iFoundry co-director David E. Goldberg will speak about “The Importance of Pairwork in Interdisciplinary and Educational Initiatives” at the 2009 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference tomorrow, Monday, 19 October 2009, in the session M2F Promoting Engineering Student Success from 10-11:30 am in La Vista.  The powerpoint for the presentation is available in the viewer below

or at www.slideshare.net/deg511, and a pdf version of the paper is available on the FIE website here.

iFoundry students will meet at 9:00am in Room B02 of Coordinated Science Lab (also referred to as CSL: 1308 West Main, Urbana) on August 22nd.   At noon on Saturday, they will be transported to the 4H Memorial camp and will return to campus on Sunday in time for Quad Day.  Students are encouraged to bring:  bug spray, tennis shoes, sleeping bag (or bedding),  a change of clothes and a YouTube ready camera.

The iFoundry overnight launch will give iFoundry students an opportunity to meet their peers as well as inform them about the iFoundry activities for the upcoming year. There is NO cost for this event.  Students who have not yet registered for the overnight, should call the iFoundry office at (217)244-3821.

The powerpoint below was presented at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Technology in a plenary panel session on the forthcoming handbook, Anthonie Meijers (Ed.) (in press). Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Volume 9: Philosophy of Technology & Engineering Sciences, Elsevier.

The handbook is in press and more information is available on the Elsevier link above or the Amazon link here.

The Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (iFoundry) will receive an HP Innovations in Education award package of HP technology, cash, and professional services valued at more than $260,000. Technologies such as wireless HP Tablet PCs, wide-format HP DesignJet printers, and remote access to high-power HP Blade Workstations from anywhere on campus, will be used in innovative ways to fundamentally redesign the undergraduate learning experience.

“The HP award is recognition of the systems approach iFoundry is taking to transform engineering education,” says iFoundry co-director David E. Goldberg. “Conceptual, organization, and curricular change must work together, and today they must work together in the context of great technology, both in- and outside the classroom.”

iFoundry seeks to transform the undergraduate engineering experience at a time when the demands of a creative era raise the need to develop engineers who are category creators, not just category enhancers. To help students practice engineering in an increasingly complex world, the pilot initiative maintains that engineers need increased exposure to design and increased attention to the objects of engineering, who they are made for and by whom they are made, as well as a larger picture of how engineers bring solutions to life.

iFoundry plans to deploy the HP technology, work stations, and tablet PC’s to create digital design hubs where students can explore these kinds of educational experiments and innovations conducted under the iFoundry rubric. The equipment generously provided by the grant will support collaboration in pilot courses in CAD/ID, between students in the learning community of a new freshman orientation course, and between the University of Illinois and faculty members and students at partner schools dedicated to transformative efforts in engineering education. iFoundry will also work closely with its Math, Science, Technology, and Education (MSTE) Office in the College of Education to support student volunteer efforts to educate local K-12 students on design artifacts and “how things work.”

More information about the 2009 HP Innovations in Education initiative and other global social investments is available at www.hp.com/go/grants.

iFoundry fellow Jim Leake gave a talk at Autodesk’s Global Colloquium at the ASEE Conference in Austin, TX last week.  The presentation is available in the viewer below

or on the iFoundry Slideshare page here.  Autodesk is sponsoring an iFoundry project that brings industrial design and engineering students and faculty together in and outside the classroom.

UPDATE:

See examples of student work from the above presentation in the video below:

or on the iFoundry Youtube channel here.

John Holz talks to iFoundry about his multi disciplinary career and the breadth of education he received at UIUC.

IESE alum Tim Phillis talks to iFoundry about his UIUC education and what he likes about iFoundry in the viewer below

or on the iFoundry YouTube channel (here).

Richard Henneman talks to iFoundry about the transformational experiences he had at the University of Illinois and after he graduated. Stay tuned for more interviews.

iFoundry would like to thank Dick Henneman for the interview and for the help during the IESE alumni board meeting.

iFoundry co-director David E. Goldberg will give a talk Playing Well with Others in a Creative Era from 12-1 pm in Lecture room C60, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, on Friday, 17 April 2009.

Abstract. Cross-, inter-, and transdisciplinary education and research are all the rage, but the reasons for their ascendence and the conceptual and organizational hurdles to successful execution are rarely critically examined.  This talk considers the rise of work across disciplinary boundaries since World War 2, and the missed revolutions that have transformed organizations outside the academy.  Economic and technological forces underlying the missed revolutions are also examined, and these lead to a discussion the growing body of literature that recognizes the present as a time that values creativity over mere improvement or enhancement.  The talk continues with a discussion of the ways in which the separation between what C. P. Snow called The Two Cultures are increasingly untenable, suggesting that the language used to defend the cold war paradigm of technology–language that includes terms such as “rigorous” and “the basics”–is itself a barrier to working across disciplines, that terms such as “soft” and “not rigorous” are a form of name calling, and that technologists have done themselves and their students a disservice by disregarding the missing basics of a proper technological education.  These missing basics are identified as a missing link to successful interdisciplinary research, and a number of organizational innovations to successful discipline crossing are discussed, including pairwork and mesolevel dot connectors.

The University of Illinois and Olin College co-sponsored yesterday’s Summit on the Engineer of the Future at Olin College.  iFoundry co-director David E. Goldberg helped open the summit with his remarks, Lonely Dots, Dot Connecting & the Engineer of the Future. Download the remarks in pdf form here.