Engineering Design Problem Solving EID 101 A Gateway to Cooper Unions Engineering Program

Good evening everyone and welcome to this special presentation engineering design and problem solving eid 101 gateway to Cooper Union's engineering program. I'm Helen Freeman the assistant director for alumni affairs at the Cooper Union. Tonight's speakers will include Lisa Shea, associate dean for educational innovation and professor of electrical engineering, Michelle Rosen, assistant professor of of mechanical engineering, excuse me, sophomores Sadia Raman and Vanessa Wuen, who are both mechanical engineering students and were mentors this year. First year students Evelyn King, mechanical engineer, and Zedane Kareem, an electrical engineer. Together, they will give the history of the EID 101 class and insights into how the program builds community among the engineering students and eases the high school to college transition. Tonight's program will be approximately 1 hour. We hope to have time for Q&A at the end. So, if you have any questions for one of the panelists, please submit it into the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen. With that, turn it over to Professor Dr. Lisa Sheay. Thank you. Good evening. And Mike, can you restart my video, please? There we go. Okay. So, good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you very much for agreeing to spend an hour this evening with us. know there are many things that you could be doing with your time. but really value the Cooper Union alumni community and their engagement with your alma mater. As college graduate, know how important it is for me to stay in touch with my alma mater and and just thank you for deciding to join us this evening. I'm going to start with an overview of the EID 101 course that has been re-imagined ever since 2019. somebody can't hear audio, but trust that the panelists can hear me, so some people can. So, I'm going to start with presentation showing some of the changes that we've made to the EID 101 course over the last about six years since I've been at Cooper. And then I'll have about 20 minute Q&A with four panelists and then we'll leave some time at the end for questions. So, let me start with what I'm calling EID 101 re-imagined. It's course that's been in existence for many years, long before my tenure here at Cooper, which started in the fall of 2019, but we've made significant changes over the last six years. So all right. So I'm going to give you little bit of context for the course, the changes that we've made, and then we'll finish with some discussion from students who have just taken the course in the fall and the one of the faculty members from the course and some upper class students who have served as mentors in the course. So arrived in the fall of 2019 and my boss Dean Barry Shupe arrived in January of 2019 and one of his first tasks when he got to Cooper was to formulate strategic plan in consultation with the chairs of each of the seven departments in the school of engineering. They spent the spring semester of 2019 working through goals and core values and understanding where the school is and where the school aspires to be and at the end drafted this sustaining legacy of innovation is the title for the strategic plan. You can find it on our website. It was approved in the May 2019 faculty meeting and unanimously approved which is pretty miraculous thing in in any university to find all of the faculty unanimous unanimous about anything is quite feat. So we were very pleased that all of the faculty got behind this strategic plan. It has eight core values which I'll talk about in minute and seven strategic goals. And Dean Shupe and really use this as framework for for resource allocation and for decision- making. We well Dean Shupe instituted the deans innovation grants that year where faculty and students are welcome to submit proposals that support the strategic plan in some way. It's also framework for providing faculty professional development and also for student professional development. In the context section of the strategic plan, you can read about the T-shaped engineer, which is person who is not just who who is certainly very strong in their disciplinary depth, whether it's mechanical, electrical, civil, chemical, engineering, but also has broad ability to to work with others, other cultures, to communicate, to to be able to work as team. and and so it's both the the professional depth in their discipline as well as the breath in being able to to do things that maybe you you've heard of as as more like soft skills. So when arrived in the fall of 2019, one of the EAD 101 faculty, chemical engineering professor Amanda Simpson approached me with some ideas about how to improve the course because this is run across all of the majors. It's run by the dean's office, not any one particular department. and she had taught it for couple years and came to me and said, you know, I've got some ideas. think it's it's not reaching its full potential as course. So, we had number of conversations. We realized with this new strategic plan in place, EAD 101 could better reflect our core values, particularly respect, integrity, diversity, and inclusion, interdisiplinarity, teamwork, social impact, partnership, and better support the strategic goals of student success and educational excellence. And so with that the that next summer we sent number of faculty to the Olan summer institute. We had put together proposal Amanda and had to to reimagine this EID 101 course and originally we were going to send four faculty Amanda Simpson, Naven Schlan, Mark Luenberg and Cosmos Sevelis, one from each of the majors, the AEAT accredited majors. and then of course COVID happened and so the summer institute became virtual institute and for the same price we could send seven faculty instead of four. So we in addition sent our STEM director at the time Elizabeth Dr. Elizabeth Waters who also had been teaching had taught an EID 101 section mechanical engineering professor Martin Lawless and our brand new hire Dr. Cynthia Lee, who hadn't even started teaching at Cooper yet. She was just hired in 2020 to start that fall, but she was going to be teaching EID 101. And