The American Society for Engineering Education honored two Tennessee Tech professors and two Tech graduate students for their research on fluid velocity.
The foursome used Tennessee’s Tech Renaissance Foundry model, an interdisciplinary teaching platform developed at Tech. Chemical Engineering Professor Dr. Pedro Arce said the model helps students bridge the gap between fundamental principles and applying them. Arce said student input was instrumental in developing the method.
“We have listened to the students about where they are challenged,” Arce said. “We have understood that one of the issues they have is dissecting this problem into smaller pieces. And with the Renaissance Foundry model, we have enabled to actually provide a tool for the students, right, to really make that connection.”
Arce said the Foundry model helped collaborators research the fluid velocity profile of pipes, ducts, and capillaries, a complex and abstract subject.
Arce said the student perspective in this research has helped other students. He said students who use the Renaissance Foundry model in their research has helped them become more independent learners.
“They have kind of a self-consistent way of checking what they’re doing and basically realizing that they’re making progress,” Arce said. “Somehing for us that has been very motivating is to see the student really do that.”
Arce described the foundry method as versatile, since a masters student used it in research for her masters thesis. He said the tool can be applied to several different situation.
Arce said being selected for the lecture was exciting, humbling and a great honor. He said it took years of hard work and collaboration to complete the process.
“The real motivation and the real focus of that is our students,” Arce said. “Without that, we wouldn’t be here. So, we are extremely delighted that we have been able to realize that.”
The research paper was co-authored by Arce, Tech’s Dr. Andrea Arce-Trigatti and graduate students Hoda Ross and Priyanka Mahajan.
This is Arce’s sixth time winning the Thomas C. Evans award.
