with these techniques.

The Materials World Modules (MWM), funded by the National Science Foundation, is a series of nine short texts that introduce science and scientific concepts to high school students through guided investigations of the materials that surrounds us in the modern world. Designed to be flexible, these modules can be incorporated into a high school science curriculum as a learning-by-inquiry addition to the main science texts. Depending on the time that the teacher has, each module can be covered in 8 to 15 class periods. Using an inquiry method of learning, the modules prompt the students to generate questions about a subject and find experimental approaches which will lead them to the answers. The modules encourage the students to learn by carrying out simple experiments using readily available materials. The Polymers Module of the MWM series aims at introducing the concepts of polymer chemistry and polymeric materials to an audience that has had some exposure to general chemistry. It asks the students to investigate their surroundings to find polymer-based objects and to infer the properties of those objects from knowing the structures of the monomeric building blocks. It introduces the relation between polymer properties and structure and that between polymer properties and molecular weight by suggesting experiments that students can do with poly(vinyl alcohol) and poly(vinyl acetate) films. Finally, it encourages the students to use what they have learned to design simple devices using polymeric materials. An example of such a device is a humidity sensor that is fabricated from thin polymer films.

The Chemical Engineering Department at Christian Brothers University (CBU) offers an introductory courses on materials at the sophomore level followed by a course on polymer science and engineering at the senior level complete with laboratory. Students desiring further exposure to materials processing are connected with local polymeric materials companies where they work as interns. These students have the opportunity to be involved in undergraduate materials research in the CBU Polymer Laboratory with the author funded by the university or local polymer companies. Their works are acknowledged in terms of student paper presentations at local or regional research seminars. In 1998, CBU Engineering School's research involvement with the polymeric materials industry was expanded when local polymer company personnels were allowed to conduct proprietary research at the institution's Polymer Engineering Laboratory with the help of paid undergraduate chemical engineering students. Recently the Chemical Engineering Department at CBU initiated collaborative research with the engineering school of a local university and a local biomaterials company. In order to meet the growing needs of packaging engineers in this area, local companies (polymer and others) that have packaging departments and the School of Engineering at CBU recently joined forces to develop a packaging teaching and training program for students as well as employees of these companies. This program would include packaging materials and engineering. The details of Phase I and Phase II of this joint venture are described in the main body of the paper that follows.

In a first step of a larger project to develop software to teach materials characterization techniques, we have developed a module on scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to be used mainly in a Department of Mechanical Engineering. The goal is to use the unique capabilities of the computer to develop a platform-independent interactive web-based software package which can be used as a stand-alone application or as support in existing “traditional” classes and improve the quality of teaching. Commercial development tools like Macromedia Dreamweaver for HTML pages, Macromedia Flash and JBuilder to create animations and visualizations of basic concepts and simulations of microscope operations are used for improved teaching quality.

We have developed a new Materials Chemistry course for freshmen with the goal of improving retention in the engineering program. This Materials Chemistry course is fundamentally different from other introductory materials courses in that it does not cover the standard introductory materials curriculum (diffusion, strengthening mechanisms, eutectic phase diagrams, etc.). Rather, its goal is to teach engineering applications of fundamental chemistry concepts. This course consists of four basic units: atomic, molecular and supermolecular structures; chemical reactions; physical chemistry; and biological materials. Each of these units consists of topics designed to show how fundamental concepts in chemistry can be applied to engineering problems. For example, liquid crystal display technology is used to teach the concept of molecular shape. The course also contains a laboratory section. This paper will describe the detailed contents of the course and its relation to the engineering curriculum.

NASA's Genesis mission provides an interesting opportunity for educational outreach in a wide variety of materials related disciplines. This mission is one the Discovery planetary exploration series, and its purpose is to return to earth quantitative data regarding the composition of the Sun's solar wind. In doing so, the mission requires a number of materials technology platforms that provide examples of how fundamental questions in science might be answered. Specifically, the Genesis mission provides an educational pathway showing how experiment design and the process of materials selection are combined to realize evidence that will increase our understanding of the cosmological transition from solar nebula to planetary bodies.

The Force Macroscope (FM) was presented at the MRS-Spring-2000 as a laboratory teaching tool to introduce students to concepts of Scanning Force Microscopy (SFM). It is a macroscopic version of the SFM. The FM pedagogical advantage over the SFM is its size: students relate to the FM, only a few grasp at once the concepts for the 100 [.proportional]m-long SFM cantilever. In this work we will show how we take advantage of the FMs large size to teach concepts of force reconstruction.