so we wanted her to be part of the the process of of engaging with what this new course would look like. So we realized that since this course is taught to all engineering faculty or all engineering freshmen, there were multiple sections and prior to this reimagining each of the sections kind of operated somewhat independently and we wanted to have consistent set of learning outcomes of course across all the sections. Those were modeled on AET's seven student outcomes that are required for all engineers. we wanted to maintain the focus on design but also address some of those T-shaped skills. So there's coursewide ethics workshop and we had long had our first year students go through the ESC0 course which had communications module and so we partnered EID 101 with ESC0 so that students would go through the communications modules as an EID 101 project team. We we're not trying to stifle academic freedom. So each of the sections will have its own theme and its own flavor of projects based on the interests and and aptitudes of the faculty. So we're not trying to constrict what faculty can do but just to provide kind of consistent set of learning outcomes for all of our firstear students. And also, especially with 2020 being COVID, we wanted to help our students make that high school to college transition. And so we introduced in each of the EID 101 sections three project mentors who provided technical advice for the projects but also served as role models both for what Cooper can offer and also just kind of for life questions for students who have moved to new city for the first time living on their own and the the EID 101 project mentors can help them become comfortable in this new environment and that last bit of hiring 9, 12, or even 15 project mentors depending on the number of students in the first year class. You know, that those are paid positions for our students and we certainly couldn't do that without your support. We had very generous grant from Mr. Gene Briskman who enabled us to to make that leap into having project mentors for each section. and and his donation also helps us provide materials for the eid 101 project so that they can instantiate physical product if that makes sense in their in the context of their project. So we absolutely thank our alumni for your help and support in this endeavor. We being academics we decided to study did we did we do the right thing how well did it work and we studied that over the course of the next year and then again being academics what do we do we wrote paper about it which we presented to the American Society of Engineering Education's national conference so it also served as faculty professional development because all of the faculty who taught the course most of whom had gone to the Olan summer workshop were then co-authors on the paper and we had particularly convenient grouping of faculty that year where four of the five faculty had been to the Olan summer institute and used their project mentors in this this new way as as truly mentors for the students. And we had one faculty who sort of served perhaps little unintentionally as the control group of using the the EID 101 mentors more as sort of just traditional TAs. And that gave us kind of comparison group. And as result we we realized that the sections who had project mentors that were in this new model, those students communicated better and they developed closer bonds with their classmates. So we found it to be very worthwhile experience, good investment of time and money. And here is is some of the feedback from that first year that the students, the EID 101 students themselves filled out survey and then one of the project mentors did really nice job of putting them into these these word maps. And we we have consistently found that the the students really do appreciate having project mentors in their EID 101 sections. and and so today in EID 101, we have coursewide syllabus that provides common framework of of coursewide events and coursewide learning objectives for all of the students. They in the very first week go on campus tour. There's poll where they're allowed to pick the EID 101 section that they that they spend the rest of the semester in. Initially, they're randomly assigned to one of the sections. But as had mentioned, each faculty member brings their own passion, their own area of expertise into the classroom. And so the various sections have slightly different focuses in terms of the projects that the EID 101 students will conduct. So they are allowed to select which section they would like to to be in. have student who runs the resectioning poll and we we're good at at least getting the students their second choice if not their first choice for what section they get put into. Every EID 101 section has 2-hour workshop on shop safety because we want to allow them to instantiate their projects, but equipment is dangerous and we have an obligation to our our students and to to our institution that our students be safe with equipment. So before they're allowed to use the the central shop and the general shop down on the first floor of our new building, they have to go through 2-hour workshop on shop safety led by those lab technicians and then they take quiz and only once they've passed the quiz are they allowed to use that that equipment in the shop. There's also basically three-hour workshop on ethics and engineering. give lecture and then it's followed up with specific discussions that pertain to the kinds of projects that the students are doing in that section and then as mentioned we partner with ESC0 to have the communication dynamics workshop and then at the end of the semester the students have showcase usually the the very last week of the fall semester and for instance here's the the poster from couple years back there were different rooms on the first floor, the lobby, and in Gelman Foyer outside of Rose Auditorium. If you've been to our new building, we we have lot of we have lovely lobby and lot of space one floor down outside of Rose Auditorium that make great showcase spaces. And so each of the projects gets assigned to room and for three hours the students stand with their projects and it's other classes other faculty