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AIAA 98-2791
Applied Aerodynamics Education:
Developments and Opportunities
W.H. Mason and W.J. Devenport
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University, Blacksburg, VA
16th AIAA Applied Aerodynamics Conference
June 15-18, 1998 / Albuquerque, NM
For permission to copy or republish, contact the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Suite 500, Reston, VA 22091 20024
AIAA-98-2791
APPLIED AERODYNAMICS EDUCATION:
DEVELOPMENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
*
and
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
Mail Stop 0203, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061
Abstract
*†
but lousy engineers.” John McMasters from Boeing
has also written about Boeing’s perception of the
problems with the current system.
2,3
In general, for
the last ten years we have heard that the products of
the schools are “not really ready” to go to work.
After some investigation, it appears that the prob-
lem expressed by industry has more to do with the
development of an engineering mentality than the
technical preparation of the students, although there
are also some concerns in that regard. Previously, we
surveyed the members of the AIAA Applied Aerody-
namics TC from government and industry to try to
understand the issues a little more specifically.
4
The
survey was intended to address the technical issues of
what specific topics needed more emphasis in aerody-
namics classes, but the respondents chose to empha-
size the general engineering attitude, and the work
ethic in general, with equal vigor. Apparently, this
problem still exists.
In an attempt to address the general engineering
issues, at Virginia Tech case studies were used in an
Applied Computational Aerodynamics course.
5
This
worked reasonably well, pushing the students to use
their own judgment in applying computational meth-
ods. The students found the requirement to locate in-
formation, work in teams, and develop a basis for
making decisions very difficult. Apparently, these
were all new aspects of their education. One can only
speculate as to whether the importance given to stu-
dent teaching evaluations keeps teachers from intro-
ducing this engineering emphasis in courses. Cer-
tainly the grading is much more subjective and the
faculty work load is much higher. Students are ex-
tremely uncomfortable with this approach, and that
might explain the poor teaching evaluations typical
of using this approach with large groups (as with
everything else, small classes can use these ap-
proaches much better). We have described related ef-
forts associated with design.
6,7,8
and multidisciplinary
design optimization education elsewhere.
9
The first section of the paper describes our experi-
ence in trying to prepare students for careers in engi-
neering, with a review of our perception of “the prob-
lem” in developing the “engineering attitude” from
Many practicing engineers feel that recent graduates
aren’t ready to go to work after graduating. They feel
that new graduates don’t really understand
“engineering.” Boeing has produced a list of desirable
attributes intended to guide engineering educators in
improving the “product,” as well as starting an indus-
try-university-government group to address engineer-
ing education. In this paper we review the issues from
our current perspective and suggest that the Boeing
list of attributes can be connected to the broader issue
of cognitive development, and Perry’s model in par-
ticular. We then describe the modern, mainly web-
based, methods we are using to attempt to improve
aerodynamics education. Using Java and other ap-
proaches, students can investigate aerodynamic con-
cepts without becoming distracted by programming
issues.
Introduction
We have been actively involved in engineering educa-
tion for nearly a decade. Within the broad context of
engineering education, this paper addresses our under-
standing of the educational challenges facing engineer-
ing educators based on our classroom and industrial
experience, our classroom and laboratory instructional
efforts in aerodynamics, and new opportunities avail-
able for improved education afforded us by the devel-
oped of the web and other advanced technology such
as Mathematica. We also consider the possibilities for
education-industry interaction
Many engineers in industry have expressed con-
cern about the education of engineering students. Per-
haps the most famous (infamous?) assessment is at-
tributed to Lee Nicolai:
1
“We educate great scientists
*
Professor, Dept. of Aerospace & Ocean Eng., Virginia
Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, Associate Fellow AIAA
mason@aoe.vt.edu
†
Associate Professor, Dept. of Aerospace & Ocean Eng.,
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, Member AIAA
Copyright © 1998 by W.H. Mason and W. Devenport
Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, Inc., with permission.
