Beginning April 18, our meetings will be held
in the Tallan Cellar Restaurant, Two Union Square, Chattanooga, TN 37402.
NEXT MEETING
(noon)_______________________________________________________
Location: Terrace Room in the Sheraton Read
House Hotel, 827 Broad Street, Chattanooga, TN 37402
April 11: "Electron Microscopes Can
Characterize Nanomaterials at Sub-Angstrom Resolution" Dr. Larry
Allard, ORNL
Dr. Allard is the principal technical designer
of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's new Advanced Microscopy Laboratory, a
facility housing the most advanced and sensitive modern electron beam
instruments. He began using electron microscopes in the 1960's as he studied microstructures of
stainless steel and nickel-based superalloys to characterize creep-rupture
failure mechanisms at the University of Michigan. Dr. Allard is now a
Distinguished Research Staff Member in DOE's High Temperature Materials
Laboratory, a National User Facility located at ORNL. He will tell us
about his current research of nanophase and nanostructured materials and
instruments developments involving electron holography as he describes the
special facility at ORNL that has been built to house three and soon four
aberration-corrected electron microscopes.
Invocation: Jack Wagner
Menu: Not available, yet. Please call the
Sheraton Read House at 423-266-4121 if you need to know the menu. A
plate lunch will be served for $11.
OUR PREVIOUS MEETING
____________________________________________________
April 4:
"Comparison of Traditional and Distance Education Delivery Outcomes for
an Engineering Statics Course" - Dr. Wes Hines, UT
Knoxville
Our joint meeting with the American Society of
Engineering Educators (ASEE) Southeast Section
Conference introduced us to this
award-winning paper by Kurt Gramoll, Wes Hines and Mary Kocak.
Dr. Hines told us that one in five students who graduate with an
engineering degree transfer to a four year college in their junior year from a
smaller two-year community college. When they transfer to a four year
college, they can complete a business degree in two additional years, but often
it takes three additional years to complete an engineering degree. An
option that can be used to boost their core skills and make an engineering
degree a possibility in two rather than three additional years is distance
learning modules.
Their experiment was funded by a grant from the
National Science Foundation (NSF). Its main objective was to prove
that distance learning technology can be a successful means of improving the
rate and ease of transfer from a community college to an engineering program at
a four year institution. The modules in the online course included 1)
an e-textbook with online Statics problem examples, 2)
online lectures, 3) online "coaching" in which the students could ask
questions where other students might respond but the professor
moderated and ultimately provided answers, and 4) online exams. In the
student-posed question module, the professor responded with answers usually
within six hours and always within 12 hours providing timely
feedback.
The same material
was taught and the same tests were given as
the traditional classroom course to compare student understanding
and comprehension of a course in Statics. The students were allowed to
select their preferred way of taking the Statics course and the distance
learners scored slightly better than the on-campus learners. They are now checking
the grade point averages of the students involved in this study to determine if
those who selected the distance learning option had better scores before
entering these classes that were compared.
The conclusions in
this presentation showed that distance learning option prepares students as
well as the on-campus course, that 70% of the students taking the online course
would recommend it to others, and that the students greatly appreciated the
flexibility of this
alternative.
FUTURE MONDAY MEETINGS (noon
in the Tallan Cellar Restaurant unless another location is indicated)
__________
April 18:
"Nanotechnology In Medicine or Very Tiny Things" - Dr. Robert
Berglund, Erlanger Medical Center
(Location: Tallan Cellar Restaurant, Two Union Square,
Chattanooga, TN 37402)
April 25: "Medical
Diagnostic Camera -- So Small It's Swallowable" - Bill Garner, Given Imaging,
Inc., Norcross, GA
(Location: Tallan Cellar Restaurant,
Two Union Square, Chattanooga, TN 37402)
May 2: “Advances in
Refining Coal for Power Production" - Dale Bradshaw, Advanced Coal Technology
(ACT)
(Location: Tallan Cellar Restaurant,
Two Union Square, Chattanooga, TN 37402)
May 9: "Aerodynamic
Drag Reduction of Heavy Vehicles" - Dr. David Whitfield, UTC
SimCenter
(Location: UTC SimCenter Auditorium,
701 M.L. King Blvd., Chattanooga, TN 37403)
May 16: "New Air
Pollution Requirements and Chattanooga's Response" Errol Reksten,
Chattanooga Air Pollution Control Bureau
(Location: Tallan Cellar Restaurant,
Two Union Square, Chattanooga, TN 37402)
May 23:
May 30: No Meeting -
Memorial Day
June 4 (Saturday):
CEC Summer Social -- Pizza in the Park, 10 am to 2 pm
(Location: Chester Frost State Park,
Pavilion #3)
WHERE WE MEET
_________________________________________________________
We will usually meet at Tallan Cellar Restaurant in
the basement of the Tallan Building at the corner of M. L. King Blvd. and Carter
Street. Lunch at the Cellar Restaurant is a hot buffet for $10 and the
meal is available at 11:30 a.m. Parking is available free at the Days Inn
across Carter Street, but you will need a note in your windshield that you’re
attending the Chattanooga Engineers Club meeting.
QUESTIONS, SUGGESTIONS?
______________________________________________