Groundwater historically has been a critical but understudied, underfunded, and underappreciated natural resource, although recent challenges associated with both groundwater quantity and quality have raised its profile. This is particularly true in the Laurentian Great Lakes (LGL) region, where the rich abundance of surface water results in the perception of an unlimited water supply but limited attention on groundwater resources. As a consequence, groundwater management recommendations in the LGL have been severely constrained by our lack of information. To address this information gap, a virtual summit was held in June 2021 that included invited participants from local, state, and federal government entities, universities, non-governmental organizations, and private firms in the region. Both technical (e.g., hydrologists, geologists, ecologists) and policy experts were included, and participants were assigned to an agricultural, urban, or coastal wetland breakout group in advance, based on their expertise. The overall goals of this groundwater summit were fourfold: (1) inventory the key (grand) challenges facing groundwater in Michigan; (2) identify the knowledge gaps and scientific needs, as well as policy recommendations, associated with these challenges; (3) construct a set of conceptual models that elucidate these challenges; and (4) develop a list of (tractable) next steps that can be taken to address these challenges. Absent this type of information, the sustainability of this critical resource is imperiled.

This paired watershed study investigated the hydrologic impacts of low impact development (LID) stormwater control measures (SCMs) receiving runoff from a highly impervious, highly connected commercial parking area located in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, USA. The site was retrofitted with a bioretention cell and permeable pavement, treating 0.60 ha and 0.42 ha of the parking lot, respectively, following a 12-month monitoring period of the existing parking lot hydrology (i.e., calibration period). Monitoring continued for an additional 20 months after construction (i.e., treatment period). The bioretention cell significantly reduced runoff depths and peak flow rates from the catchment, reducing mean values by 83% and 86%, respectively. Subsurface infrastructure (i.e., a gravel trench enclosing an adjacent sewer pipe and a nearby curb drain) was suspected to provide preferential pathways which resulted in substantial exfiltration from the cell despite poorly infiltrating underlying soils. Conversely, no significant differences in catchment hydrology were observed following the installation of the permeable pavement. The median surface infiltration rate decreased by 96% during the study, indicating that surface clogging occurred in the upper layers of the permeable pavement. Clogging was attributed to concentrated sediment loading delivered from the impervious catchment, along with lack of routine maintenance and snow plowing activities. It was concluded the loading ratio (27.6:1) of the permeable pavement was much too high, and this level of run-on should be avoided in future retrofits. Despite this, the combined effects of the bioretention cell and the permeable pavement led to significant runoff mitigation from the parking lot, reducing both runoff depths (47%) and peak flow rates (56%). Results were similar to previous studies of LID implemented in commercial catchments with lower levels of directly connected impervious cover than those herein. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of SCMs in highly impervious, highly connected catchments and their ability to mitigate runoff in commercial settings when properly sized and maintained.

Over the past 15-years the authors have undertaken a series of research studies examining the tendency of undergraduate engineering students to participate in unethical behaviors, such as academic dishonesty, and the nature of the decision-making that such students use when faced with an opportunity to behave unethically. The four studies, PACES-1, WES, PACES-2, and SEED, have elucidated the extent of the problem of academic dishonesty among engineering students and demonstrated that cheating in college is associated with unethical workplace behaviors. They have also confirmed that a model of ethical decision-making can successfully predict an individual's intention to engage in unethical behavior in the future. Finally, the studies have shown that, while engineering students' ethical reasoning improves throughout college, their tendency to engage in unethical behaviors such as cheating actually increases, suggesting there is a gap between moral judgment capacity and moral behavior.

AbstractLiving roofs are a green infrastructure (GI)/low-impact development (LID) stormwater control measure (SCM) increasingly drawing worldwide attention. Despite substantial performance evidence in the literature, the lack of a curve number (CN) or volumetric runoff coefficient (Cv) to apply to prescribed methodologies for planning and regulatory submissions may be perceived as a barrier for implementation. Paired rainfall–runoff data were analyzed for up to 21 living roofs with varying configurations and in different climates from studies identified in the literature and previously-unpublished data. Frequency analysis of empirical performance evidence from 14 living roofs indicates that meaningful runoff is not generated from the majority of small rainfall events. Where planning requires the use of the CN method, a step function is suggested: (1) runoff volume=0 for design rainfall events up to 20–30 mm, if appropriate moisture storage capacity is provided by the substrate; (2) runoff volume is determ...

