Ryan C. Campbell

A Circuit-based Photovoltaic Array Model for Power System Studies

Recent interest in distributed generation (DG) due to the opening of the electricity market and the need for alternatives to conventional fossil fuel-based electricity generation has revived interest in grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems. Studies need to be performed at the power system level to examine the impacts of grid-connected PV systems and several models for PV arrays have been proposed in the literature for this purpose. However, the complexities of these models and the difficulties of implementing them in software programs can be deterrents to their use. This paper proposes a simple, robust and flexible piecewise linear PV device model for dynamic and transient power system studies. The circuit-based nature of the model is beneficial because it facilitates understanding of the PV device and its behavior in the connected circuit. Software implementation is straightforward and it can even be constructed using standard software library components, as demonstrated using PSCAD/EMTDC.

The role of gender in belonging and sense of community

This paper reports differences in belonging and connection to various levels of community between distinctly different technical fields: electrical engineering, civil & environmental engineering, and computer science. Established (reliable and validated) constructs have been used to assess community strength in these three fields at a major research university. The results emphasize gender differences within fields and between technical fields. Belonging (and sense of community) has been implicated in drop-out rates and lack of engagement in grades K-12; likewise, isolation (lack of belonging) has been cited as a persistent reason that female undergraduates leave engineering early in their programs. Our results show that sense of belonging (and connection to community) is consistently higher for women in engineering fields where women are present in higher numbers. In addition, these important affective constructs are higher overall in fields where women are more highly represented. These results may suggest that greater numbers of women enable a stronger sense of community or alternatively, the inherent nature of the field provides increased opportunity for belonging and developing a strong sense of community. In either case, related technical fields with stronger community can serve as role models for those that demonstrate less robust connection to community in helping these fields to improve their recruitment and retention of women.

How Can Engineering Students Learn to Care? How Can Engineering Faculty Teach to Care?

This chapter focuses on a missing dimension to the traditional engineering experience: care, defined here as an active compassion, empathy, and concern for the wellbeing of other living (and sometimes non-living) things. The chapter begins with an introduction to the ethics of care, a normative ethical theory that emphasizes responsibility, relationship and context over rules and consequences. It then gives an overview of the engineering profession that shows the extent to which care is manifest in engineering practice. Throughout the chapter, a five element framework for care ethics adopted from the literature is used as a guide to demonstrate how engineers can become more effective at caring, particularly through work performed in philanthropic areas such as engineering for community service, disaster recovery, and international development—endeavors referred to collectively as humanitarian engineering (H.E.). However, in spite of the obvious opportunities for care in H.E., the practice of ethical caring is wrought with pitfalls, which are discussed, followed by way to overcome them through a proposed mindset that enables engineers to become more willing and better able to contribute constructively to issues of social and ecological justice.

Work in progress - integrating humanitarian course modules into engineering coursework

This paper describes the ongoing creation of instructional materials for a design-based research intervention that attempts to integrate humanitarian applications of engineering into existing coursework. Using a concept map based approach, a relational framework has been developed that highlights potential applications of engineering & technology in the developing world. Based on a well-known psychological theory of motivation, it illustrates the spectrum of engineering disciplines from the perspective of human needs. Related course modules on water treatment and absorption spectroscopy-based sensors have also been created, and a module on electric power system design is currently under development. Preliminary outcomes of piloting the materials suggest that undergraduate project-based courses lend themselves better to the approach than graduate level quantitative courses. While the materials are likely to benefit all students, indications of possible gender and preferred learning style differences will be of interest. It is hoped that this work will contribute a new perspective on the practice of engineering education with potential to attract and retain more diverse student populations.

Care ethics in engineering education: Undergraduate student perceptions of responsibility

Engineering is not known to be a particularly caring profession, scoring significantly lower than science in this regard according to a poll of the American public. However, engineers have many opportunities through their work to show care and concern for both people and the ecosystem, such as by choosing to work on humanitarian or environmental issues and taking responsibility to ensure these issues are meaningfully addressed. When engineers do their jobs uncaringly, people and the environment often suffer. In this paper we argue that care ethics should be a part of engineering education and explore how care is reflected in student work. Specifically, we examine empirically how undergraduate engineering students care for others, as expressed through their writing about engineers taking responsibility for the adverse impacts on the environment and public health created by e-waste recycling in the developing world. We find that in our sample, most engineering students associated engineers with responsibility for this problem, but that many appeared to lack an appreciation of both the complexities that must be addressed, and the broadly interdisciplinary and collaborative approach necessary to meaningfully address them.

Workshop - filling in the gaps: The use of affective outcomes in engineering & CSET education research

Affective outcomes are highly underrepresented in engineering and CSET research at less than 1% of the overall body of education research in these technical fields. Yet, affective outcomes are a major player in the retention of women in engineering at the undergraduate level and are known in K-12 and higher education to have profound impacts on academic performance. This workshop looks at how to select established (reliable and valid) affective outcomes and fold them into existing engineering & CSET education research in a meaningful and informative way. This workshop will discus belonging and its companion outcome, psychological sense of community, which often impact students at the very start of their programs affecting persistence and retention. It will also examine self-efficacy and locus-of-control, which can have a more direct impact on academic performance, influencing test anxiety and team performance. Finally, it will look at broader relational measures, which indicate feelings of relatedness that can create emotional scaffolding to maintain stability during difficult academic times. Whether by self-report or by observation, these measures can be captured with a rigor equivalent to that of cognitive outcomes. In this workshop, we take a hands-on approach to incorporating affective outcomes into the toolbox of the engineering/CSET education researcher. Participants will have ample opportunity to consider, choose, and design affective outcomes into individual research projects and education interests.

Engineers’ Responsibilities for Global Electronic Waste: Exploring Engineering Student Writing Through a Care Ethics Lens

This paper provides an empirically informed perspective on the notion of responsibility using an ethical framework that has received little attention in the engineering-related literature to date: ethics of care. In this work, we ground conceptual explorations of engineering responsibility in empirical findings from engineering student’s writing on the human health and environmental impacts of “backyard” electronic waste recycling/disposal. Our findings, from a purposefully diverse sample of engineering students in an introductory electrical engineering course, indicate that most of these engineers of tomorrow associated engineers with responsibility for the electronic waste (e-waste) problem in some way. However, a number of responses suggested attempts to deflect responsibility away from engineers towards, for example, the government or the companies for whom engineers work. Still other students associated both engineers and non-engineers with responsibility, demonstrating the distributed/collective nature of responsibility that will be required to achieve a solution to the global problem of excessive e-waste. Building upon one element of a framework for care ethics adopted from the wider literature, these empirical findings are used to facilitate a preliminary, conceptual exploration of care-ethical responsibility within the context of engineering and e-waste recycling/disposal. The objective of this exploration is to provide a first step toward understanding how care-ethical responsibility applies to engineering. We also hope to seed dialogue within the engineering community about its ethical responsibilities on the issue. We conclude the paper with a discussion of its implications for engineering education and engineering ethics that suggests changes for educational policy and the practice of engineering.

Work in progress — Ethics in humanitarian engineering: A means of assessment

This paper reviews current approaches found in the engineering education literature to assess ethics instruction outcomes. Based on theoretical grounds, we believe that existing approaches are incomplete for use in an ethical framework appropriate for humanitarian engineering, i.e., one that includes not only an ethics of justice, but also an ethics of care. The paper describes an ongoing mixed-methods research study that seeks to assess this broader conception of ethics, and then focuses on one aspect of the study design: a self-report survey instrument adapted from the field of positive psychology.