1
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
1
students that are still developing maturity. We will
try to understand where we’ve been and where we
might go. Next, we examine the opportunities af-
forded education by the emergence of the internet and
related technology. We will then discuss recent devel-
opments in web/Java oriented instruction in founda-
tion courses, and describe our work in senior/graduate
level elective courses oriented toward both additional
aerodynamics education and the development of an
engineering approach. Finally, the new opportunities
for industry-academia interaction are discussed.
Where we’ve been
To consider ways to produce better applied aerody-
namicists in the future, we need to consider past expe-
rience. Two items stand out. Ira Abbott, of Abbott &
von Doenhoff fame, was the after dinner speaker at a
NASA Conference on Advanced Technology Airfoil
Research at Langley in 1978. He talked about the way
new engineers broke-in in the early days of the
NACA. He said that they plotted wind tunnel data for
about two years before they were allowed to do any-
thing else. This afforded a postgraduate opportunity to
learn on the job that probably doesn’t exist today.
The first author plotted data at McDonnell and later
for the Army at Edwards AFB during co-op and sum-
mer jobs. The opportunity to learn more aerodynam-
ics, especially in the wind tunnel with veteran aero-
dynamicists is probably rare today.
A second anecdote involves my colleague, Adjunct
Professor Nathan Kirschbaum. Nathan graduated from
MIT in 1951, and spent his entire career in the aero-
space business, primarily in aircraft configuration
design. When he considers the range and depth of
knowledge we expect from our students in design
class he shakes his head in wonderment. He is amazed
at our expectations compared to his day. The oft-used
analogy is that we make them drink from a firehose.
There is no doubt that we are putting a lot in the
curriculum. At the same time, many universities are
demanding more courses be taken in a core curriculum
which includes the humanities and the social sciences.
And in many cases, state legislatures are putting lim-
its on the number of hours required to graduate. The
result is that the requirements placed on the students
are already significant and no more credit hours are
going to be added to the graduation requirements. In
response to industry, most courses include projects,
frequently team-based. This adds a major burden to the
student workload. Thus, although industry would like
to see us add a lot more, it’s unrealistic for a four year
degree. However, it’s a natural for a five year degree,
with the final product being an MS or MEng.
Where we are now
There is no doubt that the educational system will
undergo significant change. Remarkably, many engi-
neering colleges are ignoring the inevitable. Although
they claim to be embracing change, it’s essentially
superficial. The faculty, for the most part with no
exposure to engineering practice, are simply not ca-
pable of the needed change. Since the current faculty
are responsible for hiring the new faculty, no mecha-
nism for change exists. Several powerful recent dis-
cussions of the situation seem to have been com-
pletely ignored.
The Monster Under the Bed
by
Davis and Botkin
10
addresses education in general.
Two other important engineering specific examina-
tions of education were written by Ferguson
11,12
and
Goldberg.
13
Both of these deserve attention, but ap-
pear not to have received any.
There are however some positive developments
toward making the Master’s Degree the primary engi-
neering degree. MIT has embarked on this approach,
and descriptions of the program in Aeronautics and
Astronautics
14
and Electrical Engineering
15
are avail-
able. Other schools are also following this trend.
16
Virginia Tech has introduced a somewhat novel pro-
gram that combines the students from five participat-
ing departments in a program that requires two com-
mon core courses and department-specific courses to
allow the student to major in a particular degree.
17
There is one other significant development. As an
outgrowth of Boeing interest in engineering educa-
tion, a Industry University Government Roundtable
on Engineering Education (IUGREE) has been meet-
ing for the last several years. This organization dem-
onstrates a real commitment to engineering education
by the top management of the major companies in
the aerospace business. The results of this activity
have not been felt at the working level by educators,
although individual company efforts such as summer
programs to expose faculty to current practice have
been ongoing for several years. The work of this
group will be interesting to follow.
The educational dilemma — Perry’s theory of
development of college students
The problem of getting students to develop the atti-
tude toward aerodynamic analysis and design that in-
dustry seems to want has a direct connection to the
problem of development of college students identified
by Perry.