students from other schools and and even some outside guests are invited to tour this end of semester showcase and I'll show you few pictures from it. So that's from our our foyer. There's number of projects that are focused on health and other projects that are focused on improving the environment, reducing pollution, reducing energy usage. one of the things that we're very proud of in EID 101 is that these students choose their own projects, but they've all thought about kind of the bigger picture. They're not just projects for the sake of doing project, but really taking Peter Cooper's vision to heart of how can engineering make the world better place. so there was the first picture showed was wrist brace for an actual client who who needed that. this one about reinventing wheelchair. There's projects for reducing food waste by me measuring spoilage of of fruits and vegetables. You know, the students have great time sometimes demonstrating these and and they get dressed up and get into the part. they're clearly very passionate. mean, you can just see the intensity in these these students as they explain their projects. And this is view down into Galman Foyer where that that team that you just saw in the previous picture is demonstrating their project. and so it's it's really great opportunity. In addition, the project mentors receive training. We don't just throw them into the mix to just figure it out on their own. The three project mentors per section, they receive total of five hours of training and support. We give them two hours of training before the semester starts that's really focused on sort of the practicalities of the the parts order process, the schedule, the the resectioning process, and then little bit about how to how to be good mentor and team leader. And then there's three meetings over the course of the semester roughly once month to discuss concerns about what they're seeing in their sections. And we frame it around book that we read together called Holding the Calm. Because in that very first year that we had EID project mentors, the feedback was that they understood how to help freshman students except when it came to conflict resolution. They they didn't have any real training in how to mediate conflicts. And when students are trying to work together on project and one student just isn't cooperating, what do they do? How do they help? So, this book, Holding the Comm, has very practical examples of how to how to do conflict resolution. they have 18 chapters that that cover some very very useful and and practical tools. And so they the mentors and over the course of the semester read read few chapters every time and then we talk about how those techniques can be used in the course. So what did we do this past fall? So the first section is was called bio inpired design. It was led by professor Michelle Rosen who you'll get to meet in just minute. She's one of the panelists and one of the project mentors is Sadia Halman who is on this panel and one of the students is Evelyn King and you can see in the picture one of the projects actually EV's project to help make make agriculture little more sustainable to identify when plants need water so that they don't get overwatered. The second section was called data collection and visualization for New York City infrastructure. Professor Cynthia Lee, as you saw, she was one of the first faculty to teach in this new new section. she was the faculty member for section She's civil engineer. Zedane Kareem was one of the students in her section and he's one of our panelists today as well. The third section was called robotics crash course. It's taught by Mr. Michael Gileia. He is an adjunct instructor at Cooper. He's also the laboratory technician for both electrical and mechanical engineering. He's halftime in each of the departments. And Vanessa Wen was project mentor in his section and she's on our panel tonight. And then finally, section was called sustainable urban infrastructure integrating technology for resilient cities and it was taught by Mr. Benj Benjamin Villa Visner who is an adjunct with an impeccable pedigree. His he's he's such Cooper faculty person in that regard. His undergraduate degree is in architecture and he has master's in design from Harvard and has really really embraced all that we that we aspire to in EID 101. And so he had some projects focused on combating water pollution with filtration system. making energy costs lower for people who live in apartments and also reducing New York City's reliance on on fossil fuels with installable solar panels for apartments. So really, it's it's totally new type of course since I've been here in in Cooper Union. And I'm going to turn it over now to the panelists and we'll hear from those who have been in the course most recently. Let me stop sharing. Okay. So, I'm going to start by asking our panelists, starting first with Professor Rosen. so, Professor Rosen, please introduce yourself, what your background is, where your degrees are from, how long you've been at Cooper, and then we'll start asking the students. Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Professor Michelle Rosen. I'm an assistant professor in mechanical engineering. have background in mechanical engineering. have my undergraduate degree from University of Maryland. and my master's and PhD both from Harvard. work mostly in bioinspired robotics. So hence my bioinspired robotics section. joined Cooper in 2021 fall of 2021 and came from basically being lecturer at Harvard where was teaching somewhat similar freshman design course. so hopped right into EID 101. Thank you. All right, next. Zedane, would you introduce yourself, please? Hi everyone. I'm Zedane. as mentioned before, I'm freshman electrical engineering student. And, think coming into EID, was very expecting to do lot of coding and electrical based interfacing. but being in the civil engineering section section got to experience lot of what engineering has to offer from the other side. And think it taught lot taught me lot about how to approach those problems with solutions that don't immediately jump to overblowing budgets and solutions that can be way simpler than anything imagined. Thank