- Winter Term Senior Design: Meeting Time & Place, Progress Report Reminder
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Dear Seniors and BS/MS Students,
Good morning. OK, we finally have a room and day/time assigned for us to meet - Curtis 255B, Fridays, 10-11:50 am. Rather bizarrely this is the same room, same time and same day as was originally scheduled for us, and was then taken away...yet as of today this is what is offered in response to Judy's request for a room. Based on your input earlier in the term this should accommodate the majority of the group.
I would like to meet again the week after next (Friday 2/8/08), at which time all of the true Seniors need to submit [hard copy plus an E-mail copy, .doc format please, NOT .docx] a 2-3 page Progress Report to me, to your Advisor, your other faculty grader and grad student mentor. BS/MS students do not need to submit these. The purpose of these is twofold [1] additional practice in writing to describe and present your work and [2] an update on your status and progress with your projects, so that we can identify any major problems or issues well enough in advance to be able to develop and implement any remedial steps that may be necessary.
We will also conduct an informal "peer review" of these progress reports when we meet as a group the following week...I will provide copies of the reports, which we will "shuffle around" and have someone else read it and critique it. This provides good feedback and an opportunity to learn from each other's projects. Your progress reports should be organized as follows:
1. Make sure to include your name, course #, Advisor (s) and Mentor's names, project title and date.
2. Use "bullets" rather than paragraphs of text to report your accomplishments...bullets are shorter, more direct, and easier to comprehend in reports.
3. Briefly recap the problem your project is addressing [an opportunity to revisit your problem statement if your written report or oral presentation from back in December was criticized in this area - hint!
4. Briefly recap your approach.
5. Give major emphasis to your progress to date:
- Tasks completed.
- Results to date...experiments in progress, data gathered, analysis of results, status of design tasks, materials selection etc.
- Highlight any major problems you've encountered [e.g. in obtaining materials, with equipment access, with your planned approach not working or turning out not to be feasible].
6. Highlight any significant changes in your scope or approach, and briefly explain, together with a brief indication of your "Plan B".
7. Update your project timeline, indicating which tasks have been completed and showing which tasks, if any, have slipped in timing, and by how much.
Other:
- Remember to meet regularly with your Advisor(s) and Mentor.
- If possible, participate in your Advisor's "group" meetings...request a 5-10 minute slot if necessary...get yourselves on the agenda...practice and feedback from your Advisor and others working in the group can only be good!
Finally, just to plant the seed...the Winter Term oral presentations will be held on Friday, March 14th, In Hill Seminar Room...please mark your calendars. This time, my goal will be to have the BS/MS students go first. Written reports [from Seniors, not BS/.MS] are due the day before, 3/13/08
- MATE 492 Winter Term Update, Important Reminders
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Dear MSE Seniors and BS/MS students,
Welcome back everyone. I met most of you at today's scheduled group meeting, but not everyone. Consequently I'd like to take this opportunity to bring everyone up to date on what we discussed in today's meeting, and outline the expactations and requirements for this term.
1. Fall Term Debrief:
- Today I returned, to those students who were present, copies of the score sheets from December's oral project presentations - so that you each get to see the comments faculty or fellow students made during your presentations.
- I also returned marked up copies of any written reports, which I hope you will find useful. Unfortunately I only had about 5 or 6 reports and returned most of those, but I still have 1 or 2 left. Please make sure to contact your Advisor for an additional debrief on your oral and/or written presentations.
- If you weren't at today's meeting [:'(] then please stop by and see me to pick up a copy of your score sheets.
- I think everyone has done a good job so far...and the scores and grades reflected that...and there were no major disasters. Good job everyone, well done!
2. Winter Term Expectations:
- Having said the above, I cannot under-emphasize how important the Winter term is. Winter Term is the time for each you to "break the back" of your project tasks, the time to really put in the effort and get the bulk of your project tasks done.
- There will again be oral and written report due towards the end of the quarter [the due dates are in the schedule in the course syllabus] and at this time NO-ONE should even think about anything major in the future tense! Fall term was for planning and talk about what you are/were GOING to do, Winter term is the time for DOING it, and for presenting lots of results and emphasizing your progress!
