Do you have a human connection to engineering? Perhaps there is someone in your family or a good friend who is an engineer or studying engineering? Perhaps you were an engineer before you went into teaching or you are currently an engineer or engineering student? Do you have a former student who is now an engineer? Before we get into the book, I thought it would be interesting to see the various personal connections we have to engineers. For me, both my father and grandfather were mechanical engineers. After college my Dad worked as a plant engineer developing the machinery to build farm harvesting equipment. He moved to NJ and became the plant engineer for Kearfott Machine Corporation and later went to work for IBM. Two of my memories of my Dad when I was growing up was him teaching me to use a slide rule (do students today even know what a slide rule is?) and a fascination with his precision drawing tools- mechanical pencils, compasses, etc. I went through my old archives and attached a photo of my Dad. And he always wore bow ties!
My grandfather, Ralph Page, (now you know how I got the name, Page, without an i in the spelling!) was also a mechanical engineer and was the Chief Engineer at the Poughkeepsie, NY IBM Lab before he retired in 1954. Attached is a photo of my grandparents pouring through one of the books IBM gave him upon retirement of a bound collection of the over 50 patents he had for IBM, including electric typewriters, sorting machines, collators, etc. He also invented the first finger print sorting machine used by the FBI. I attached one of the pages from a patent filed in 1934 for the statistical card operated machine. The pages of text that go along with engineers' diagrams are really interesting- every number on the drawing is explained in detail on the patent. I used to love to watch my grandfather tinker with devices.
Interestingly, no one in my family became an engineer, but some of us did lean toward science. I have an uncle who is a physicist, my brother majored in plant science and is now an international fruit exporter, and I studied life sciences with the intent of going to veterinary school, but after graduation and a stint at the Jackson Lab, I went into science education. And I am sure glad I did as I wouldn't be here today working with the SCITEC and TIES projects and book blogging with you! So, I guess some of that early engineering exposure rubbed off on me!
Wow, Page! You have some strong connections to engineering. That's fascinating that your grandfather held so many patents. I don't have so many connections. No one in my family is an engineer. I do have one friend who has a doctorate in electrical engineering. He helps us out whenever we have confusing questions about our inverter. (We power out house with an inverter and battery bank in the basement.)
ReplyDeleteBut I don't think you need a degree to do engineering. My husband is quite clever in solving problems. He invented a special table to hold doors when you paint them. We're using it right now since we're working on painting a bedroom in our "new" house.
We also needed to get some sheet rock up to a third floor in our house since they were 10 and 12 foot sheets, so we engineered a way to lift them up to a deck on the third floor using an electric winch, pulleys, and a special frame we built to pivot them onto the deck.
My other connection to engineering is through my older son. When he was in high school, he participated in the Science Olympiad every year. It was a lot of fun and I always went to the competitions. There was a great deal of engineering involved in that.
My own educational background is more in language arts than in science or engineering. But since I am an elementary school teacher, I get to dabble in a little bit of everything and I love the hands on nature of science.
Interesting stories! My closest connection to an engineer is my brother who started out in hydrogeological engineering, caught the computer bug with modeling programs and now works as a programmer solving problems with modeling programs and databases. He definitely is a problem-solver . . . . he is known in the family for taking everything apart and rebuilding it the 'way it should have been done in the first place.' He is always trying new things and not afraid to tackle anything.
ReplyDeleteOn another note - this week I had several big trees taken down in my yard. They did it all with a climber and it was fascinating to see how they attacked the problem and managed to have everything fall exactly where it should. The job was complicated by two sets of electrical lines and a well so there were some nail-biting moments for me! But not for them. It was an interesting experience to see how they solved the problem.
Wow Page I am impressed with your family connections to engineering. My dad was an electrician so I was exposed to his knowledge of circuits and the wows of electricity. Recently my daughter's science classes in high school have taught me a lot about engineering. What I have found so interesting is that she did very well with the biology and chemistry parts of the courses but when it came to the engineering parts she was challenged. I am glad she is having these experiences.
