Keeping it Real with Phil Schmidt
May 16, 2005
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When talking to Dr. Phil Schmidt about teaching, it doesn’t take long for a theme to emerge: Engineering as a profession is engaged in real world problems and processes, but traditional engineering teaching is abstract. This realistic vantage is at the heart of Dr. Schmidt’s approach to teaching and his many efforts to establish a stronger connection between the real and the abstract in engineering education.
Dr. Schmidt joined the Mechanical Engineering faculty in 1970. The quality of his teaching has been acknowledged with several awards and he is a member of UT’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Grounded in the belief that students are intelligent, vibrant, and deserve our respect, Schmidt says. “We are charged with developing their ability to think and function as leaders, professionally and socially. It’s not just feeding them information and facts, but developing their thought processes.” In the classroom Schmidt tries to engage students with a highly interactive style of lecturing. Rather than show students how to solve a problem, he gets them to think about how to solve the problem and discuss their thinking.
Phil is leading an ongoing department-wide curriculum reform effort called PROCEED, which stands for Project-Centered Education. The roots of the endeavor go back to a series of brown-bags where ME faculty discussed changes in engineering education and ways to respond and improve. They recognized that project-centric work was a recurring theme for tying the undergraduate experience more closely to real-world experience. PROCEED was formalized in 2000 when Ford Motor Company pledged $875,000 over five years. A short time later, Applied Materials made a similar 5-year pledge of $500,000, assuring a firm foundation for PROCEED endeavors.
The Faculty Innovation Center (FIC) has supported PROCEED in several ways. Spearheaded by ME assistant professor Matt Campbell, the FIC developed an online portfolio system known as Polaris. Students use Polaris to collaborate with others and showcase their project work for potential employers. PROCEED has also supported acquisition of videoconferencing capabilities including a state-of-the-art Tandberg mobile system, which the FIC schedules and operates. Additionally, the FIC has been involved in assessment of the project-centered approach. QQI – which stands for Quality, Quantity, and Improvement – is a survey instrument developed by Dr. Theresa Jones as part of her doctoral dissertation. The FIC automated the survey system and put it online, making it painless to use. Professors receive email notification when the survey is closed, as well as a detailed report. The system has been implemented department-wide in Mechanical Engineering where it provides valuable feedback to individual faculty members as well as programmatic data for evaluating different teaching modes.
Under Dr. Schmidt’s leadership, PROCEED has flourished. The program has supported 15 pilot curriculum and laboratory development projects over the last five years. Most of the pilot projects have been fully integrated into the ME curriculum. New PROCEED initiatives are underway and the program is garnering positive recognition from peer institutions. Although “project-centric” has taken on many manifestations, the goal throughout has been to get students engaged in activities more like real-world practices than traditional engineering education.