Education Engineering: Math-Science Death March

Discussion in 'Quackenbush's' started by Perham1, Nov 4, 2011.

  1. Perham1

    Perham1 2,500+ Posts

    How to better teach the STEM classes in college? That's the big question in higher education. How will America adapt?

    This was interesting:

    After studying nearly a decade of transcripts at one college, Kevin Rask, a professor at Wake Forest University, concluded last year that the grades in the introductory math and science classes were among the lowest on campus. The chemistry department gave the lowest grades over all, averaging 2.78 out of 4, followed by mathematics at 2.90. Education, language and English courses had the highest averages, ranging from 3.33 to 3.36.

    Ben Ost, a doctoral student at Cornell, found in a similar study that STEM students are both “pulled away” by high grades in their courses in other fields and “pushed out” by lower grades in their majors.

    MATTHEW MONIZ bailed out of engineering at Notre Dame in the fall of his sophomore year. He had been the kind of recruit most engineering departments dream about. He had scored an 800 in math on the SAT and in the 700s in both reading and writing. He also had taken Calculus BC and five other Advanced Placement courses at a prep school in Washington, D.C., and had long planned to major in engineering.

    But as Mr. Moniz sat in his mechanics class in 2009, he realized he had already had enough. “I was trying to memorize equations, and engineering’s all about the application, which they really didn’t teach too well,” he says. “It was just like, ‘Do these practice problems, then you’re on your own.’ ” And as he looked ahead at the curriculum, he did not see much relief on the horizon.



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  2. OldHippie

    OldHippie 2,500+ Posts

    I started out as a math major. In 3 semesters of calculus, my grades went from A to B to C. I learned that to do well in math, I needed to enjoy sitting in my room doing calculus problems for hours on end. I decided I'd rather sit in my room reading psychology books for hours on end instead, so I changed majors and never regretted it.
     
  3. Dionysus

    Dionysus Idoit Admin

    I started as a business major and quickly learned that accounting, economics and such bored the **** out of me. Switched to liberal arts and found my groove.
     
  4. OrngNugz

    OrngNugz 500+ Posts

    Engineering is hard and solving real world engineering problems is not easier than solving classroom problems. You not only have to be pretty sharp but have commitment to follow through.

    "10% inspiration 90% perspiration" is pretty accurate. On the upside there is a lot of money to be made and we all have to do something for a living.
     
  5. VYFan

    VYFan 2,500+ Posts

    I put my first 100 or so hours of credit toward a Chemical Engineering degree at UT, and my testimony is that it was hard, and very hard to make straight A's which was my standard, since I was going to law school. A's were rare and hard--did I say that? In one engineering class of over 100 students, I had the 7th highest grade, and got a "B." The teacher said he only gave 5 A's. Then, there were only about 25 B's. Plus, you would put about 20 hours a week into classes and labs to get 14 hours credit.

    When I switched to a "simple" Math major it felt like I'd just crested a long hard hill on my bike and started coasting down. I made 4.0 GPA's taking 21 and 18 hours a semester (and back then, 4.0 was all that was available). So, yes, in "my day" the engineering students definitely got hammered on GPA. In fact, UT law school was easier than undergraduate Chem.E.
     
  6. Longhorny630

    Longhorny630 1,000+ Posts

    This pleases me. As an engineering graduate, this can only make my degree more valuable as fewer and fewer people are being created to replace me. When I was on campus, I was of the belief that whatever your gpa was in engineering, you added a point to it to get what your gpa would be in any lib arts or business major. Now that I am out of college and have a job, I'm not even asked what my GPA was in college. Everybody knows McCombs is nothing more than a haven for Cockrell dropouts anyway, so why does this surprise anybody?


     
  7. Rayug

    Rayug 100+ Posts

    My physical chemistry class (mostly Juniors) started with something like 25-30 students for the first semester. (This was at UTA) The first thing our professor told us, was that he did not curve the class. I believe 7 students passed the class with the majority of those being a C grade. I knew of at least 2 students who literally dropped out of school after that class and I would guesstimate that 10 changed majors. (from Chemistry) Out of a student body of 22-23K at the time, there were 2 BS Chem graduates in my class. (BA Chem took a dumbed down version P. Chem)
     
  8. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    I have to agree with Longhorny360. You have to memorize things in every subject. I mean you actually have to know something before you can start to apply it to problem solving.

    I graduated with a ChE degree after not having the greatest standardized test scores. But I was curious and enjoyed learning the way the world works. I have to say I enjoy engineering more today than when I first started studying it.

    It is sad but one thing I have noticed is that most of the engineers in the next generation will not come from the US. They will work in the US but they will be born in other countries and come here to either study it and/or work. It is sad. I think it is intellectual laziness really.
     
  9. Gadfly

    Gadfly 250+ Posts

    I took the 2 Calculus classes for engineers/scientists at UT, and I did well in them both. For those who don’t know, they take the traditional 3 classes and squeeze them into two. I also thought organic chemistry was relatively easy – although I only took the two introductory classes after you finish your regular chemistry.

    I think the problem is a lot of social pressure to be engineers. There are kids who have the intellectual capability to do the work; they just don’t really like the subject. I can see that. Engineering seems like the most mind numbingly boring subject in existence to me. Our society has defined success as the ability to keep and maintain a high paying job, so many kids who don’t really like engineering are choosing it because of social pressure.

    Longhorny630, I think, makes an incredibly good point. The real fun stuff in any major doesn’t really start happening until the Junior year. Perhaps they could load some of the fun stuff into the first year, too. I remember telling my TA that I found Calculus not as much fun as Algebra and Geometry. She was angling to get me to be a math major, and she told me after your first two years, mathematics study becomes more algebraic and fun. She agreed calculus was a PITA. Without the extrapolation into physics, calculus is just memorization or theorems… blah.
     
  10. Longhorny630

    Longhorny630 1,000+ Posts

    Well I loved the way aerospace did it at UT. Your very first class, on the first day of school is a one hour a week 'intro to aerospace engr' which equates to having this aerospace rock star tell stories of how he escaped from the Nazi Stuka dive bombers to come to the US, earn his PHD, become fishing buddies with Werner Von Braun, to advising presidents on which bombers were best, heading up the UT system, and 'retiring' by teaching freshmen students while developing a plane mounted electricity guns and lasers. It gives you the taste of whats to come, provided you can withstand the 2 year onslaught of general engineering courses. But hey, without all the hard work, everybody would be engineers and McCombs wouldn't have anybody to fill it's ranks.
     
  11. Gadfly

    Gadfly 250+ Posts

    I walked by that Aerospace engineering building almost everyday on my way to RLM (across the street from ACEs right?). I'll admit - I was always jealous of the cool stuff you guys may be learning.
     
  12. Longhorny630

    Longhorny630 1,000+ Posts

    Yah, the really old rectangular one from the 1950's right next to the service building (last to be updated by Cockrell). Biomed gets a whole new building for all of it's 5 students, but aerospace can't get **** for 60 years. You can walk through the basement and see the old wind tunnel through the window. You might be able to see the supersonic tunnel, I cant remember if the window is covered or not.
     

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