This project is a collaboration between Clinton River Watershed Council (CRWC), Lawrence Technological University (LTU), and several municipalities within the Clinton River Watershed (Michigan). CRWC is a non-profit organization whose mission is to protect, enhance, and celebrate the Clinton River, its watershed, and Lake St. Clair. In 2014, CRWC started a partnership with the Great Lakes Stormwater Management Institute of LTU to enhance its existing WaterTowns community program by providing conceptual green infrastructure plans for public spaces in participating communities. The conceptual plans include specific green infrastructure improvements (such as rain gardens, porous pavement, bioswales, etc.) along with community placemaking suggestions (such as gathering spaces, trails, etc.). The conceptual green infrastructure plans were accompanied with estimates of volume of water retained on site, using a curve number approach, and general cost estimate for construction and maintenance based on published literature. The final project report also included artistic renderings (to gain community understanding and acceptance) and an analysis of the overall drainage plan for each site. This allowed the communities to prioritize retrofit options as they seek to implement their personalized WaterTowns program. As part of the process, Lawrence Tech and CRWC had multiple meetings with community partners to refine the conceptual plans and insure municipal objectives were met before presenting the final product at an open forum municipal council meeting. To date, there have been six communities engaged with each community plan including 8–12 specific green infrastructure improvements. Of those six communities, three have already begun implementing the plan less than 9 months after receiving the final report. Finally, the program has been extended to include an additional 9 communities from 2016 to 2018.

This Work In Progress describes a NSF funded project to revise/simplify our research instruments used to measure ethical development of engineering undergraduates and make them useful for practical applications. Results of this project will provide a way for institutions, programs, and faculty to assess the impact of ethics initiatives at the, course, co-curricular, or single intervention level. As such, it has the potential to transform the way in which undergraduate engineering education is delivered by allowing individual institutions, programs, and faculty to assess and improve on their own ethics initiatives. In this paper we describe the method for reducing the full instrument to a more practical tool and initial steps at pilot testing.

Developing engineers must be aware that technological development and emerging global issues will require a keen sense of ethical responsibility. Therefore, they must be prepared to reason through and act appropriately on the ethical dilemmas they will experience as professionals. From a civil engineering professional perspective, graduates need to conform to the ASCE Body of Knowledge as they prepare for the Vision of 2025. This investigation evaluated different institutional approaches for ethics education with a goal of better preparing students to be ethical professionals. The project included visiting 19 diverse partner institutions and collecting data from nearly 150 faculty and administrators and more than 4,000 engineering undergraduates including 567 civil engineering undergraduates who completed the survey. Findings suggest that co-curricular experiences have an important influence on ethical development, that quality of instruction is more important than quantity of curricular experiences, that students are less likely to be satisfied with ethics instruction when they have higher ethical reasoning skills, and that the institutional culture makes affects how students behave and how they articulate concepts of ethics. Overall, regression analysis indicates that civil engineering student responses were consistent with the overall engineering undergraduate population. Finally, the research suggests the curricular foundation is in place, but that institutions need to improve their curricular and co-curricular offerings to facilitate ethical development of students and fulfill ASCE Body of Knowledge outcomes. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.