you, Evelyn. Hi everyone. I'm Evelyn King. was in Rosen's section for EID 101 which was bioinspired design and I'm freshman mechanical engineer. Thank you Sia please. Hi everyone my name is Sia Rahman. I'm mechanical sophomore mechanical engineer. was in professor Rosen's section in my freshman year. so bio inspired and then became the project mentor for her section this year. Thank you. And last but certainly not least, Vanessa. Hi everyone, my name is Vanessa. I'm second year mechanical engineering student and was student and then project mentor for that robotics section which I'm very excited to share about. Thank you. Thank you. So see there's question in chat. What is the overall objective of the course? The this is firstear required course for all engineers and it's really to give them an introduction to the engineering design process to allow them to design process process or product from start to finish but of course constrained so that it can be done in one semester. But in addition to that, all of the AET student outcomes of of solving complex engineering problems, applying math and science, communicating their decisions, making ethical decisions in regards to engineering design, designing in in constrained environment all go into the process. So, so Professor Rosen, if we could turn to you now, what did you find? What do you find most rewarding about teaching EID 101 because you've been doing it for number of years? Yeah. So, always kind of come back to the most rewarding thing being seeing the students succeed. So, when they come in, lot of them are somewhat scared. They don't know what engineering is. They don't know how to do engineering. They can't do this. they think it's going to be, you know, their project's going to turn out terrible. and it's always amazing to see them work through the process together and amaze themselves at the end. And me often, like I'm very amazed by what they can do. their creativity, like mean, I've been doing this for while and sometimes it's pretty easy to get jaded about ideas and you shut down your own ideas before you even say them. And it's really great to get, you know, some of the the new blood, you know, kind of injected in there where they don't necessarily have some of those constraints and you see some real creativity come out in their approaches to projects. and just, you know, seeing them be so excited when what they were trying to do actually works. and you know, working through when it doesn't work as well. So that's always what find the absolute most rewarding part. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, so Sadia, as you you mentioned, you know, you were in Professor Rosen's section and then you were mentor. Why did you choose to be an EID 101 mentor? chose to be an EID 101 mentor because in my freshman year, my group was having particular problems within our dynamics and our project mentors were always there to help us out. And we also created project that we thought was probably not going to work. And the satisfaction that we all felt, just wanted to bring that forward to like the incoming freshman so that they really feel excited about engineering and be like helping or guide for them throughout their freshman year and resource to them even after EID 101. Wow. Thank you, Vanessa. the same same question because you were in you're mentor for the same section that you were in last year, right? Yes, that's correct. So, why did you become mentor? Yes. Well, first of all, EI 101 was the class that considered the most fun the first semester that came into Cooper. And big reason for that was the project mentors. whenever they hosted office hours or whenever they were there to help us, it felt really welcoming and we were able to see them as more than project mentors and as friends later on. And wanted to be this person that could do this for the freshman, the incoming freshmen, able to give them good first impression of Cooper as well and show them that here we're very tight-knit community and we're always willing to help each other. And found it super rewarding. found that we was able to build connections with the freshmen and also learn lot from them because even though I'm one or two years older than them, find that they always surprise me with all their ideas and there's lot to learn. find that as faculty member as well. learn from my students and you know I've been faculty member at various places for more than 20 years and and still learn from you all because Cooper students are pretty amazing. So, you've kept in touch with some of your students from last fall. Yes, definitely. love it whenever see them on the hallway, they'll just come up to me and talk about classes, professors, and even if they need help, sometimes they text me as well. And I'm always willing to help them. Yeah. Very cool. And that's that's teamwork is one of our core values and one of the things that we aspire to improve in our students and and our mentors absolutely demonstrate that and we we thank you for that. So So turning now to the the first year students, Evelyn, what what project did your team come up with and how did y'all figure out that was what you wanted to do? Yeah. So, we were part we were the reinventing the wheelchair project that you had picture of earlier. we kind of actually struggled to settle on design for very long time because it was like it was six of us and we all had very differing interests. and so finding something that was like rewarding and interesting to every person of the group was bit of challenge. But we finally came to wheelchair design because there were couple people in my group who were very interested in kind of like car design or tank design, like more moving things and just vehicle design. And there are couple people who are very interested in like directly helping certain group of people. And then like me, I'm very interested in disability creation and trying to make it easier for people with physical disabilities to live their lives to their fullest extent. And so we settled on trying to create new form of wheelchair or we ended up doing new form of the actual wheel of wheelchair to be able to get around city environment easier and more independently for wheelchair