18
The educational theory community has
been aware of Perry’s model of development for many
years. It’s part of an education major’s basic course-
work. However, few engineers and engineering educa-
tors are aware of this theory.
2
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
The first author learned about it when he attended
the National Effective Teaching Institute, which has
been given by Rich Felder and Jim Stiles regularly in
association with the annual ASEE Conference. After
learning of the theory, details were found in the book
by Wankat and Oreovicz,
19
Mason read the chapter in
this book on Perry’s model and was astounded to see
a perfect description of his own students. Having
come from industry, his views on engineering educa-
tion were closely aligned to the assessments by Nico-
lai and McMasters. It turned out that engineering stu-
dents have simply not been pushed to develop to the
level of cognitive development required to satisfy the
request for an “engineering attitude.”
Table 1, which the first author constructed in
1993 to help digest the theory, shows the problem,
and warrants study. The characteristics that Nicolai
identified first in his list include the ability “to shift
back and forth between left and right brained activi-
ties”, “perform trade studies to make the compromises
necessary for achieving a balanced design”, “be able to
develop selection criteria considering all relevant is-
sues”. Examining the table, we can see that the char-
acteristics Nicolai is looking for most likely corre-
spond to a stage 5 or above on the development chart.
According to Wankat and Orevicz, a new engineering
graduate is unlikely to be at a stage 5 or above at
graduation. As a design teacher, Mason often ap-
proaches the group as if they were at stage 5. This is
a serious problem, students at stage 2 or 3 can’t even
understand the discussion of issues at a stage 5 level.
However, stage 5 has an special problem. In this
stage you start to question your life choices, spouse,
career, etc. It’s best to move quickly to a level of
commitment.
The problem is that most engineers, as well as
students, want a “right” answer to a problem. Even
though they are exposed to open-ended problem solv-
ing, students have a hard time actually working com-
fortably in this environment. Typically, they don’t
like the subjective grading associated with this type
of academic work. In general, the teachers don’t like
working with students in this manner either. Every-
body wants straightforward problems with unambigu-
ous answers. It matters little that this model, the
primary paradigm for engineering education, has noth-
ing to do with actual engineering practice. Although
the liberal arts courses often attempt to push the stu-
dents to move further up the development ladder by
stressing analysis of multifaceted problems, the per-
sonality types attracted to engineering seem not to
benefit from these courses. Whether the instruction is
inadequate or the students simply unwilling, the bene-
fits of this aspect of the liberal arts courses don’t
seem to be realized.
No matter how far along the mental development
path we are in areas we are familiar with, almost all
of us immediately revert to a stage 1 or 2 when faced
with an entirely new subject area. We want to know
the
answer, with no concern for the subtleties of the
subject.
As currently operated, engineering schools give
the students as much information as possible, as effi-
ciently as possible, with little regard for pushing the
students to move up the level of the development
ladder defined by Perry. There are of course a few ex-
ceptions. However, “diving in” and trying to relate to
students as seasoned engineers is doomed to failure.
Trying to teach students as if they were on stage 4 or
5, when they are actually at 2 or 3, will simply result
in frustration for both the students and the instructor.
One study has been published recently that pre-
sented the results for engineering students.
20
At the
Colorado School of Mines, they predicted that on
average, entering freshmen were at a stage of 3.27,
while students graduated at a stage of 4.28. This was
below their goal of stage 5 for graduates. There was a
wide variation in the student achievement. They found
that one third of their students were below stage 4 at
graduation. They thought that the improvement of
one stage on average over four years was a significant
achievement.
Industry must understand that they need to com-
plete the development of their engineers, providing a
way for their engineers to progress to levels 8 and 9
after they graduate. Viewed from this vantage point,
we can all understand the problem and tackle it con-
structively. In the intensely competitive global mar-
ket place it would appear critical to achieve a com-
petitive advantage for industry work toward this goal.
Opportunity: Computers and Education
Computers
per se
certainly aren’t new for aerospace
engineering or aerodynamics education. Sometimes it
appears that this a recent development. The first
author took a required FORTRAN course in the mid
’60s and was given plenty of programming assign-
ments as an undergraduate. Availability of a computer
was never a problem, although access was awkward.
