Engineering Education "Today in History" Blog: First untethered spacewalk
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (387) · February 7th, 2008 · Add a Comment
Today in History – February 7, 1984 – The first untethered spacewalks were made by Space Shuttle Challenger astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart. Each used a manned maneuvering unit (MMU) in an orbit 150 nautical miles above the Earth. McCandless was the first to leave the cargo bay untethered in space. They were both charged with checking out the equipment by maneuvering within the cargo bay, then flying away and returning. Data were collected to test and demonstrate the capabilities of the MMU flights with the goal of eventually using it for a planned retrieval of the Solar Max satellite on a later shuttle mission
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on spacewalks and space exploration. For related educational resources, visit the Aerospace Engineering Education Community site. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.
Also on this date in 1863, the Law of Octaves was used as the basis for the Periodic Table and the in 1935 the first Monopoly game was marketed. Don’t laugh, educational games can be an engaging and effective form of learning in engineering.
Tags: Aerospace Engineering · Engineering Mechanics · General Engineering, Engineering Science
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