ReplyDeleteThe only person in my family who was an engineer by title was my great uncle. He was a mechanical engineer for Boeing.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, growing up on a potato farm I felt like I was constantly exposed to engineering type challenges. Many required out of the box, on the spot solutions. When a 15 ton potato harvester breaks down in the middle of a field, there is no taking it to the dealership or calling AAA.
I can also picture so many improvised add-ons to all of the equipment. As well built as this equipment was, once it was used on the farm its flaws became apparent and one would have to improvise to modify its design. One thing that comes to mind is one of the bin pilers that were used to load potatoes into storage facilities. The hopper at the beginning of the machine would often overflow with potatoes as they were being unloaded from trucks. To deal with this the sides of the hopper had to be extended upward by welding additional sheets around the 3 sides.
Yankee ingenuity+engineering!
DeleteI meant...yankee ingenuity = engineering. That's better.
DeleteI am so enjoying reading your stories! Who knew engineering had such a human side to it .... Judy's husband and son, Nancy's brother, Kathy's dad, Andy's great uncle are all terrific examples of engineering applications. But I also appreciate the personal life experiences you're describing. We're recognizing that every time we have a problem (should I say failure?) and then improvise equipment or otherwise design a solution, we're all engineers, aren't we?
ReplyDeleteMy introduction to engineering was my dad as well. Dad was a chemical engineer with Monsanto's plastics division - his name is on the patent for the process that seals the plastic liner in-between two pieces of glass to make safety glass!
While his profession probably influenced my decision to teach chemistry, it was his human qualities that gave me my engineering perspective. I was known as "Daddy's little helper". Dad was a very patient man who knew it would take twice as long to fix something when I was assisting, but he had no qualms about letting me try something out, knowing it was going to fail - and knowing he would eventually be able to guide me to a successful outcome.
I have to add a final comment: Writing this brought back fond memories of my dad, so I "googled" him, to look for his safety glass patent. I found it, but even better, I found someone's blog titled "A Lifetime of Great Mentors". I learned that when this person started his career path at Monsanto, he lists my dad as one of the people who impacted his life. How wonderful!
Can't wait to hear from others .... what's your personal connection to engineers or engineering?
My human connection is two fold. Both myself and my grandfather were trained engineers and science educators. His train was in civil engineering, where mine was in chemical. I worked a co-op R&D position at Otis Specialty and a Jr. Engineering position for Imerys while I finished school. I love engineering and the engineering thought process, but the life and stress of engineering in the business world was not something I did not want. So I went into the family business of education (which is stressful for other reasons) and have not looked back.
ReplyDeleteI feel that my engineering training has definitely helped my teaching. I don't think or attack problems in the same way my traditionally educated colleagues do. My personal opinion (whether right or wrong) is that the colleges of today teach to much idealism. My classroom has all kinds of different criteria and constraints that I must adhere to to ensure my students gain the proper skills to be successful later on.
Finally I feel like teaching is a type of engineering. It is social engineering. We are constantly looking for better ways, methods, and tools for educating and molding our youngster. Our big problem is that we rarely see our successes until years later.
Brian, I agree about teaching as being engineering, just a different kind than what we normally think of it as. But engineering is everywhere in our lives, socially, industrially, medically, chemically, etc.
DeleteBrian, you also mentioned that you think colleges today teach too much idealism, as opposed to more hands on, explicit, valuable tools? I agree with you. That happens in many educational pathways though unless you go to a more tech type school. I know when I took courses for teaching, like methods courses, it was mostly theory and information that is good to have but did not prepare me for the actual classroom.
DeleteSo is this why industry or the working world says that college kids are not prepared for the workplace these days???
Brian - I completely agree with your comments. I too took a non-traditional path to becoming a science teacher. Because I was able to make sense of many science concepts through working with my Dad in his workshop, I brought that understanding to my classroom. Middle school students are much more motivated to learn when they have hands-on activities, and are given permission to fail. As you said, this is a piece of social engineering as well. It is extremely important for students to learn that failure is a part of the learning process.
DeleteI totally agree with you Brian. Particularly with curriculum and lesson development. I've taught my new STEM class 2 times now and I make sure the students understand that they are part of a design process because they are pat of the class.
