Vedaraman Sriraman

Globalizing manufacturing engineering education

The discipline of manufacturing engineering in the U.S. was established in the 1960s, a period when U.S. corporations and products dominated the global economy. Any form of engineering education that ignores the reality of multinational corporations, global supply chains, and international markets looks increasingly outmoded and provincial. The need to acknowledge the global aspects of engineering activity is beginning to be recognized in engineering education, and the need is especially acute in manufacturing engineering education. The shrinkage of the U. S. manufacturing sector portrayed by popular media is an supported by more intensive manufacturing engineering work in order to maintain the status quo of product value produced. The demand for well-educated manufacturing engineers worldwide is likely to increase in the long term. Very few U.S. manufacturing engineering programs explicitly recognize the global aspects of manufacturing at the course level.

Quantifying the environmental impacts of crack sealing and filling treatment in hot mix asphalt pavement

Crack sealing and filling treatments have always been an important consideration in order to prolong the life of pavement among all the pavement maintenance programs. Crack sealing uses a router to cut the crack to provide a uniform rectangular reservoir for greater penetration of sealants in order to have good bonding whereas crack filling is simply inserting sealant without performing any modification to the crack walls. This research study is intended to compare the initial and long-term environmental burdens between crack sealing and filling treatment. The parameters related to the field implementation of crack treatment methods (length sealed per day, amount of materials, configuration techniques, and equipment data) were collected from the Abilene district database system and the inventory loadings were gathered from the industry and the literature. Each life cycle phase of crack filling and sealing treatment was quantified in eight impact categories in terms of environmental emissions. In general the results of this study indicated that the initial environmental emissions of crack sealing treatment are very high compared to filling technique. However, this environmental burdens can be compensated along with an approximately 25% reduction in emissions by implementing crack sealing treatment over a long period.

Implementing Project Based Learning Pedagogy in Concrete Industry Project Management

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to carry out a mixed methods construction education study seeking to improve student learning. This study uses project-based learning (PrBL) and milestone deliverable pedagogy to teach a concrete industry project management course and compares the outcome to a control (non-PrBL) version of the same course. The intervention course was designed as a full semester learning experience for students. The students worked as project managers from start to finish constantly contributing to the completion of their team project. In the control scenario, delivered in Fall 2013, students were required to carry-out a traditional project due at the end of the semester. This study examines the impact of having the course project become the main learning mechanism and considers and measures the ways in which PrBL affects student performance. Pre and post questionnaires regarding self-perceptions of learning and skill development were administered and project and course grades were used to assess the impact of PrBL on the students’ performance. The questionnaires revealed a minimum increase of students’ perception of their understanding of 48%. The course grade comparison showed an average of 13% point increase in all student grades when the PrBL pedagogy was implemented.