user. So, did you have conflict at the beginning that you needed help working through to to settle on this this project or did it all kind of come together pretty smoothly? There was little bit of conflict that we definitely ended up going to Saudia for. Saudia was our TA. so but we it was very helpful to have someone who had kind of gone through the same sort of issues and had insight like at the end of it of it's worth it to work it out because you'll end up making something that much better. but yeah and how how did you sort out roles in your project? Like were there defined roles that somebody was was lead design, somebody was on documentation or how did you sort that out in the project? It was kind of just like focusing on who's interested in what? as for documentation is like nobody really super wanted to do it, so we all kind of just switched off on it. but for like the actual design aspect, there were couple of us who were really interested in making the molds cuz we ended up making like very small scale like maybe this big wheels for the end of the semester and we made them out of silicon and 3D printed molds that we like ended up pouring the silicon into. And so some of us were very interested in that. there were couple other people that were much more interested in like displaying all of our research and working on the the paper for the end of semester and working on our poster presentation for the end of semester. And there was one or two people that were very interested in the like testing apparatus for our wheels. so they were ended up working on lot of coding and more electrical systems to figure out which design actually ended up being the most useful. So you had whole not only did you you design it but you had some criteria and you tested the the design against those criteria. Yeah, we ended up testing against essentially how much force is required to use certain wheelchair from rest. like wheelchair wheel pattern and then whether or not it would slip if it was wet outside. both very important things. And then if it could get over certain vertical distance, so like getting up onto curb from wheelchair. those were kind of our three criteria. And we ended up making testing apparatus that was basically it measured voltage drop for you to be able to go over certain texture that was sort of mimicking different urban environments. and that voltage drop it corresponds to essentially the required amount of force to be able to actually go through that like if you were pushing wheelchair. so it was very interesting and it did the entire project taught me so much more than was expecting to learn my first semester on like realistic engineering stuff. was kind of expecting like lot of my friends and my family before me have been engineers and lot of them are like yeah know the first semester or year is kind of just work grindstone like math science no actual design and so was very excited to actually be able to learn like this is how you write paper and this is how you do presentation and this is how you actually present your ideas. And were all the students in your group mechanical engineers? No, we had no. We had it was me and one other person was mechanical engineer and then we had or no two other there were three mechanical engineers, one chemical engineer and two electrical engineers. Very cool. Thank you. Awesome. Did there question? Yes. Did your team test existing wheelchairs? We did. We made mold for the kind of standard pattern of wheelchair wheels which was actually much easier than the bio inpired ones because it's very geometric and bio inspiration is rarely geometric. but yes, we tested that as our baseline and two of our three bio inpired designs ended up testing better and the third one did not. We did the three we did were like the skin of sharks, the skin of snails, and the skin of snakes. and we basically just mimicked the pattern that their skin or scales naturally form to see which could provide the best grip essentially. Cool. Thank you. So turning to you Zedane, what project did you work on and how did your team def decide upon that project? So Professor Lee early on this semester gave us this assignment where we broke off into groups. These weren't our project groups yet, but she split us into sections where we would go outside like leave the classroom and explore the area around Cooper and we would make note of certain data points like things that are observable things about the environment around us. So we focused on parks for my section, but other groups were looking at subway stations or things like public conditions. And it all inspired us to start thinking for our projects about measurable data. so when we were considering our idea when we finally formed our groups, we were thinking about what could we look at that has measurable data that we can deliberate on and also what relates to our shared experiences because we could then combine factual information with our own lives which think drives like real passion driven project. and we were all NYC natives. So, we decided to focus on the subway system, specifically the thing that drives us about the subway systems, which was subway delays. because we noticed that everyone who well, not to speak for such general population, but most people who experience subway delays are mostly uninformed on the causes of these delays. And that's not entirely their fault. It's because the information that is released is not 100% accurate and there's broad category of ethical issues that goes into that reasoning. But my group decided to put together game so that our audience would enjoy playing and looking through our simulation. game that would mimic typical subway run while experiencing those delays and then educating as to why those delays happen and how those reasons are hidden from the public. Wow, that's that's fascinating. How many students were on your project team? So, we had three electrical engineers, one civil engineer, and one chemical engineer. So, five to five total. And think see the question in chat. That's five or six is is fairly typical. we tend to have about 30 students in an EID 101 section. and then we we have the number of sections needed to to fit to cover the