DeleteBrian,
DeleteI do think that the teacher training courses need to be more practical and hands on. As you mentioned we engineer in our classrooms all the time.
It's interesting how we define and redefine engineering as we look at our connections. Such flexible thinking would have brought to where I am a little more quickly, I expect. My father is an engineering professor, and throughout high school and college my only fixed career decision was that I would NOT be an engineer. A little while out of college I tried to think of a way that I could lead an interesting and useful life with the skills and interests I had: math, physics, theater, photography.... Education or engineering where the two options that popped up. So now I, too, teach engineering, and work as a structural engineer. Like Brian, I see many of the challenges in similar ways - as both educators and engineers we are presented with a goal and need to find a safe, legal and efficient means of achieving it.
ReplyDeleteAlso enjoying the book with its many ties from the formal world of engineering to most of our day-to-day lives.
Hi all.
ReplyDeleteI have learned so much about engineering and creating and coming up with new ideas out of need. I may have needed a certain tool, but didn't have it, ex a screwdriver...so I use a butter knife. I think I learned that from my dad! He didn't have tons of tools, or they weren't handy at the time, but he sure got a job done when he really needed to. I have noticed that as I gain more confidence in myself, I will take more risks and say..."why not try,,,,"
My husband is an mechanical engineer turned college math instructor so we have had many discussions about how we can prepare students for this career.
As a kid, I was exposed to engineering all the time, but never knew it. My Dad loved to build things. I spent many hours out in his workshop fetching tools or holding boards, while he cleverly transformed wood into beautiful things like clocks, shelves and chairs. As I grew, he decided that our family would build our own vacation home, and I learned the "rougher" side of building. I grew up with a belief that anyone could make anything they wanted to, if they had the time, energy and materials.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I essentially met, because we were the two people in our domicile at college who were often called upon to repair windows, ceilings... Once we bought our first home, we continued to have a blast building stairs, decks, docks and solving any number of engineering dilemmas along the way.
"As a kid, I was exposed to engineering all the time, but never knew it." - M. E. Tracy
DeleteThis is so true for everyone and it maybe what we need to change. Everyone can engineer to some degree. So if we can get to one or two students a year, we will have engineered ourselves a stronger, less uniformed (sorry about double negative) society.
My connection with formal engineering is through one of my best childhood friend's who started as a mechanical engineer and is now a quality control manager for Chrysler. He's spent almost his whole career in the auto industry. He's the quality control manager for the new Dodge Dart. It was supposed to be launched in the first quarter of 2012 but it's been moved back to make there are no glitches since this is the first Fiat/Dodge project.
ReplyDeleteAs other people have mentioned, engineering and design go hand in hand and I've built canoes, kayaks and some furniture over the last 20 years so I have practical application of design. My work is living proof of failing (sometimes fast, other times not so fast; and rarely cheap!)
I have no idea where I got my connection to engineering. I think I was born with it?
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 10 years old, my parents bought a battery operated AM "transistor radio" that I could pop the back cover off of. That was it for me, I wanted to know how all those parts worked. I wanted to know how sound came out of a speaker. I wanted to know how the antenna picked up "waves" from the air and somehow convert it to voice and music. I did not know what engineering was at that time, I just knew I wanted to know how electric circuits worked. At that time, I would have heard the term "engineer" and thought about the person who drives the train into town to take box cars of grain away. I did not know what the term engineering meant until I was probably 13 years old.
I ended up getting three degrees in electrical engineering. After the first degree, I actually designed radios! I worked for Motorola and designed "cop car" radios, i.e., two way radios. So, I did actually understand what was going on in that transistor radio that I held when I was 10.
My dad was mechanically inclined. He was a mechanic at a farm equipment dealer. I had tickertoys and my favorite was an Erector Set. I played with it for many years and built all kinds of stuff. But yet, I did not become an mechanical engineer.
Erector sets and tinkertoys were so much fun. I have a set of gears and wheels that my students use to build their own walking robot thing.
