# Engineering program development

Engineering Program Development at a Community College

## Problem

Develop an engineering program at a community college that increases school reputation, transfer success and placement into workstudy, internships, summer jobs.

## Conceive

Four year colleges in the US are ranked by a variety of organizations. These rankings are debated, but graduate success underlies or is the independent variable. The problem is that four year colleges can only elevate their students relative to their initial starting points. Football coaches know this and thus spend half their time recruiting. They know that student quality determines future success. Historically, students are selected by test scores, current GPA, evidence of self-discipline, intellectual curiosity, and hard work.
How do open enrollment community colleges select students? By sorting students into
* cohorts
* honors
* clubs
* student governance

## Design

Four year institutions split up into Public and Private. Private are generally around 10 times smaller than Public. Although they increasing look the same from a funding point of view, their outcomes are much different. Graduates of private institutions look better for the same reason that unknown small companies win over large companies in customer satisfaction surveys .. small colleges can control outliers more easily.

## Implement

Implement implies a top down, thought out plan that almost never happens. There is a learning curve, change requirement, and space/material/logistical double bind tension that both the institution and individuals have to suffer through.
StartUp Issues :
Grants
Grants usually attract leaches that are interested in the next grant. Grants should result in institutional change that sustains success after the grant is over. It is important to start this without grants. Even virgin, new grant recipients/participants will turn into leaches because institutions unconsciously love the double bind of accepting grants yet refusing to change. Grants are not a starting point. This lesson is most clear to those at community colleges where grants are rare and those that do arrive are in the context of hand-me-down "partnering", "participating" or "advising" four year grant requirements.
Find a Starting Point
The starting point is a class that can justify a project. This has to be a bottom up story. Can not be hired as an administrator and pull this off. The battle has to be fought ground up. Find a teaching job. Get assigned a class. Doesn't matter what type of class.
Materials
Money is not necessary, just start collecting stuff. Cardboard boxes. Golf balls. Visit second hand stores and look for treasures such as bags of legos or k'nects .. or golf clubs. Look for carpet people are throwing away. Anything that catches your eye. Then say create something to your students with it. Leave expectations as open ended as possible. See what happens. Apply Truth, Beauty, Goodness to the results.
Expect to fight these battles with administrators:
request material lists before the class starts .. denying the open ended nature of projects
try to negotiate projects with you .. expecting you to have done the project and be ready for brown nosing rather than learning in front of and with your students .. deny the objective of negotiating projects with students
want to purchase in bulk when you need many one-off's ... one of many different things
choke you rather than force support staff to fill internal purchase order forms necessary for all the unique items
make random rules that throttle purchase ... no budget .. that is a toy .. that can be reused - is not consumable .. need to keep track of things ... students can not take things home
accuse you of stealing/taking things from other rooms in the school without permission because you run around trying to borrow everything
Space Negotiation
Stake out territory. Make a mess. Loud noises. Leaf blower spinning computer fan and try to measure the energy coming out of it. Bring rotary saw into the class room and cut wood. Make so much dust that it gets into the computer center and clogs everything up. Don't ask permission. Don't apologize. Ask forgiveness only when absolutely necessary.
Leave stuff in public places so everyone sees it. Suffer the complaints with "I have no where to store it." Put the institution in the position of saying ... no you can not do that. Put the institution into double binds rather than suffer them yourself.
Name people NO
They are going to start joking that you are wasting your time, climbing into a bottom less pit. You are going to make them look bad. They are going to start saying "No" at every opportunity. Turn this around. Name their behavior. Create nick names (Dr. No) and being using them.
Process Junk
There is a flow of broken printers, computers, and exotic equipment out of physics, chemistry and biology labs of a community college. Get into this flow. Take apart everything and play with it.
No Paper
Electronic, Learning Management System, Email, Wikiversity are all better tools than any piece of paper. Constantly ask "who owns the information I or my students create?" Anyone that asks you to write on paper, print paper, pickup paper and hand you notes is establishing a bottleneck to throttle you.
Celebrate
Celebrate engineering week, pi day, toilet day, Ada Lovelace Day. Create a projects day and invite everyone to come. All institutions calendars and rooms are always full. Fight the battle to gain access to these resources.
Partner
Student government organizations often sponsor projects, Service Learning departments, Work Study, Learning Assistants, Career Services .. there are often more Support Staff than teachers on a community college campus. Make them work.
Market
Market internally. The entire community flows through a community college. Market to the people already at the college. :

#### Edit

* Entrance into the Program
* Facility Access
* Elevator Speeches
* FAQ
* Volunteers
* Safety
* Facility Design

## Demo

* Student Engineering Ethics Presentation
* Professional Engineering Ethics Presentation

## Next Steps

* Fill in the implementation steps above
* Develop presentations of these issues