freshman class. So this year there were four sections of about 30 students and faculty member has you know has span of control of of only so many projects. So they they typically have, you know, few four or five projects in their section. And so then you you just do the math. If there's 30 students and five projects, then you get six students per per project. guess although guess you know really shouldn't be be speaking to that. Professor Rosen, what's your philosophy on how big project team should be? So, actually tried something my first year, which was somebody told me, there's three projects per class." So, took my section of 30 students and divided them into three groups. So, groups of 10. it didn't go that great as far as having enough work for everybody to do and, you know, being able to divide it up, making something that's challenging enough for 10 people that, you know, three people aren't just sitting off to the side. so my philosophy is generally find the sweet spot to be somewhere between four and six. like tend to air on the side of just five to six students just by the way the numbers that we've had. and because purposely try to balance teams. make all my students fill out survey basically answering little bit about themselves, what their skills are. and then try to kind of balance it out. So don't have all the mechanical engineers on this team who are, you know, good at CAD and then all the electrical engineers over here are good at circuits and then when the mechanical engineering team comes to something that they need to build circuit, they're very stuck, right? So try to kind of balance it and make sure that because everybody comes in with very different level of background, right? Some students have been on the robotics team for the last four years and some students decided they wanted to be an engineer right before they went into college, right? And don't have too much practical experience. And try to kind of get everybody on that that level playing field by, you know, mixing up the groups. So find five to six is usually I'm usually able to get good mix with with that that team size. Thank you. And I've done some studies. as say, I've I've been faculty member for more than 20 years and I've run capstone course in another institution and it's it's useful to have at least two people from the same major on project team because then they can help each other out. If you just get single student, they become the sole expert on say EE, but especially in their first year, they're really they're not an electrical engineer. they're high school student with two weeks of college under their belt. So, it's better to have at least two students of given major if if possible on team. And so, then you get, you know, naturally four to six students on team from two or three different majors. so we're coming close to the end of our our panel discussion part. So, I'd like Professor Rosen, you just do little retrospective for us. You've been here for four years. You've taught EID 101 for all four years. The seniors who just graduated, you taught EID 101 in. So now you've seen from soup to nuts, to What is your impression of the the enduring skills that EID 101 provides your students now that you've seen them throughout the curriculum? also teach senior design, so actually do get to see both ends, which is fantastic. think really what EID 101 does really incredibly well is focusing lot on the problem and not so much the solution, which is something that's really hard for all of us. Like tell my students, we're all human and especially engineers, when we see problem, we want to fix it, right? Like that's immediately what we want to jump to. And you know, constantly say it and love when students say, you know what Professor Rosen would say when they don't even think I'm listening, which is like problem, not solution." my my students in design and prototyping right now know that too. right, problem not solution. and so that's something that think really carries over into senior year, right? It's not something that is as heavily emphasized in sort of the in between. I'd say there are couple classes that touch on it, but you know, we all know, you know, sophomore to junior year, lot of it is is very technical. Even if there's design project, it's usually, you know, somewhat structured and scaffolded before it's, you know, given to you. think what EID 101 and senior design both have is this sort of open-endedness where it's really up to the students to pick their own projects, whatever that looks like. And think the those skills of learning how to do that is something that hopefully carries, you know, carries with them throughout their their time at Cooper. also think we do put little bit more emphasis on teamwork and some of the quote unquote softer skills, right, in EID 101, which sometimes get some complaints, documentation and, you know, writing and presenting and teamwork and all those things that, you know, lot of times when you get to later classes, it's just assumed you know how to do it, right? You just, you know, how to work on team, right? and so think, you know, actually taking the time to have that kind of discussion and instruction in ID 101 instead of just assuming everybody knows how to do it, really kind of helps throughout the the next few years. Very cool. Thank you. And then turning to our our student mentors, now that you've had EID 101 behind you by three semesters, what what have you gotten? What what enduring skills do you see that you've gotten from the course? So, Vanessa, we'll start with you this time since we started with Sia before us. Yes. So, we definitely learned lot in EA 101. And for Sia and as mechanical engineering students, we have had principles of design and now design and prototyping with Professor Rosen. So lot of the skills we learned in 101, we're definitely using them right now. And one of the main things also is how to communicate our ideas as engineering students. Sometimes we're talking about circuits or design and we have to make sketches and we have to be able to present them correctly so the public can understand us. And also just going up in front of crowd and giving presentation on project that we're passionate