2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Integrating Robotics and Automation in STEM Education: Preparing the Future Workforce for Advanced Manufacturing

The landscape of STEM education is undergoing a significant transformation, with an increasing focus on equipping middle and high school students for careers in advanced manufacturing and robotics. Through the NSF-RET initiative, we provided advanced manufacturing research experiences to twenty-eight K-14 educators during six-week summer workshops in 2023 and 2024. Among these educators six of them are community college educators and rest of them are high school educators. These educators not only conducted research but also developed curriculum modules for their students during the summer workshops. They also implemented these modules once they returned to their respective institutions. This comprehensive paper presents an in-depth analysis of five innovative projects designed to integrate robotics and automation into the educational curriculum. We highlight the pivotal role of educators in curriculum development and demonstrate the effectiveness of kinesthetic learning in enhancing students' understanding of complex STEM concepts. Through hands-on activities, experiential learning, and problem-solving exercises, we illustrate how these approaches prepare students for careers in rapidly evolving technological fields.

Authors

Dr. Md B. Sarder http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5502-7276 Bowling Green State University [biography]

Dr. Sarder is a professor & director of the School of Engineering at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). Prior to joining BGSU, he worked at the U.S. Air Force Academy as a distinguished research fellow. He served as an associate professor, and graduate director of the logistics, trade, and transportation program at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). Dr. Sarder has a record of excellence in research, teaching, and services as evidenced by the number of funded grants, list of publications, outstanding teaching evaluations, and professional services in the national and international arena. Dr. Sarder spent more than 15 years in administration as a school director, department chair, graduate director, program coordinator, and assistant director of a research center. During his academic tenure, he developed a school of engineering, a school of aviation, two new engineering programs, a graduate logistics transportation program, and two university centers. Dr. Sarder authored 5 books and 7 book chapters. Two of his textbooks including Fundamentals of Economics for Applied Engineering (2nd edition) with CRC Press and Logistics Transportation Systems with Elsevier are being used in many universities nationally and internationally. Dr. Sarder published more than 100 scholarly articles predominantly on logistics and supply chain domains. He served as a PI and Co-PI on more than 30 grants ($5+ million) funded by several agencies including the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Commerce, the US Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation. He received numerous awards in research, teaching, and professional services.
Apart from academic pursuits, he is deeply involved in institutional and professional society activities. Dr. Sarder is actively engaged with the AABI and ABET. He serves or has served on the editorial board for several journals including Transportation Research Records, Complexity, and Journal of Enterprise Transformation. He also served as the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Logistics Transportation Research. He founded the logistics & supply chain division within the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE) and served as the founding president of that division. He also served as Technical Vice President of IISE for three terms. Currently, Dr. Sarder is leading a student leadership board (SLB) and chairing the Future Faculty Fellows (3F) programs at IISE. He served on the College Industry Council on Material Handling Education (CICMHE) board, the academic committee of the Association of Operations Management (APICS), the Transformation Team on the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), the Research Committee of Intermodal Freight Transport committee, Freight Transportation Planning and Logistics committee of Transportation Research Board (TRB) among others. Dr. Sarder chaired the Industrial & Systems Engineering Annual Conference in 2016 and 2017, and the Engineering Lean Six Sigma Conference (ELSS) in 2013.
Mohammed Abouheaf Bowling Green State University [biography]

Dr. Abouheaf earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electronics Engineering from Mansoura University and completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2013. Currently, he holds the position of Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at Bowling Green State University. Dr. Abouheaf's research pursuits encompass a broad spectrum, including Systems & Control, Machine Learning, and Applied Mathematics, all with a specialized focus on the application of autonomous and intelligent systems. His contributions lie in advancing the comprehension, design, and efficacy of cooperative and model reference adaptive control solutions. This is primarily achieved through the utilization of data-driven methodologies, optimization paradigms, reinforcement learning algorithms, and adaptive critics.
Dr. MD ZAHABUL ISLAM Bowling Green State University [biography]

Zahabul (Za) works in the area of advanced manufacturing (3D printing) and Material Characterizations. The goal of his ongoing research is to develop and optimize process maps for polymer/metal additive manufacturing. He works with Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) / Selective Laser Melting (SLM), Direct Energy Deposition (DED), FDM and Stereolithography techniques. He aims to design novel method and manufacturing technique to optimize and manufacture advanced materials for Energy, Aviation, and Hypersonic flight applications.
Mohammad Mayyas Bowling Green State University

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025