Engineering Education "Today in History" Blog: Rosa Parks Day marks service learning and the invention of the assembly line and hydroponics
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 (232) · December 1st, 2008 · Add a Comment
Today in History - December 1, 1955 - Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a bus in Montgomery and galvanized the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks showed the world that a single courageous act could positively change the course of history. How can we use engineering and human-centered technologies to positively impact local communities? How do we integrate human-centered approaches into our curricula? See the Engineering Pathway’s resources on human-centered design and computing and on community service learning. Of note is the EPICS (Engineering Projects for Community Service) program originated in the College of Engineering at Purdue and the 2005 winner of the National Academy of Engineering’s prestigious Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.
December 1 also marks the day of notable inventions in the twentieth century. Ford introduced the continuous moving assembly line in his Highland Park, Detroit, Michigan, factory. Faster than the “push” assembly processes before, it was capable of delivering a car every 2-min 38-sec. Using a continuous moving chassis line the method was so successful that the Ford Motor Company became the world’s largest car manufacturer in the world. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on automotive engineering and manufacturing processes. Additional curricular materials on modern manufacturing practices can be found on the Manufacturing Engineering Education or the Industrial Engineering Education community sites.
December 1 also marks the day that the first U.S. patent was issued for the soil-less culture of plants in a large commercial hydroponicum (No. 2,062,755) to Ernest Walfrid Brundin and Frank Farrington Lyon as a “system of water culture” in 1935. Hydroponics - the growing of plants with their roots suspended in water containing mineral nutrients found in soil - was coined in the early 1930s by Professor Gericke at the University of California at Los Angeles from two Greek words: “hydro” (water) and “ponos” (work, labor). See our educational resources in hydroponics and agricultural engineering. Or visit our Biological Systems and Agricultural Engineering Education Community site.
Tags: African American · Biological Systems and Agricultural Engineering · Broadening Participation · Industrial Engineering · K-12 Education · Manufacturing Engineering · Mechanical Engineering
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