Educational efforts by the MSE profession can effect society in several ways: by producing more and better MSE graduates, by enhancing the Materials backgrounds of students from other engineering disciplines, by continuing education programs, and, in a nontraditional sense, by impacting the non-engineering community with outreach programs. I suggest that the effect on society of working with disadvantaged elementary school children, such as inner city fifth graders, is potentially far greater than efforts spent on non-engineering students already in college, high school students, or even middle school students. The Fifth Grade Volunteer Teaching Program (5GVP) at Marquette has attempted over the last ten years to inform Milwaukee's inner city fifth graders of the existence of an engineering career while showing them that science is something that they can actually do themselves and that the doing is fun. Maybe some of the roughly 5,000 students taught have stayed in the college prep track in math and science as a result of contact with our enthusiastic engineering student volunteers. Our lessons are self contained and heavy with things for the fifth graders to do themselves. One lesson, which portends Materials Science and Engineering, is called, “Phases of Matter”. This year I have expanded the 5GVP Program to include three of the Choice Schools operating in Milwaukee. These schools differ from the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and from each other significantly. Class sizes in the Choice Schools vary from much smaller than MPS to about the same size as MPS. The school buildings range from ramshackle to very modern. The Charter School has science labs and the Choice Schools do not. The Charter School is for profit and these two Choice Schools are not for profit.

This paper presents a new CD-ROM, (EMSET2, ISBN 0-13-030534-0) [1] which provides useful resources for courses in engineering and technology. A product of a fifteen-year effort, this CD contains hundreds of demonstrations and experiments which have been classroom tested and peer reviewed. These resources are available in the popular Adobe Acrobat PDF format, accessible thorough the Acrobat Reader, which is included. The contents are useful for such courses as materials science, materials technology, mechanics and strength of materials, as well as for pre-college level course and school visitations. Additional PDF-formatted resources on the CD-ROM include a short course on Microscopy of Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites, an Image Gallery showing materials, applications photos, photomicrographs of a wide range of materials, a structural models gallery, and related web site hyperlinks. There is also a section on how we made the PDFs. The manner in which the demonstrations and experiments are written provides useful tips on securing supplies and construction of devices. Topics include Structure, Testing & Evaluation, Metals, Polymers, Ceramics, Composites, Electronic & Optical Materials, as well as ideas for Materials Curriculum development.

The Center on Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Assemblies (CPIMA), an NSF MRSEC and joint partnership among Stanford University, IBM Almaden, and University of California at Davis, established the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Program in 1995. Its mission is twofold: to expose undergraduate students to cutting-edge research and to help students with their ultimate career decisions. Approximately twenty-five students each summer are assigned a research project under the direction of a mentor. Students are exposed to a variety of research environments including universities, industry, and laboratories overseas. Regardless of site, students participate in research group meetings and learn the research process –a valuable experience that is often not obtained during a student's undergraduate years. To complete the research experience, SURE students attend a CPIMA Forum where they present posters on their research and interact with members of both academia and industry. While undergraduates are exposed to academia, they are often not exposed to industry or alternative careers. SURE students learn about industrial research by visiting IBM and getting a tour of the Almaden Research Center. A Career Day is held during the Program where students are given workshops on applying to graduate school as well as talks from people in different scientific careers, both traditional and nontraditional. Assessment surveys show that after their exposure to a number of experiences and ideas over 10 weeks, the SURE students have learned important lessons that a traditional classroom does not afford. To date, over 150 students have participated.

For materials science and engineering departments across the country, recruitment of students is a critical concern. To increase enrollment, students' interest in materials science needs to be sparked early, preferably before they begin college. However, many entering college students have never heard of the major and/or are unsure of what a career in materials science would be like. There are many excellent resources that have been developed to target this problem directly including comprehensive career resources on the web, videos describing careers in materials engineering, and teaching materials developed for middle and high school teachers.

Incorporating technology in pre-college education is an important goal. There is a clear mandate from the national education standards movement to address the issues of scientific and technologically literate citizenship. The Materials World Modules (MWM) Program uses a unique approach based upon design and inquiry to unite the abstract, quantitative methods of scientific inquiry with the concrete methods of technological design to help students develop and integrate these complementary skills. By experiencing MWM, students learn science by doing science. Using the MWM modules, students will be doing what scientists and engineers do: integrating the design process of propose, build, test and evaluate with the inquiry process of question, predict, experiment, reflect, and communicate. This kind of active application of learning leads to mastery of scientific concepts and greater retention.