- If all goes well then Spring term should be used for tying up loose ends, exploring any interesting offshoots from your projects and finishing off any longer term experiments or evaluations...but the bulk of your work should already be done by then!
3. Advising Meetings:
-Week 2 of the Winter Term has been designated by the MSE Department as "Advising Week".
- The Dept. and faculty view student advising as being very important. Not only does it enable us to get to know all of our students a little better, learn where you've been on Co-op and what your career coals are, but it also enables us to identify any potential "problems" in your plans of study, any missing or incomplete grades, missing required courses, insufficient # of credits and so on...and to do this BEFORE any such issues have major negative impacts on you...like possibly becoming barriers to your graduating on schedule!
- To that end please make sure you meet first with Judy ASAP, to update your Plan of Study form, and then meet and talk with your Advisor.
- For BS or BS/MS students, your primary advisor is your Senior Design or MS project advisor, respectively.
- BS/MS students also need to meet with the departmental Graduate Advisor (Dr. Li) to review your progress on the graduate part of your studies, again to make sure that nothing required or key is missing, so that you can graduate on time.
- If anyone does NOT meet with their advisor then we will withhold grades from this term!
4. Job Opportunity/Recruiting Visit:
- Karen Johnson, a recent (2006) Drexel MEM graduate will be visiting Drexel next Mon-Wed (1/14 - 1/16) recruiting 2008 BS and BS/MS graduates for Pratt and Whitney's Engineering Development Program. I will be circulating details of this by E-mail later today. I encourage anyone with a GPA of 3.0 or better to consider this interesting opportunity.
5. CoE Fall Term Course Evaluations:
Did anyone receive the usual notification regarding completing the CoE on-line course assessments for the Fall term, not just for Senior Design, but for any courses you were taking?
Please let me know.
6. Winter Term Meeting Schedule:
- As previously indicated, we "lost" our scheduled room for group meetings this term. Today those present at the meeting indicated on a grid the times/days they were NOT available, so that I can try to pick the best day and time for us to meet as a group. If you missed today's meeting then please stop by and see me to review the schedule.
- We won't need to meet every week, but I do wish to meet a number of times during the term to hear from you regarding progress on your projects, discuss any problems you may be having etc. While your primary technical advisors are your faculty advisor and graduate student mentor, I can also help in some instances, for example if you're having difficulty getting access to a particular instrument for measurements you need to make.
Happy New Year,
RK
- Presentation Schedule for Friday, December 7th, 2007
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A copy of the presentation schedule for Friday is attached and downloadable.
Please remember that hard copies of your written reports are due to me, you Advisor etc. on Thursday of this week. I also need hard copies of your PowerPoint presentations, printed 6 slides per page, plus electronic copies of both your written reports AND PowerPoint presentations for archiving and to distribute to other graders who may not be there on Friday. Make sure to proofread and spell check them beforehand.
BS/MS students will only be giving oral presentations, but your presentations will all be scored in the same way as the Seniors...which will provide you, your Advisor(s) and mentors with useful feedback for review after the fact.
Your presentation deliveries will be "recorded" using software called Camtasia, so all presentations should be made using the Departmental PC Laptop...which I have reserved for all day on Thursday and Friday, so there's plenty of advance opportunity to load up and test your presentations before Friday morning.
Everyone should also practice their oral presentations, more than once if necessary, certainly with your technical advisors...if you would like any objective critique then I'm available...just let me know or come find me.
RK
- Oral Presentations and Written Project Proposals - Deadline Reminders and Guidelines
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Some reminders of pending deadlines and related items:
1. The Fall Term Oral Presentations will be held in Hill Seminar Room (LeBow 240) on Friday, 12/7/07.
- Please inform any external Co-Advisors on your project of the date (a detailed schedule will be circulated nearer the date, since the times are subject to change as faculty juggle potential conflicts etc.) and formally invite them to attend your presentation. They are most welcome to attend ALL of the presentations and to be part of the scoring and feedback process...their input and participation will be most welcome.
- I encourage you to begin work on your presentations as soon as
possible, and to practice your delivery ahead of time...use your friends and
colleagues as an audience. If you wish I can also be available to
critique and provide feedback on content, style and delivery, just let
me know.