DeleteMy son had lego, dacta, then lego mindstorms. (He's now 21.) I would have gone nuts as a kid if I had dacta and mindstorms!
DeleteI do not have any formal connection to engineering or engineers. My dad was most definitely NOT "handy". My mom was super handy and creative, but stuck to gender-acceptable stuff like sewing, upholstery, back-to-the-land food preservation, and she never risked showing up my Dad in the "Dad" areas of life.
ReplyDeleteI have, however, just returned from a trip to visit the family, and realized that what my brothers do is engineering to some degree. One brother studied astrophysics and jazz music, but ended up designing filtration systems for manufacturing plants and specializes in the digital instrumentation of those systems. What he does is apparently so obscure that my parents do not even know his job title or the name of his company! I think he simply assumes that nobody is interested in the details. Never was much of a talker. The baby of the family, he would spend hours in his room with computers in the early 80's (he built my first PC from scratch, and a really nice telescope that required grinding and polishing an enormous glass lens), and then he would sleep till noon and my parents just let him. Probably the best parenting they could have given him! This gives me hope regarding my own 15 year old! This brother decided mid-college that he would opt for technical training instead, and built on his own natural interests which led to this career.
The other brother is responsible for mechanical maintenance of LifeFlight helicopters for a large hospital network in Minnesota and Wisconsin. He has also been in charge of commercial aircraft, commercial shipping, and Alaskan floatplanes. Fortunately he is very picky and by-the-book, and in that sense he is excellent at what he does in terms of safety for the rest of us. He is by nature conservative. For fun, he has built and re-built the bodies of antique float planes, and a bunch of sailboats, inspired by a stint building for Hinckley Yachts. That is where his creative extensions come into play. I still have the sheet metal toolbox he made for me in his Grade 7 "shop" class. It is beautiful. Why was a person like this so unsuccessful in school that he dropped out, opting for the Air Force to complete his (ongoing) continual education?
Both brothers (and parents) lead me to wonder what has gone wrong with education in our society!
Kelly have you ever "fixed" something or made it work better? Even those little tinkerings are engineering. You saw the problem, figured out what you need it to do, created a prototype and used.
DeleteFor those in SciTec that is our Engineering Design Process (Egg diagram).
As for me, I was not allowed to take "shop", being a girl, and was given typing class (with a typewriter, not even electric!) which I promptly failed on purpose.
ReplyDeleteI eventually earned an M.F.A. in sculpture, which involved many engineering-design decisions that were based on physical reality and the properties of materials, albeit towards an aesthetic end. One of my artistic heroes was Eva Hesse, who pioneered the artistic possibilities of the new technological materials, latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She was simply interested in how far she could push the materials, physically and aesthetically. A lot of people do not realize that artists do this sort of thing, which is essentially materials science, involving an enormous amount of trial and error and experimentation. Like Marie Curie, alas, her devotion to her investigations ended her life prematurely due to the number of hours she spent with manipulating carcinogenic materials.
Because artists are freed from the weight of responsibility for "failure" (except in their own lives) they have free license to imagine and create. I should mention, though, that pressure to put the novelty part "on steroids" and to truly do original work, while it may have no monetary or practical value, is an oppressive burden. Art is probably like all the other vocations; most people repeat what has been accepted as "good", some are not quite there, and a few are unrecognized in their originality unless extraordinarily lucky. Usually they are just considered eccentric failures!
Schooling was okay for me, as I could "play school" well, but it never engaged me intensely unless it involved direct manipulation of materials (ceramics, sewing). My first experience of engineering involved my gift of a sewing machine at age 11. I needed (really NEEDED!) to design and make snowshoes for my imagined future life as a wildlife tracker and woodswoman. Materials available: wire coathangers and turquoise naugahyde (fake leather). Requirements: carrying my 80 pounds safely over the wetland hillocks and frozen waterways of Wisconsin. After 3 revisions I had it, packed a thermos of hot cocoa and a field notebook, and struck out to survey the "wilderness" around my home.