Materials Science and Engineering straddles the fence between engineering and science. In order to produce more work-ready undergraduates, we offer a new interdisciplinary program to educate materials engineers with a particular emphasis on microelectronics-related manufacturing. The bachelor's level curriculum in Microelectronics Process Engineering (μProE)is interdisciplinary, drawing from materials, chemical, electrical and industrial engineering programs and tied together with courses, internships and projects which integrate thin film processing with manufacturing control methods. Our graduates are prepared for entry level engineering jobs that require knowledge and experience in microelectronics-type fabrication and statistics applications in manufacturing engineering. They also go on to graduate programs in materials science and engineering. The program objectives were defined using extensive input from industry and alumni. We market our program as part of workforce development for Silicon Valley and have won significant support from local industry as well as federal sources. We plan to offer a vertical slice of workforce development, from lower division engineering and community college activities to industry short courses. We also encourage all engineering majors to take electives in our program. All our course and program development efforts rely on clearly defined learning objectives.

Industrial experience can be a significant factor in materials science education, and internships at our laboratory under two NSF programs directly impact undergraduates and high school teachers. In these programs, the participants become a member of individual, existing research groups under a mentor on a technical project relevant to IBM. The research is publishable but closely related to a technical area important to IBM. During the summer the participants become members of the research group, attending departmental meetings and informal discussions. In addition, they attend a special seminar series on industrial research frontiers, receive career-training discussions, and participate in a variety of other programs sponsored for summer interns by IBM. Every participant presents a poster at an internal technical meeting at IBM or a technical meeting at Stanford (or both) at the end of the summer. One of the programs, an NSF MRSEC “Center for Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Interfaces” (CPIMA), involves a partnership with Stanford University and the University of California at Davis. The CPIMA program has an active group of postdoctoral scientists, graduate students, undergraduate (summer) students and (summer) high school teachers. In addition to IBM, summer students in CPIMA may work with other industrial firms who are industrial affiliates of CPIMA. In addition, CPIMA has a public science and K-12 component in materials science in educational outreach with the The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. The other program, an NSF GOALI grant on “Surface and Analytical Chemistry of Materials” with San Jose State University, involves undergraduate and graduate (masters) San Jose State University students during the academic year who work on collaborative research projects between IBM scientists and San Jose State University professors. In addition, this project also has a large summer program with undergraduates from across the US and with high school teachers. The impact of the programs on the students, teachers, and institutions will be reviewed, with a special emphasis on the impact on the industrial partner.

Being able to obtain and analyze quantitative data are an essential components of any undergraduate education in science or engineering. At the most basic level, this begins with characterizing the measurement system using proper statistical techniques. Although most undergraduates in the sciences and engineering are required to take a course in statistics, the knowledge gained in the statistics course does not always find its way into practice. In this paper we will present 4 experimental modules that will enable the student to: 1. Assess the precision of a measurement system; 2. Determine if the system is stable with respect to a number of variables; 3. Quantify the amount of variation that exists within a particular sample; 4. Quantify the amount of variation from sample to sample (i.e., process variation). Our modules were applied to the measurement of silicon dioxide thickness from an oxidation process. However, they generally apply to any process that involves measuring a physical quantity. Assessing these sources of variation in a process form the foundation for more advanced techniques such as process control and experimental design.

We have integrated recent research results in the curriculum of the University of Maryland, while leaving the basics intact. This allows us to teach the fundamental laws and to show the students how these help us to answer questions that are of importance today. This can be done as part of a laboratory and as part of a class. In the laboratory classes, we emphasize what is measured (the main topic), then measure samples recently done in the literature. If available, we measure two samples and have a discussion on what are the differences. These are then related to the manner the samples have been grown. In the classes, we show the basic equation or relation, and introduce how it can answer a question that is pertinent to today's research.

Recognizing that the traditional engineering education training is often inadequate in preparing the students for the challanges presented by this industry's dynamic environment and insufficient to meet the empoyer's criteria in hiring new engineers, a new curriculum on Semiconductor Manufacturing is instituted in the Chemical Engineering Department at UCLA to train the students in various scientific and technologica areas that are pertinenet to the microelectronics industries. This paper describes this new mutidisciplinary curriculum that provides knowledge and skills in semiconductor manufacturing through a series ofcourses that emphasize on the application of fundamenta engineeering disciplines in solid-state physics, materials science of semiconductors, and chemical processing. The curriculum comprises three major components:(1)a comprehensive course curriculum in semiconductor manufacturing; (2) a laboratory for hands-on training in semiconductor device fabrication; (3) design of experiments. The capstone laboratory course is designed to strengthen students’ training in “unit operatins” used in semicounductor manufacturing and allow them to practice engineering principles using the state-of-the-art experimental setup. It comprises the most comprehensive training(seven photolithographic steps and numero0us chemical processes)in fabricating and testing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices. This curriculum is recentyaccredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology(ABET).