about that practice in the ID 101 really helps in these classes. Now and for my section specifically, we learn how to use gun chart, how to make state machines, make bill of materials, and even something as easy as problem definition is actually harder than we think. So going through that exercise was really helpful. And beyond that, learning how to use lab spaces at Cooper. So the machine shops downstairs or the maker space lab and knowing all the safety procedures that we need to be able to use those resources. Very cool. Thank you. and Sadia. agree with Vanessa, especially right now in DAP, we're like we're just wrapping up on our project that was pretty similar to EI 101 where we designed an educational toy based on what we thought was educational and we provided solution which was so similar to EI 101 and was so glad that had all the skills that learned under my belt and also the skills that picked up as project mentor. it really did help in working in smaller group. And outside of coursework, it has been helping with my other projects that have taken on at Cooper and like keeping up with documentation and figuring out prototypes where we definitely do not have any basis for as well as understanding how to incorporate background research and incorporate it into our solutions or like use it as way to measure our solutions. so overall, EID 101 has been sticking with me in like all my courses in one way or another. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. So, we're now at the point where we're here to take questions from all of you. just looking through the the chat. there was question about the the overall objective of the eid course and eid is is an interd disciplinary engineering design. That's that's the eid prefix as opposed to an ECE or CE or CH course. And so it it really is the design process and and the design implementation along with all of the other skills that it takes to be good engineer. And and don't know what there was before eid 101. It's this course has been on the books for for many years. It's just that we in 2019 started updating it to be to be the course that I've talked about. how do you manage students who don't really contribute? so, so Sadia, what what do you say to that? You're, you've been project manner. How do you manage students who don't contribute? so this year, my group, which was Evelyn's group, they had quite little bit of difficulty in like working with each other and like certain people not stepping up or certain people doing too much. And how handled that was at first we tried to have them discuss among themselves and see if they could set little criteria criterias for each individual to meet. we saw that that didn't work out too well. So took them all outside and gave each person two minutes to let out what they felt was not working with the group or what they themselves felt that they weren't doing for the group. And that kind of opened up their mindset to what others were thinking and what they themselves really wanted to express to their group. And that in turn helped them understand each other little better and understand the goal that they all were trying to achieve. And they started to work little better. They got into more smaller subsystems for their project and learned how to communicate with each other and they came up with their amazing project. Very cool. Thank you. And think and then there was question about how do you handle mentors on on complex issues like ethics? And and Vanessa, I'd like to turn that to you because certainly robotics has your your particular project were autonomous small robotic vehicles and so did you talk about like the ethics of autonomous vehicles or the the ethics of AI in vehicles in in your section at all? We didn't dive into it too much, but we definitely mentioned that to the students. We talked about it briefly and they also had their freshman year seminars where they cover lot of ethics and they talked to us lot about that how they enjoy these seminars and ethics is definitely becoming more important topic nowadays and we try to give them all the resources we could if they wanted to talk about the use of AI or what they felt the project was important to them or if they felt the project was not relevant at all and such. Thank you. And and I'd just like to to put in plug the ESC0 seminar, the prof professional development seminar in the spring does something that don't know of any other school doing. We have for the last three four years had an interactive play at the in the spring semester where the the stage crew would stop at various points and an ethical question would be raised and the students in the audience would then divide into groups of four or five and vote on what would happen, what decision that character would make and And after their discussion, they vote. We tally the votes and the plays plot will actually shift depending on the votes that that come out of the the student discussions. And so the first two years that we did it, we had this was one of the deans innovation grants. we had the late professor Daniel Lepic sponsor reading of the now I'm drawing blank. Ison's play. And I'm drawing blank. don't have to worry about Gabbler Doll's House. No, it was the gosh, there's small town whose drinking water was was polluted by lead and and the the play was actually set in America because it was an adaptation. And the mayor and the mayor's sister, who is an environmental engineer, were now on opposite sides when the hot springs that were providing revenue to the town were found to be contaminated with lead. And now the town's economic livelihood was at stake, but then also public health was at stake. And then there was question, is the, you know, how how bad of lead issue is it? And so at various points in the play, the students would decide, you know, should the environmental engineer do or do should the mayor do or do and and then the play would unfold. And then last year in this we had small theater troop called at Alia Theater develop modern adaptation of Rossam's Universal Robots called Rossum's Universal AI where and someone from the from the chat remembered the name of the play Enemy of the People. Enemy of the people. That is it. Yes. Thank