- Your Advisor, Co-Advisor, Mentor and I should each be provided with a
hard copy of your PowerPoint slides, printed 6 per page on the day.
B&W is fine.
- Your presentation should set out the What, Why and How of your
project, and include any preliminary data/results that you may/should
have already (hint!). Avoid too much text, rather use bullets. Use good
quality graphics that are relevant and clear, and, if "borrowed" from
other sources, properly and appropriately referenced.
- Your presentations should be 15 minutes long, plus 5 minutes for Q&A.
- Before the day of the presentations, make sure to test out your talk ON THE COMPUTER actually located in Hill...to make sure the fonts are all OK, any embedded videos and/or graphics work OK, etc.
- Use a laser pointer to highlight things, but don't waggle it around all over the place.
- Avoid excessive PowerPoint animations and sound effects...done professionally animations can enhance a presentation and really help you in its delivery, overdone it's commonly known as "PowerPoint Hell".
- Practice talking to the audience, not to the podium or screen, and don't just read out what's on the screen...as soon as you put up a new slide the audience will have read it long before you can read it out. Use the bulleted text on your slides as "prompts" to remind you of what to talk about, in more detail that is shown on the screen.
- Include and discuss your timeline (Gantt Chart) and budget in your presentation.
- Emphasize the design aspects of the project, and consult the "presentation score sheet" included in the course syllabus and ensure that you EXPLICITLY address all of the ABET a-k items listed there. If your particular project has no major "environmental" or "ethical" issues then say so...on a slide and in your delivery...that then shows the audience that you are aware that a project could have those, that you have considered them and have decided that they do not apply to your particular project. The key thing is that you address them explictly, rather than not appearing to be aware of them.
- Speak at a moderate pace, remember to breathe, and speak loudly enough to be heard at the rear of the room.
- Your presentation should set out the What, Why and How of your project, and include any preliminary data/results that you may/should have already (hint!). Avoid too much text, rather use bullets. Use good quality graphics that are relevant and clear, and, if "borrowed" from other sources, properly and appropriately referenced.
- Spell check, spell check, spell check!!!!!!!!!
- VERY IMPORTANT: Everyone should, unless they have a class schedule clash, attend ALL of the presentations during the day...that way you get to see/hear what your fellow students are doing, and to hear the Q&A and any other faculty comments and feedback. The latter often contains information useful to many of you, regardless of your particular topic.
2. Written Project Reports/Proposals are Due on 12/6/07.
- E-mail one (1) copy of the first draft of your written project proposal (Word format only) to the WIT Tutor (Valarie Pelletier) by 5:00 pm on 11/19/07...that's next Monday folks!
- One (1) copy of your written project proposal is due to me by 5:00 pm on Thursday 12/6/07 - the day before the oral presentations. No late proposals will be accepted. You are also responsible for delivering a hard copy of your project proposals to their Advisor(s) and the MSE faculty member(s) of the evaluation committee. These written proposals can/should be expanded versions of your Pre-Proposals, taking on board comments and feedback provided by me, your Advisor(s), Mentors and Valarie.
- Spell check, spell check, spell check!!!!!!!!!
- October 24th to November 9th
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I will be away on travel from 10/24 through 11/9, consequently we will not be meetign on Wednesdays during this period. Please make sure to use the time wisely and productively on your Senior Design projects and/or MS research. In particular:
1. If you haven't yet submitted your Pre-Proposal, please E-mail those to me as soon as you can. Make sure to include information on who your Advisor, Co-Advisor [for an industry sponsored project] and Mentor are.
2. Work closely with your Advisors and Mentors to further develop your project plans - that is where the bulk of your technical guidance should come from...so make a nuisance of yourselves and bug your Advisors often. In early December we will have the Fall Term Senior Design presentations, at which time you will need to submit a written project report [essentially a detailed description of what your project is about, how you are proposing to carry it out, and (hopefully) some preliminary results] plus give an oral presentation to your colleagues and the faculty.
3. If anyone has not yet completed Drexel's on-line laboratory safety training you need to do this ASAP. Go to www.drexelsafetyandhealth.com, select the "Training" tab, enter your E-mail address, then complete the appropriate module...read, understand, answer the Q's, then you'll be set.
