Today, in the 21stcentury, knowledge of science, technology and especially engineering are necessary to make informed decisions in most aspects of everyday life and the demand to fill jobs in these areas, especially engineering, is growing rapidly. Recent research indicates that a majority of college students who enter Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) majors became interested in STEM-related subjects when they were in high school or even earlier, in middle school. But the absence of engineering topics in K-12 science and mathematics curricula means that most potential college students are not prepared academically to study engineering in college or pursue careers in engineering. To address this problem the Next Generation Science Standards integrate engineering design and mathematics into science education. The engineering design process provides an opportunity to teach students about scientific inquiry and helps make connections between the science used in engineering applications in the real world and their classroom science lessons. Most current teachers have not been trained to incorporate engineering topics into classroom lessons and while professional development for teachers is being developed to address this need, summer enrichment programs such as those offered through the Center for Pre-college programs at New Jersey Institute of Technology can be instrumental in filling this void. The current paper describes a summer program for middle school students who would not otherwise have been exposed to engineering topics. Students were presented with a scenario that contains a core problem to be solved. Students were assigned to work in teams and were introduced to the Engineering Design Process as a means to develop a solution to the problem. Students completed a pre and post test which included questions about the Engineering Design Process (EDP) and were required to make a presentation about their solution to the core problem. A rubric has been developed to evaluate students' understanding and application of the EDP from their presentations. Analyses of the pre- and post-tests indicate that most students had no prior knowledge of the engineering design process but learned the steps during the course of the program. Correlations among students' responses to the post-test and scores from the rubric have been found. Results include a preliminary examination of the psychometric properties of the rubric.

Numerous inquiries from K-12 educators across the state of New Jersey have indicated that defining and implementing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has become a challenge to the K-12 education sector. Many of these K-12 educators approach STEM disciplines as if each one exists in isolation from the others and they do not integrate the content and skills of the disciplines that can engage students on many levels. Alternately, they may believe that an engineering experience and/or robotics, i.e. an isolated project, can be considered a STEM program. Our responses have focused on STEM education as an interdisciplinary area of study that integrates the four disciplines rather than achieving skills and knowledge independently in each subject area. A STEM program should also provide students experiences in problem-solving, analytical, critical thinking, teamwork, and communication skills. As a result, students should possess the ability to apply, synthesize, and evaluate their knowledge of how the world works within and across the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This paper describes our approaches with educators that can lead to effective implementation of a STEM program to make connections between the STEM disciplines. Examples of program implementation will illustrate two pathways: 1) Development of an "engineering track" that begins with an introduction to engineering and engineering design as a problem solving method applied to different engineering problems. This course is then followed by a sequence of modules/courses focusing on different areas of engineering of interest to the educators and their students. This program may be developed as a three- or four-year high school track with the senior year culminating in the University freshman college engineering course for which students can earn dual credit. The content of all courses in the sequence are aligned with the content of science and mathematics courses students are taking or have taken in their high school curriculum. 2) Integration of engineering principles and appropriate applications into the science and mathematics courses offered by the school. Here, students can see the parallel nature of the engineering design process, scientific inquiry process, and mathematical problem solving. Regardless of the chosen pathway, our approach also focuses on the three distinct, but interrelated components of teaching and learning: Instruction, Curriculum, and Assessment of student learning. All interrelated activities are described in lesson plans designed to be aligned with these three components into a coherent process and learning experience aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

The Center for Pre-College Programs at New Jersey Institute of Technology sponsors a series of summer enrichment programs designed to increase academically talented students' interest in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Programs such as these can be instrumental in informing young students about careers in engineering and technology and helping ensure they receive the academic background required to prepare for these careers in college. One of the programs has been designed specifically for young girls in an effort to increase the number of women interested in engineering and other technological careers. Although there is much debate about the relative effectiveness of female-only programs, previous research comparing aspects of our female-only program to equivalent mixed-gender programs has shown that they can be particularly effective in reaching young girls, influencing their perceptions of engineers and attitudes toward engineering as a career. The addition of equivalent male-only programs has prompted additional research comparing changes in students' perceptions of engineers and attitudes toward engineering, as well as increases in learning and content knowledge. The three different gender grouped programs (female-only, male-only and mixed-gender) were identical in content. The single gender programs within the same grade were taught by the same teacher. Although the mixed gender programs were taught by a different teacher the curriculum was exactly the same. In addition to objective measures of effectiveness, teachers were interviewed to collect qualitative data about the climate in the classroom and students' interactions within the three different gender groupings. Results show differential effects among the programs, not only in terms of perceptions, attitudes and learning, but also in the classroom climate and students' interactions in the classroom.

