Mechanical Engineering Fall 2018 Newsletter

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NEW FACULTY Lauren Cooper Assistant Professor Lauren Cooper joined the department this fall as an associate professor. She has a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, master’s in building systems and doctorate in mechanical engineering with a research emphasis in engineering education. Cooper has industry experience in renewable energy and residential energy efficiency. She started her teaching career as a middle school teacher before returning to receive a Ph.D. As an educator, Cooper hopes her students take away three things: confidence, personal responsibility and sense of caring. She aims to build confidence in students by creating hands-on design projects that challenge them to learn and apply real-world skills like creativity, brainstorming, ingenuity, prototyping fabrication, team work and project communication. Cooper encourages personal responsibility in students by engaging in active learning and using the flipped classroom approach. “I see my role not as the deliverer of knowledge but as a facilitator who engages students in activities and experiences that give them opportunities to grow and learn,” she said. Benjamin Lutz Assistant Professor Benjamin Lutz joined the department this fall as an associate professor. He has a bachelor’s in aerospace engineering, master’s in mechanical engineering and doctorate in engineering education. Lutz is a qualitative researcher, and his work typically focuses on student voices and perceptions to better understand how to motivate and enhance learning and cognition. As an educator, Lutz has three main goals: • Enhance students’ engineering mindset and approach to problem solving. • Increase students’ capacity for teamwork and communication across diverse groups. • Critically engage with course content in ways that produce social consciousness and ethical reasoning. Lutz recently won the best paper award at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conference. Lutz worked with Marie Paretti, an associate professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, to document the lives of 12 recent mechanical engineering graduates through the initial stages of their jobs, exploring their significant challenges, accomplishments and realizations as they navigated their new roles. 8 FALL 2018 ME.CALPOLY.EDU
MAC Competition winning team. From left to right: Daisy An, Eric Ramos, Emily Gavrilenko, Soojin Park, Tae Hun Kwak Cal Poly Hosts First MAC Competition Cal Poly’s first MAC Competition took place Oct. 6-7. The industry-sponsored event was a collaboration between professionals and the student chapters of the Mechanical Contractors Association and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning. Four teams of 19 students from mechanical engineering, bioresource and agricultural engineering (BRAE) and construction management, competed for $3,000 in prizes. The competition simulated real problems that engineers could experience when designing HVAC systems. The teams were tasked with designing a duct size and location, choosing an Air Handling Unit (AHU) based on cooling load calculations, doing an economic analysis, completing a crane lift plan for installation, constructing safety plans, designing a schedule for installation and coming up with a final cost for the entire project. On the morning of the first day, teams were given the design problem. The students had until 5 p.m. – less than nine hours – to analyze the problem, solve it and deliver the the supporting documents to the judges. Midway through the competition the teams were given a surprise; equipment was being delayed by two weeks, but the project end date remained the same. The students had to change crane plans and calculate the impact on the project schedule and budget. The next day, each team gave a 25-minute presentation on their design solutions. Judging was based on the submitted documentation and the presentation. The winners of the competition were Soojin Park (fourth-year BRAE), Tae Hun Kwak (second-year construction management), Eric Ramos (secondyear mechanical engineering), Emily Gavrilenko (first-year mechanical engineering) and Daisy An (fourth-year mechanical engineering). “It was rewarding to be part of this competition, and I could tell the underclassmen learned a lot from participating,” said An, team project manager. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING FALL 2018 9
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Mechanical Engineering Fall 2018 Newsletter

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