4. Keep a proper lab notebook for your project...in a previous blog post I provided some guidelines written by Dr. Fontecchio which are very useful.
5. Remember to attend the ECE S.D. lectures ad to write up and submit brief reports on each week's lecture coverage.
RK
- Senior Design Meeting - October 17th, 2007
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We will not meet tomorrow 10/17/07. Please use the time wisely and productively to work on you Pre-Proposals. If have already sent those to Valarie for review that's great, make whatever changes she has suggested and then get hard copies to me and to your Advisor and Mentor. One or two of you I know are still working to finalize your project topic...so you have a little grace period. I would like all pre-proposals to be submitted before I leave for Australia on the 24th.
Make sure that your Pre-proposal contains sufficient information regarding the problem your project will address, why it is a problem, how you propose to tackle it, the materials you will use and the characterization/analysis tools you will use, plus a timeline [Gantt Chart} and Budget estimate.
If anyone wishes to have me look over what you have written, or advise on content etc. then please stop by my office and see me.
Please don't forget to also send me some brief written notes from this week's ECE Senior Design lecture.
RK
- Keeping a Laboratory Notebook
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A PDF of the document about the what, why and how of keeping a lab notebook [Copyright Dr. Fontecchio] is attached.
- Pre-Proposal Guidelines
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As per today's group meeting, here is a suggested outline for a Pre-Proposal.
1. Title/Cover Page:
- Indicate the project title, your name and affiliation, your advisor's name, mentor's name [if known], and Course # information [MATE 491 for Seniors, MS Thesis for BS/MS] and the date.
2. Abstract:
- Short summary of the whole thing.
3. Problem Statement
- Describe the nature of the problem your project going to investigate/address, together with a rationale...why is it a problem? Keep this brief and as specific as possible.
4. Background:
- Summarize relevant background information that you have on the problem outlined above.
5. Planned Approach:
- Summarize your intended approach - experimental or theoretical [as appropriate], the characterization techniques you intend to sue and brief explanation as to why they have been selected.
-Discuss briefly what you intend to do by way of experiments - what you will vary, # of trials, what you hope to correlate to what...i.e. an overview of your planned experimental matrix...your design of experiments.
6. Timeline:
- A Gantt chart should included showing all the major tasks, including the deadlines etc. for reports and presentations.
- There are websites [e.g. http://timios.net/Gantt/] where you can develop Gantt charts and then save them for importing into your documents.
7. Budget:
- A cost summary including Personnel/Labor [+ Fringe] costs; Direct Costs [cost of materials, supplies, cost of using the characterization instruments (check the MCF web page via the DNI web page for the $/hr rate for things like the SEM, Ramans, Optical Microscope, Nanoindenter etc.); Indirect Costs [Drexel's Indirect cost rate is 50%]. Indirect cost is typically charged on the total cost of Labor + Direct Costs.
8. References:
- If any to date.
9. General:
- Figures can be included, and should be properly captioned...number the figures, use a format like "Fig. 1: TEM image of single-walled carbon nanotube."
- It's a good idea to use numbered main section headings and subheadings, i.e. 2, 2.1, 2.1.1 etc.
- Number the pages.
- Spell check!
Hope this all helps.
RK
- Opening On A Team Project
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Dr. Schauer has an opening for anyone wishing to join a team project related to the electrospinning of materials and involving the design of a system to electrospin multiple materials and prevent the electric fields interacting and "sparking over". THis sound like an interesting, multidisciplinary project that will involve some true engineering design work.
Anyone interested should see Dr. Schauer and/or Ronson Lamond for more information.
RK
- Senior Design 2007-08: First Blog Post of the Year
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Welcome to Materials Engineering Senior Design for 2007-081 We covered a lot in today's meeting, so I wanted to summarize the key points here for future reference:
1. If you haven't done so already it is vital that you get your project topic and advisor sorted out ASAP. Now is the time to go knocking on faculty doors, sending the faculty E-mails and getting yourselves familiar with who does what and what project opportunities they may have. By next week I'd like to see the majority of you having at least the genesis of your project topic selected.