I feel really sad that while education focuses like a laser on basic skills in math and language arts (and for good reason, I realize), the truly stimulating experiences with real materials, like Petroski describes in an old-fashioned childhood, or like Andy Weatherhead describes in his agriculture upbringing, are being lost. Even with my own two boys, while we eliminated TV until this year and did a lot of camping and gardening, I am losing them to the allure of the digital world, which is where most kids virtually live these days. How are our students going to learn those basic lessons about materials that Petroski describes as out first lessons in engineering?
Kelly,
DeleteI think in our changing world that technology will and needs to be a part of our teaching. I find it amazing what my children can do with computers. They have no fear of failure or damaging the computers. It takes them less time to problem solve than me. Yes I still want them to experiment with real objects too. But I think there is room for both.
I, too, think there is room for both, but we should make sure that the kids have a hands on foundation for how things work, move, change, etc. I am not sure those visual hands on concepts can be learned on a computer at a young age.
DeleteI guess we will see in this generation as they grow into adulthood and enter the workforce. Are today's college professors, company heads, etc seeing a change and readiness for the job and learning?
Kathy,
DeleteI think it is the realization that failure is fine, and strong problem solving skills that benefit our children the most. I dare say they, along with social skills, are more important than the content we actually teach in our classrooms.
I teach learning, not content. My content is what I use to teach students how to learn.
Kelly,
DeleteI liked the phrase " how far she could push the materials,". My work in Materials Science always fascinates me with how we can use the new properties of the new nanotech materials, and where they will take the Arts, and the rest of Society.
My ties to engineering go back to my childhood. My Dad was replacing the lock in our front door, and I just had to take it apart to see how it worked (I think I was around 7 at the time), and he let me. My whole family was into the Boy Scouts, and we always built or rebuilt things instead of buying them new. Trips to the town dump never came back empty-handed!
ReplyDeleteAfter college, I was a materials chemist for 8 years then a mechanical engineer for 12 years before becoming a teacher. Warren Pumps made custom-engineered large pumps for critical, complex applications, so I spent many years traveling internationally working on projects like the space shuttle, nuclear subs, chemical plants, pipelines, and even breast implants (silicone is difficult to pump).
As many of you have said, engineering is everywhere. In undeveloped sections of India, China, and Venezuela, people have figured out how to do amazing tasks with minimal materials and no formal training, yet the human curiosity and the desire to solve problems thrives. I think that this is an exciting time to be a teacher as our country awakens to the need to teach problem solving skills over content.
Last night my bedtime reading encompassed the, to date, published Personal Connections to Engineering.
ReplyDeleteThen... I couldn't sleep! I looked out at the stars blanketing the night sky, and thought how amazing this new blogging experience is, what an interesting idea to comment on, and how insightful the reflection opportunity, for the individual and the readers.(That is not to say the following will be for you...however... it is time for me to do a little reflecting. I just finished lunch with my human connection to engineering, the connection is decades old,my husband of many years, Chris, is my personal connection to engineering. Chris has been interested in various types of engineering, through his degree in physics. Chris garnered some of his interest from his Dad,who was a weather forcaster in the Navy, and then at the Pentagon.
My husband Chris has always had an interest in the world around him and how the world works. He has 2 patents
one on a lightbulb filament, and the other is an optical sensor used to control chemical concentration.
He has been involved with materials engineering, making pumps that could stand up to the harsh chemicals used in manufacturing.He has been in places,like Lima,Peru, where they have been extracting minerals and potentially causing significant environmental damage, such as draining cyanide directly into the ground water,in the process of mining zinc. In that same process they were putting mercury directly into the air.
On a lighter note, our son Alex, majored in computer engineering,
and does a diverse variety of projects; including biometric development, and software to add in MIA retrival.
From what I've seen around me, our schools need more concentration on engineering. I am happy to help in that process,(contributing as a result of outstanding professional development!) in whatever way I can, within my current job, as a Second Grade teacher at Mount View Elementary.
Dawn - so when are they coming to visit your Grade 2 students!? Excellent connections to engineering here!
ReplyDeleteI wish I had thought of that first! You are right, I'll work on making this happen. Thanks!
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