This paper focuses on two initiatives: fostering the entrepreneurial mindset in the first year introduction to engineering course and successfully combining discipline-specific courses into a multi-discipline course.While most first year introduction to engineering courses focus on design and problem solving, at the same time familiarizing the student with basic technical content, very few also focus on the entrepreneurial mindset - a way of thinking increasingly required of engineers entering the workforce. Skills associated with the entrepreneurial mindset such as effective communication (written, verbal, and graphical), teamwork, ethics and ethical decision-making, customer awareness, persistence, creativity, innovation, time management, critical thinking, global awareness, self-directed research, life-long learning, learning through failure, tolerance for ambiguity, and estimation are as important in the workforce as technical aptitude. In fact, employer feedback has indicated that graduates with these skills are more highly sought than those with an overly technical education since technical engineering skills can be readily obtained on the job; the entrepreneurial mindset takes years of practice/refinement. Although students may eventually begin practicing many entrepreneurial mindset skills in the curriculum especially during a senior project sequence, it is paramount that the importance of the entrepreneurial mindset is stressed in the first year. This paper will include details of how to integrate all of the skills listed here into well-established design projects, homework, and active learning classroom modules in a first year engineering course using entrepreneurially minded learning. Informal interviews with students reveals successful implementation.As the lines between engineering disciplines are becoming more blurry, employers also covet engineering graduates whose technical skills span a variety of disciplines. Engineers must work on teams that are diverse, and being able to understand and communicate the broad field of engineering is vital to success. Therefore, while completing an engineering degree, students need to become familiar with a multitude of engineering disciplines and work with students from many departments. This is not a new concept and many introduction to engineering courses are interdisciplinary. On the other hand, many colleges still contain only discipline-specific introduction to engineering courses. Over the past year and a half, Lawrence Technological University underwent a successful college-wide transition from many discipline-specific introduction to engineering courses to a multi-discipline course. This paper will outline keys to a successful transition including pitfalls to avoid and working with university administrators, faculty, and staff during the transition.

Recruiting and retention are common challenges that engineering programs deal with on a regular basis. To address these challenges, universities seek innovative ways to market their programs while simultaneously improving their curricula to align with industry standards. With this in mind, the Department of Civil Engineering at Lawrence Technological University is incorporating standard industry certifications in its undergraduate curriculum to enhance students' educational experience and increase the value proposition of the curriculum. The certifications provide students with an advantage when searching for internships and are offered through the regular curriculum saving students time and money. In addition, incorporating industry recognized certifications as part of the standard curriculum establishes the relevance of their coursework and demonstrates the Department is responsive to industry needs. The goal of this Work-in-Progress study is to collect data from certified students to determine the impact the certifications have on retention and how they can be used to recruit new students.

In 2008, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) published the Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge, Second Edition (BOK2), reflecting ASCE's vision of the skills and knowledge the next generation of civil engineers must acquire. The Department of Civil Engineering at Lawrence Technological University adopted the BOK2 that same year as part of its regular program review process. Faculty engaged in extensive debate on the prudence of adopting a new, more complex standard just two years before the ABET accreditation visit in 2010. However, the Department's commitment to continuous improvement was the eventual impetus for adoption of the BOK2 student outcomes for our program. This paper provides an overview of the challenges faced and the various approaches taken by faculty to integrate the BOK2 outcomes into the civil engineering curriculum. The paper also documents the successful ABET review in 2010 in which the program was granted full accreditation and the maximum six-year review cycle. Finally, after six years of the Department functioning with BOK2 as student outcomes, the faculty can reflect and comment upon the successful and more the problematic aspects of the experience.

Lawrence Technological University has developed and administers a week-long summer enrichment program for undergraduate engineering students focused on progressively building from the foundations of the creative process/competencies to the application of innovative techniques coupled with engineering design and problem solving. While this summer enrichment program is administered by the University, the program is facilitated in close partnership with The Henry Ford, a nationally renowned cultural, historical, and educational destination. This paper will explain the objectives and format of the program, summarize the benefits of collaborating with a local cultural institution, explain how this program can be transferable to other universities, and present preliminary assessment results. Two different assessments were performed: pre- and post-surveys determine the students' perceptions of creativity, problem solving, teamwork, and leadership; and a curriculum survey evaluates the effectiveness, format and delivery techniques. A preliminary results for both assessments are positive. Further data will be obtained this year to allow for a more robust analysis. Based on the assessment results, the program is undergoing continuous improvement.