2. Make sure to review the Syllabus I handed out today...paying particular attention to the requirements and schedule for the Fall term, and the general guidelines and WIT information. Our WIT tutor (Valarie Pelletier, also a Materials student) will be coming along to speak with you about the WIT aspect of the course.
3. Remember to send me (Word format please) a weekly summary (bullet form is OK) of what is discussed/presented in the ECE Senior Design lectures each week. I like those by 5 pm on the Friday of each week.
4. Please review the ABET information I circulated today too...the ABET evaluator will be talking with some of you during the site visit scheduled for October 14-16, so please be prepared and familiar with what ABET is all about.
If anyone has questions, ideas, problems or anything related to Senior Design then please E-mail me or stop by and see me. I'm normally in between about 7:30 am and 5:45 pm. I do have other classes 8-10 am on Tue, Wed and Thu, but am otherwise pretty accessible.
RK
- Senior Design Final Presentation
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The final Senior Design Presentations will be on Monday, May 21, from 9 am until whenever, in Hill Seminar Room. Written final reports are due the same day.
RK
- Out of Office: Knight
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I will be out of the office from Monday May 7 through Friday May 18, traveling to and attending the ITSC-2007 Thermal Spray Conference in Beijing, China. I will be co-teaching a short course for 3 days, attending various Thermal Spray Society Board and Committee meetings and presenting 2 papers.
If anyone has requests for help with Facilities issues please contact Judy Trachtman. For Bossone-related issues please see Wayne Hill.
- Awards Given By Seniors...
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One of the most important responsibilities of you as the graduating class is to present a number of "awards" and to good naturedly roast the faculty during the traditional "graduation brunch", which this year will be a "commencement tea", scheduled, I believe, for June 16th.
There are several awards that can be presented by the senior class...the most notable is the "Slag Award" which is "Presented annually by the Senior Class in Materials Engineering to the faculty member whose actions were most representative of scoria, and who alone and unashamedly made life truly miserable in at least one professional course". Currently I hold this award [thanks to strong lobbying from Harren Bray who was my Senior Design student last year]. You, as a group need to select a new recipient for the Slag Award and the other awards for presentation just prior to this year's graduation. Some of the other awards include "Doherty's failed heat-treat award" which celebrates Dr. Doherty's heat treating lab experiments going wrong...the award is a piece of half molten metal. Then there's also the "Polymer Unpredictability" award, which celebrates the fact that unlike metals and ceramics, polymers have a range of melting points and don't behave in the same predictable ways as metals and ceramics. The award is a lump of half-melted agglomerated polymer material. I do not know who currently holds the latter two awards...maybe Judy can help identify the guilty parties.
You mau also wish to create and give new awards...one recent graduating class created the "Space-bar" award just for Dr. Doherty, whose E-mails and written documents are infamous for having anywhere from zero to about 8 space bar gaps between words.
RK
- Updates on Deadlines etc.
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The final Senior Design presentations are scheduled for Monday, May 21, 2007, in Hill Seminar Room from 9 am to whenever. I have the room reserved from 8:30 am until 3:00 pm and we likely will not run that long. Hill is also still reserved in my name on the Friday before [5/18/07] and unless the College or anyone else pushes for us to relinquish that I propose to hang on to it so that you can practice your presentations if you wish.
I will be away in China from Monday 5/7 through Friday 5/18, so if there are any issues of time clashes on the presentation schedule please notify Judy...who will be maintaining the latest version of the schedule while I'm away.
Remember too that the first drafts of your final written reports [in W0rd format please] are due to Colleen Mackey <cmm62@drexel.edu>, our assigned WIT tutor, by 5:00 pm this Friday, May4th for review and feedback. Your second drafts are due to Colleen by 5:00 pm on 5/14/07. Hard copies of the final reports are due to me and your Advisor(s) on 5/21/07, i.e. the day of the oral presentations.
Also, owing to a scheduling conflict, the date of the CoE Senior Design competition has been moved from Wed. June 6 to Tuesday, June 5, 2007.
Good luck with your preparations.
- PowerPoint Caution
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Take a look at the following link
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/04/powerpoint_bad/
it's possible to have too much of a good thing...maybe a case of style vs. substance.
RK