Graduate work, especially the Ph.D., requires extensive research, a skill not often emphasized in undergraduate programs. Although not much is known about all the factors that influence undergraduate students' decision to pursue or not pursue graduate studies, particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, recent research indicates that many undergraduates feel unprepared for graduate studies and view the research requirement as a deterrent. Opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research have increased recently as a result of federally funded programs including Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs), McNair Achievement Programs and Bioengineering and Bioinformatics Summer Institutes (BBSI). Students work in research laboratories during the summer, interact with faculty and graduate students, learning hands-on how to do research. The Attitudes toward Graduate Studies Survey was developed to help evaluate the effectiveness of these programs at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Students who participate in these programs show increases in their attitudes toward graduate studies and have significantly higher attitudes than students who do not participate. Often students indicate confidence in their ability to pursue graduate studies but only a small percentage think that they will have the skills necessary to begin a Ph.D. program when they complete their undergraduate degree. A possible conclusion is that even though students feel confident in their academic abilities they do not feel confident enough about their research skills to complete a Ph.D. program, making research programs such as REU's, BBSI and McNair, necessary. A follow-up study of students who attended these programs at NJIT over the last decade has found that participation in these programs increases attendance in graduate programs.

The Center for Pre-College Programs at New Jersey Institute of Technology sponsors a series of summer programs designed to increase academically talented students' interest in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. One of the programs, Woman in Engineering and Technology, called FEMME, has been designed specifically for young women in an effort to increase the number of women interested in engineering and other technological careers. The programs span grades four to eight because middle school is not only an important time for all students to begin thinking about future careers, but because boys and girls do not differ much in technical abilities until the later high school years but rather in their attitudes toward technological careers including engineering. Single-gender programs like FEMME can be particularly effective in reaching young girls, influencing their attitudes before they reach high school. The Middle School Students' Attitude to Engineering, Science and Mathematics Survey and the Draw an Engineer Test have been used to more fully assess young women's perceptions of engineers and what they believe engineers actually do, and how their perceptions may change as a result of attending the FEMME program.

For high-speed fuzzy control systems, an important problem is the improvement of speed for the fuzzy inference, particularly in the consequent pan and the defuzzification stage. This paper introduces an algorithm to map real values of the fuzzy membership functions in the consequent pan onto an integer grid, as well as a method of eliminating the unnecessary operations of the zero items in the defuzzification stage, allowing a center of gravity method to be implemented with only integer additions and one integer division. A VHDL implementation of the system is presented. The proposed system shows approximately an order of magnitude increase in speed as compared with conventional methods while introducing only a minimal error and can be used in many fuzzy controller applications.

We give a new decomposition algorithm to route a rearrangeable three-stage Clos network in O(nr/sup 2/) time, which is faster than all existing decomposition algorithms. By performing a row-wise matrix decomposition, this algorithm routes all possible permutations, thus overcoming the limitation on realizable permutations exhibited by many other routing algorithms. This algorithm is extended to the fault tolerant Clos network which has extra switches in each stage, where it provides fault tolerance under faulty conditions and reduces routing time under submaximal fault conditions.

Abstract Rearrangeable Clos networks have been studied in the literature in connection with telephone switching and communication networks. This paper examines the applicability of matching and edge‐coloring in bipartite graphs to the rearrangement problem in these networks. A survey of various matching and edge‐coloring algorithms is given, and these algorithms are evaluated for their suitability and effectiveness. It is shown that no single matching or edge‐coloring algorithm reported in the literature performs well over all Clos networks. It is further shown that the time complexity of the looping algorithm for Beneš networks is at least as good as any routing algorithm that can be obtained from matching or edge‐coloring. © 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

A number of matrix decomposition schemes have been previously reported for routing on Clos switching networks. These schemes occasionally fail to find the right decomposition, unless backtracking is used. It is shown that a partition may occur during the decomposition process, and that this is the underlying reason these algorithms fail for some decompositions. A parallel algorithm which can recognize when a partition exists and set up the Clos network without backtracking is given.>

To reconstruct an image using computed tomography (CT), the axis of rotation must pivot at the same point on the reconstruction plane that the X-ray source and the CT detector assembly rotate about around the imaged object. This pivot point is used as a reference point for backprojecting pixel values to their proper coordinates. Reconstructing an image with a nonstationary axis of rotation would backproject pixel values to incorrect coordinate points. A convolution filtered backprojection algorithm has been derived for correcting images that were acquired with a nonstationary axis of rotation using the fan beam geometry with a collinear (flat) detector. The correction method accounts for the vertical displacements of the axis of rotation as the CT scanner rotates around the imaged object, as may be the case when sagging occurs. Software simulations are performed to show how the algorithm corrects for the shift in the axis of rotation.