The extant research on engineering ethics instruction shows that students receive ethics instruction within the engineering curricula. Unfortunately, the methods used in engineering undergraduate classrooms are described as "abstract'' and have mixed results related to impacting students' ethical development. Thus, exploring how out-of-classroom experiences-as a curricular alternative-influences students' ethical development is warranted. This is an exploratory investigation to determine how out-of-classroom experiences influence students' ethical development. The authors define ethical development using three constructs: knowledge of ethics, ethical reasoning, and ethical behavior. We draw upon a conceptual model that suggests students' ethical development is impacted by what takes place inside and outside of the classroom. As the first phase of a multi-year, national study to holistically assess the ethical development of engineering undergraduates in the United States, we conducted focus groups consisting of faculty members and students at 18 institutions. All focus group participants were asked questions related to campus climate, ethics, and involvement in out-of-classroom experiences. Our data suggest that participating in out-of-classroom experiences: served as a complement to the classroom instruction on ethics; helped students connect learning about ethics to the engineering workplace; and, influenced students' ethical development. Given what we learned about the engineering undergraduates' involvement in out-of-classroom experiences, we suggest that engineering faculty members use classroom instruction to connect out-of-classroom experiences to ethics and encourage reflective practice in ethics instruction.

While active and collaborative learning (ACL) and problem-based learning (PBL) have been effectively implemented at the college-level for many years, their widespread use in engineering education is a more recent development. Research has shown that ACL and PBL allow for higher critical thinking, reasoning, achievement, and retention in students. In addition, because ACL and PBL typically require teamwork, communication, and tolerance for ambiguity among other aspects, they are also an ideal vehicle for instilling the attributes of the entrepreneurial mindset in students.Lawrence Technological University implemented a six year process to modify 75% of the courses in the engineering curriculum to include ACL and PBL. Besides traditional engineering courses, such as statics and design, the modified courses include those in our general education core curriculum, such as calculus, history, literature, communication, and the sciences. As such, this course modification process involves more than 50 faculty members from multiple departments and colleges. The process entails intensive week-long workshops, report-back accountability sessions, closing-the-loop sessions, support teams of faculty from related content areas, coordinators, peer-reviewers, and a leadership team of university administrators, faculty and staff. This paper will explain the reason and objectives for the course modifications and will detail the process to modify many diverse courses including faculty evaluation of the program.The paper will discuss the impact that the course modifications have had on the university as a whole. Finally, the paper will present assessment results of pre-and post-course surveys of student perceptions of the use of ACL and PBL to apply attributes of the entrepreneurial mindset. The surveys demonstrate a positive shift in perceptions.

Luis Obispo, where he teaches courses in engineering design from a materials perspective.He is currently PI on a multi-university collaborative research study assessing the ethical outcomes associated with the curricular and extra-curricular experiences of engineering undergraduates on a national scale.In addition, Dr. Harding has conducted several investigations on the influence of non-traditional teaching methods (e.g.service learning,

BackgroundRecent national reports have indicated the need for an increased emphasis on the ethical development of engineering undergraduates. Despite this call for increased focus on ethical development, little is known about how engineering students make ethical decisions or how these decisions are related to personal differences and environmental influences.Purpose (Hypothesis)This is an exploratory investigation to determine which demographic, academic, moral reasoning, and decision‐making variables are predictive of the extent of test cheating among engineering undergraduates. Rather than beginning with a particular hypothesis, the study investigates predictive relationships between the variables described above and self‐reported rates of test cheating among engineering undergraduates.Design/MethodThree hundred and eighty eight engineering undergraduates from three Midwestern U.S. institutions completed a survey based on a modified version of the theory of planned behavior as a conceptual framework. The three institutions are of different Carnegie classifications, sizes, missions, and institutional cultures.ResultsResults indicate that our proposed model of ethical decision‐making was successful in predicting the behavioral outcome with regard to college test cheating and there were observed significant differences in the level of cheating between institutions. However, institution as a variable was not a predictive of behavior.ConclusionsThe effect of institution on cheating was mitigated through other measured variables including past high school cheating, involvement in Pan‐Hellenic groups, moral obligation, and perceived behavioral control. It is these underlying predictive variables that need to be addressed when engineering educators and student affairs staff consider the issue of unethical undergraduate behavior.

