From General Motors Corp. to teachers in Alabama and Rhode Island, the 2004 IEEE Educational Activities Board Awards honored nine recipients found to have made a difference in engineering education.

The General Motors (GM) Technical Education Program (TEP) received the IEEE Educational Activities Board Employer Professional Development Award. “Twenty years ago, GM’s top leadership initiated its [education program] in reaction to the great numbers of its engineers who were pursuing postgraduate business degrees when what the company really wanted was engineers with more job-related technical expertise,” says Diane Landsiedel, senior manager for the program. She accepted the award, on behalf of the company last November at a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas.

To provide the expertise it wanted, GM, the world’s largest vehicle manufacturer, employing about 325 000 people globally, has worked with leading universities to provide job-related courses to its employees through distance education.

“GM is very proud to be recognized and is thrilled to receive this exceptional honor from the IEEE,” says Landsiedel. “[We recognized] that to successfully compete in the global auto industry, the company must continually  build the skills and capabilities of its technical workforce.” The firm also supports employee involvement with the IEEE.

Boston, Florida Sections Honored
Two IEEE Sections were recognized for major contributions to members in the areas of lifelong learning, continuing education, and professional development. The Boston Section and Florida West Coast Section (FWCS) each received the EAB Section Professional Development Award.

“The educational conferences, courses, tutorials, and meetings that the Boston Section offers help to fulfill the IEEE’s goal of providing technical and career training to members and the engineering community,” says Ron Tabroff, Boston Section chair, in accepting the award. “At the very core of [our] educational activities is our desire to present subject matter that is timely and often not yet available at other educational venues. We also strive to partner with industries that share our commitment to fulfilling the educational needs of engineers.”

The Florida West Coast Section and its chapters of the IEEE Power Engineering Society and the Industry Applications Society were among the first groups in the state to offer members who are registered professional engineers help with maintaining their licenses by helping them fulfil their continuing education requirements. The section offers credit in the form of professional development hours, better known as PDHs, for a range of workshops, tutorials, and seminars. Other chapters in Florida have followed suit.

The section was also recognized for the variety of opportunities it offers its members for developing management and leadership skills that can transfer directly to the workplace.

Accreditation activities
The EAB also honored two IEEE Fellows with the 2004 Meritorious Achievement Award in Accreditation Activities. William S. Clark, a finance director for BellSouth Corp., in Atlanta, was recognized for his contributions to accreditation processes. Accreditation is used to ensure the quality of the science and engineering programs offered by educational institutions. It is a voluntary, nongovernmental process of peer review that requires an educational institution or program to meet certain defined criteria.

Specifically, Clark was cited for his leadership of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology’s (ABET) Technology Accreditation Commission Criteria Committee, which developed the first so-called outcomes-based criteria for accrediting engineering technology programs. Outcomes-based criteria focus on how well an institution’s educational process prepares its students for the technical world after graduation.  For example, rather than tote up the hours spent in classes learning a certain topic, the approach tries to determine whether the students know how to apply the theories they’ve learned to real problems. This criterion represents a major shift in engineering technology accreditation.

Clark was very appreciative of his employer, BellSouth, for encouraging him in his accreditation activities. He found that his work benefited him as well as the students. “I have the good fortune of working for a good company where our leaders recognize that education doesn’t stop with graduation, and that technical, personal, and managerial growth isn’t limited to on-the-job opportunities,” said Clark. “Professional activity, such as that provided by IEEE, is a great avenue for employee development,” he adds.

William E. Sayle II, director of undergraduate programs for Georgia Tech Lorraine in Metz, France, was honored for his years of outstanding contributions to engineering accreditation through the IEEE and ABET. He was also cited for his work at Georgia Tech in helping to develop the university’s first Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC2000) self-study program, a guide for accrediting an educational institution or program. Sayle has been active in training ABET program evaluators—those sent out to accredit the programs at educational institutions—to use EC2000 criteria. He has also made important contributions to improving the ABET evaluation process. Sayle points out that the fact that every U.S. engineering program either is or wants to be accredited by ABET is testimony to the importance of the IEEE’s accreditation activities.

IEEE Fellow H. Vincent Poor, the George Van Ness Lothrop Professor in Engineering at Princeton University, in New Jersey, received the EAB Major Educational Innovation Award for his innovation and leadership in teaching. Specifically, he was cited for developing a course for both engineering and liberal arts students that uses the field of wireless communications as a model for learning about the technical, social, economic, and political dimensions of technology.

The EAB Meritorious Achievement Award in Continuing Education went to IEEE Fellow Cary Y. Yang of Santa Clara University, in California. For more than 20 years, Yang has initiated innovative programs to educate technical professionals at various stages of their careers. He also founded the Center for Nanostructures at Santa Clara University, which offers interdisciplinary research and education opportunities for university students and faculty, high school students and teachers, and Silicon Valley technical professionals. Yang had kind words for the IEEE, which he says “has been a leader in facilitating and promoting lifelong learning for all professionals, regardless of membership.”

Precollege
Mark D. Conner, a mechanical engineer who teaches at Hoover High School, in Hoover, Ala., and Rebekah Gendron, a technology educator at Riverside Middle School, in East Providence, R.I., were corecipients of the EAB Pre-College Educator Award.

Conner developed two innovative high school courses that provide students with significant engineering analysis and design experience. He is also an instructor for the Infinity Project, a program sponsored jointly by the Southern Methodist University School of Engineering and Texas Instruments that introduces high school students to engineering. 

In accepting his award, Conner also notes the advantages of being associated with the IEEE. “One of the greatest benefits of working with the IEEE has been the opportunity to network with engineers and educators from all over the country,” he says.

For her part, Gendron stresses the importance of reaching students early, saying it was vital for “our educational and engineering establishments to cultivate in our youngest students an interest in the areas of science and technology.” She teaches technology using robotics as a primary tool. In particular, she established and is now directing Rhode Island’s Robotics/First In Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST)/Lego League competition. Geared for children aged 9 through 14, the competition gives kids hands-on experience in engineering and computer programming principles by letting them build and program robots. The program is a partnership between the FIRST organization and Lego Co., which sells programmable robot kits.

Nominations for the 2005 EAB Awards are now being sought. For more information, visit http://www.ieee.org/organizations/eab/arc/awards/index.htm