Interdisciplinary Laboratory in Advanced Materials-A Team-Oriented Inquiry-Based Approach

在大多数本科工程课程中，不同学科的学生很少有机会一起工作，即使是在工程领域。一个跨学科的学习课程汇集了机械和化学工程的学生。 该项目采用了由成功工程联盟和其他专注于刺激学生学习的组织开发和传播的流程。 这些过程被用于加强田纳西理工大学的化学工程课程。 特别是，弗吉尼亚理工大学的SUCCEED垂直集成设计项目被用作该项目的基础。 该项目将在高温材料课程中实现多个学科的横向整合。 高温材料生产是设计此类课程活动的共同基础。 材料加工跨越机械和化学工程的学科，是一个自然的集成点。化学工程课程通常侧重于加工，而忽略了材料的性质和性能标准。同样，机械工程研究通常侧重于属性和性能目标。然而，在实践中，这两个学科共同努力设计新的工艺和材料，通过将化学、加工、性质和性能等因素联系起来，实现制造能力和性能目标。 该项目的目标是：（1）创建实验室资源，包括高温石墨元件炉，固体混合，研磨和成型设备，用于支持为材料生产过程，微观结构，性能和性能关系的跨学科学习提供基础的活动;（2）通过将机械和化学工程专业的学生融入以团队为导向的探究式环境中，创造一个积极的跨学科学习环境，为学生提供设计，计划，实施和分析实验，并获得跨学科团队和团队之间的工作经验，以实现小组目标;（3）通过跨越核心要求和支持实验室的项目和实例，在现有课程中创建高温材料加工线程;以及（4）利用拟议的设施，通过大学青年学者计划向大学预科学生介绍材料研究。 该项目将奋进吸引少数民族学生和女学生在本科和大学预科阶段进行研究。

Few opportunities exist in most undergraduate engineering curricula for students of different disciplines, even within engineering, to work together. An interdisciplinary course of study is bringing together mechanical and chemical engineering students. This project adapts processes developed and disseminated by the SUCCEED Engineering Coalition and others which focus on stimulating student learning. These processes are used to enhance the chemical engineering curriculum at Tennessee Technological University. In particular, the SUCCEED Vertically Integrated Design project at Virginia Tech was used as the basis for this project. This project will implement a horizontal integration of several disciplines in a high temperature materials course. High-temperature materials production is the chosen common basis upon which to design such curricular activities. Materials processing cuts across the disciplines of mechanical and chemical engineering and is a natural point for integration. Chemical engineering curricula typically focus on processing while neglecting the property and performance criteria of materials. Likewise, mechanical engineering studies typically focus on property and performance objectives. In practice, however, these two disciplines work together to design new processes and materials to achieve manufacture ability and performance targets by relating the factors connecting chemistry, processing, properties and performance. The goals of this project are: (1) to create a laboratory resource that includes a high-temperature graphite element furnace, solids-mixing, milling and forming equipment to be used to support activities that provide a basis for interdisciplinary learning about process, microstructure, property and performance relationships in materials production; (2) to create an active interdisciplinary learning environment by integrating mechanical and chemical engineering students within a team-oriented inquiry-based setting that offers students the opportunity to design, plan, implement and analyze experiments as well as gain experience working within an interdisciplinary team and between teams to achieve a group objective; (3) to create a high-temperature materials processing thread within the existing curriculum by cutting across the core requirements and supporting laboratories with projects and examples; and (4) to use the proposed facilities to introduce pre-college students to materials research through the University Young Scholars program. The project will endeavor to attract minority and female students to research at both the undergraduate and precollege levels.