you. Which think was on Broadway within the last year or so. So that's great. Thank you. Yeah. So anyway, so that was so so now we have an adaptation of Rossam's Universal Robots. And again, at various points in the play, the the students vote on what character does. And so it brings ethics into situation that's that feels more real than than perhaps case study does. Miss Freeman, you were monitoring. There's Q&A site somewhere. Are there other questions? There are couple of questions in the Q&A. So, think let me just start from the top. So, Rick Andrews, who's member of the class of 79, said that EID 100 was his favorite class their freshman year. and they noted that women were small minority in their class. so, think not noticing the makeup at the panel, they were asking specifically what the percentage of students and faculty are who are women currently. if if we know that. great. Yes. lot more than there was recently. So, when when Barry Shupe and came, the faculty were about 14% women and that was before Professor Rosen was hired, Professor Lee was hired. now it's 42% women in the in the school of engineering. And the one of the recent freshman classes was actually 50% women. And let me see the school of engineering right now is 38% women, but it does vary lot by major. chemical engineering is almost 5050. electrical is 28% women. I'm an electrical engineer myself and can attest it's generally not very many women in electrical engineering. Someone in the chat noted in 1966 there were two women. Okay. Yes, it was about 2%. don't know if that's faculty or or the entirety of of the student. anyway, fascinating. think Professor Rosen, you sort of touched on this but someone is asking, do the teams select their own members or are they randomly assembled? think your answer said it was somewhere in between, but if you could clarify that. Yeah. So, in my section, do assign them, but it's not like random assignment. Like, it's it's very purposeful in trying to balance those skill sets, balance those majors, make sure as Dean Chay was saying, nobody sort of stands alone either. That includes majors and women, right? don't like to have just one woman on team, right? Because then they become sort of the, you know, the one. So, do try to kind of group things up in that way. So, they are assigned but thoughtfully. I'm not sure exactly how it's done in other sections. Maybe Vanessa Zedane can talk to that. but believe most of them are are usually assigned because otherwise you you do get, you know, kind of teams of varying strengths and that sort of thing. And think the whole purpose of eid 101 is in the eid right that interdisciplinarity where we we are really trying to reach across those disciplinary lines in in class like this. Well so Vessa how how was it how were teams assigned in your section? Yes. So for our robotics section since we had three main components for building the line following robot we had we asked the students to fill out form where they rated their skills on coding or electrical design or mechanical design sorry and from that we did base off to make balanced team and same as professor Rosen's section we did try to put at least two two women in one team so they wouldn't feel alone and we were able to do that and apart from that we also asked the students if they wanted to work with someone else specifically and if both students with the same person then we will try to match them up as best as we could. Very cool. Thank you. Yes, it's it's good point also about about the number of women you you don't want to have just single woman on team or they become the the spokesperson. Zedane, was that kind of your experience too in Professor Lee's section? so our section was mostly paired up on interest on what we wanted to work on like mentioned before we had interest on the subway so we noted that in our survey form like what did we want to focus on for infrastructure cool so think we have time for one last question and so this person is saying it's fantastic that this course gives students an early practice with holistic design and applying engineering to solve real problems are there any other courses besid IDE senior design that offer similar or complimentary experiences. so in terms of being interdisciplinary like that not too many because the students will pretty much track into their majors but there are certainly projectbased courses at all levels in in all majors. Professor Rosen, do you want to elaborate more for Michael? can speak for mechanical but also want to give plug for the VIP courses here too which is the vertically integrated projects. So those very much are all as far as could can see solving real world problems. So for instance run the VIP course on building cubat so building small satellite to go into space very interdisciplinary very kind of open-ended like yes there is goal but what is our science mission what are we doing with that that sort of thing. So those are very much complimentary. on the mechanical side, yeah, there's lot of sort of design classes through the the curriculum in mechanical. So EID 103 design and prototyping which I'm currently teaching. in my courses generally try to loop in some kind of open-ended project whether it's dynamics or mechanics and materials. try to do that little bit but we also have an experimentation course junior year where students do build an experimental apparatus usually based on they have an actual client. So like I've been the client where I'm like would really love torsion testing rig to be used in mechanics and materials and so the students address that. Thank you. All right. So on that note, thank you. want to thank everyone for attending this evening. huge thank you to Dr. Shay, Dr. Rosen, Saudia, Vanessa, and Zedane for your time and insights this evening. found it fascinating to learn more about the engineering program and this unique introductory course. also want to thank the donors for the program, especially Jean and Susan Briskman. wouldn't be doing my job fully if didn't make sure you're aware of opportunities to donate to the Cooper Union. You can learn more by visiting our website, which is cooper.edu/giving. Thank you. Thank you. And have good night everyone.