Accurate pier scour predictions are essential to the safe and efficient design of bridge crossings. Current practice uses empirical formulas largely derived from laboratory experiments to predict local scour depth around single-bridge piers. The resulting formulas are hindered by insufficient consideration of scaling effects and hydrodynamic forces. When applied to full-scale designs, these formula deficiencies lead to excessive over prediction of scour depths and increased construction costs. In an effort to improve the predictive capabilities of the HEC-18 scour model, this work uses field-scale data and nonlinear regression to develop a family of equations optimized for various non-cohesive soil conditions. Improving the predictive capabilities of well-accepted equations saves scarce project dollars without sacrificing safety. To help improve acceptance of modified equations, this work strives to maintain the familiar form of the HEC-18 equation. When compared to the HEC-18 local pier scour equation, this process reduced the mean square error of a validation data set while maintaining over prediction.

A week-long summer enrichment program (i.e., summer camp) was developed for and administered to undergraduate engineering students. The program is the result of a multi-institutional partnership, in which six universities spanning the U.S. collaborate on instilling the entrepreneurial mindset into engineering education. Therefore the camp engaged students from multiple institutions and engineering disciplines. The plan is for three of the six collaborating universities to host an enrichment opportunity over three consecutive summers that focus on entrepreneurial education themed to the unique attributes of the host city. The first summer enrichment program was hosted at Lawrence Tech University who partnered with The Henry Ford in the Detroit metro area. The first camp was focused on exploring creativity, innovation, and ingenuity as it relates to the American experience and manufacturing. In addition to learning objectives, a goal of the program is to demonstrate the curricular enhancement of engaging multiple institutions in interdisciplinary problem solving and to inspire students by showing them the history of innovation in technology and manufacturing. In subsequent summers, two of the partner universities will host summer enrichment opportunities in Boston and St. Louis.Throughout the week, the camp participants explored the core competencies of creativity and innovation through activities and games. In addition, the students studied and implemented various methodologies of creative problem solving through teamwork on various problems and product development projects/tasks. To further emphasize innovation as it relates to American history, two of the five days were spent visiting The Henry Ford which includes the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, a Ford F-150 truck assembly plant, and the Benson Ford Research Center where they participated in a pilot version of the new Henry Ford Innovation 101 curriculum.This paper will explain the objectives and format of the program, summarize the benefits of a multi-institutional engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration, and present assessment results. Two different assessments were performed. First, for the beginning and end of the week, a pre and post-test was conducted to determine the students. general perceptions of creativity, problem solving, teamwork, leadership, the role of creativity in engineering, and their personal view on their own creativity. A comparison of the pre and post-program surveys yields a shift in perceptions. A second assessment administered to the students at the conclusion of the week gives an analysis of the effectiveness of the program, the delivery techniques, and the format.

Scour and erosion potential of a soil are closely related to each other. Similarities or differences between them have not been defined fully and the terms are often used interchangeably or in association with one another. Erodibility is a property of soil that describes erosion potential. Therefore, a proper understanding of erodibility should help predict scour more accurately. In the past, researchers have looked into erosion of soils with the ultimate objective of understanding the erodibility with respect to the standard geotechnical properties. Most research has shown the difficulties associated with correlating erodibility to any one or more soil properties. The research described in this paper is mainly focused on the relationship between erodibility and dry unit weight of soil with varying fractions of fines. Soils tested using laboratory Jet Erosion Test (JET) indicated that the logarithm of erodibility makes a linear inverse relationship with the dry unit weight. In situ JETs confirmed the range of erodibilities established by the laboratory JETs. The best correlations between erodibility and dry unit weight appeared within a single category of soil as classified by the Unified Soil Classification System. In addition, it was also determined that the logarithm of erodibility is inversely related to the angle of internal friction of the fluvial soils tested during this investigation.