2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 326: Investigating Creativity, Confidence, and an Entrepreneurial Mindset through Curricular Modification and Community Engagement

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

In the Spring of 2022, the South Dakota Mines Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering faculty modified their junior-level Principles of Metallurgical Design course to utilize local Black Hills minerals to formulate and produce a clay-based ceramic body. The final body functionality was left to the student teams to help create an open end to the design process. The course provided a unique learning environment for students and faculty. The students learned the iterative design process through this project-based learning approach as well as the unique challenges that the use of local minerals present. It was found that the use of clay-based ceramics in design lends itself well to the teambuilding process. In addition, the faculty learned the importance of targeted messaging within a STEAM framework to enhance student project acceptance and creativity.

For the Spring of 2023 (second year), the faculty team will focus on leveraging their initial pedagogical experience by executing a very similar design project as the previous year. Additional emphasis will be focused on product development, and the ability for the teams to design an economically-viable product that could be mass produced. The faculty team will assess student creativity, confidence, entrepreneurial mindset, and technical knowledge at the beginning and the end of the semester.

Concurrent with the curricular modification the faculty team has begun expanding the program through new undergraduate course development (MET 300), and focused community STEAM activities that engage pre-Kindergarten to retirement age participants.

Authors

Dr. Katrina J. Donovan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0410-7847 South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
Dr. Jon J Kellar South Dakota School of Mines and Technology [biography]

Kellar is the Douglas Fuerstenau Professor of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering at the SD School of Mines and Technology. He has been on the faculty since 1990, and in 1994 was selected as an National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellow a
Dr. Michael West South Dakota School of Mines and Technology [biography]

Dr. Michael West is an associate professor and head of the department of materials and metallurgical engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SD Mines). Between 2008-2013, he served as site director of the NSF I/UCRC Center for Fri
Dr. Stuart D. Kellogg P.E. South Dakota School of Mines and Technology [biography]

Stuart Kellogg is Professor and Head of Industrial Engineering at SDSMT. His discipline research areas of interest include applied probability and stochastic models but his passion over the last two decades rests with STEM Education and STEM Education re
Dr. William Cross South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
Dr. Cassandra M. Birrenkott http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6137-0820 South Dakota School of Mines and Technology [biography]

Dr. Cassandra (Degen) Birrenkott received her B.S. degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in 2007. She received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 2012 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying mechanochemical reactions of a spiropyran mechanophore in polymeric materials under shear loading. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology where her research interests include novel manufacturing and characterization techniques of polymer and composite structures and the incorporation of multifunctionality by inducing desired responses to mechanical loading.

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