*
The computer certainly played a role in education
even then.
However, with the advent of the personal com-
puter and the introduction of graphical interface
*
Today’s students haven’t seen a computer card and are
confused about why old input instruction manuals de-
scribe “card numbers.”
3
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
browsers, and finally, the possibility of platform in-
dependent computing through Java, computers can be
viewed in an entirely different light. Other key devel-
opments include platform independent document dis-
semination through Adobe’s PDF file format and free
Acrobat Reader, and spreadsheet and high level tools
such as MATLAB and Mathematica which are nearly
device independent. Opportunities to improve educa-
tion have come with this revolution and require care-
ful consideration. A staggering array of possibilities
exists, and educators have been introducing educa-
tional innovations for some years.
Some examples of applied aerodynamics oriented
instructional software include the programs from
Desktop Aeronautics by Ilan Kroo of Stanford,
21
originally developed for the Macintosh, work by Kurt
Gramoll and co-workers at Georgia Tech,
22
also for
the Macintosh, and by Higuchi from Syracuse,
23
again for a Macintosh. The first author jumped-the-
gun slightly by developing codes for programmable
calculators in the early ’80s.
24
This last effort demon-
strated the problem of developing programs that were
platform specific, and also failed to anticipate the
coming revolution in personal computers. We re-
viewed the general status of aerodynamic program
availability for classroom use several years ago.
25
We
have a web page extension of that paper with a cur-
rent assessment, intended for students in aircraft de-
sign.
26
Despite the widespread availability of software,
the impact on most engineering education appears to
be limited. A study by J.B. Jones of Virginia Tech
shows that that we are simply not yet realizing the
potential benefits from computer.
27
Before describing
our efforts to improve the situation, we will review a
couple of issues.
Computation in place of theory?
Our faculty have considered whether to de-
emphasize the theoretical content of our courses in
favor of a more application oriented approach. We
concluded that an emphasis on the fundamentals of
aerodynamic theory cannot be reduced. The power of
computers is such that very large calculations can be
made by a single junior engineer. Thus, we need to
make sure that the students are provided with the
theoretical basis for the computations being carried
out. In today’s environment the importance of a fun-
damental understanding of basic fluid mechanics is
even more important. Thus the issue becomes how to
provide this information. An approach that uses elec-
tronic means to aid the student, so that fundamentals
can be learned without requiring too much effort not
specifically germane to the study is required. This has
to done in a way that will move the student along
Perry’s stages.
Actual “programming” by undergraduates
With the introduction of high-level environments
such as spreadsheets, MATLAB and Mathematica, the
role of classical programming languages, and the em-
phasis on students learning them with any degree of
proficiency has arisen. It appears that engineers going
directly to work with a BS degree may not engage in
classical programming. Those that do often say that
FORTRAN was not used. Thus, practicing engineers
should be aware that while students use existing ap-
plications extensively, the emphasis on traditional
programming is diminishing rapidly. This is possibly
more important for the universities, where graduate
students are typically expected to do programming,
and their skills in this area are becoming very weak.
It appears counterproductive in a content-specific
course to have students struggle with programming,
when that skill has little to do with the specific
course material. This is an example of the problem of
trying to separate specific course material from engi-
neering skill in general.
A Solution: Use of Java in foundations courses
Several key courses offered in aerodynamics at Vir-
ginia Tech have moved to the web in large part.
These include the required undergraduate course in
compressible aerodynamics, the required junior year
undergraduate lab and the required first year graduate
course in theoretical aerodynamics. The purpose is to
improve student understanding by enhancing insight
into the material. A by-product is reduced cost in
terms of textbooks and the ability to refine the mate-
rial continuously.
Background
As described above, educators have realized the
value of computer-based tools for enhancing engineer-
ing education for some time. More recently, it has
become clear that the capability of the computer to
interact with its user, to compute and then display the
consequences of that interaction in a dynamic form,
provides an avenue for learning that is simply not
available in the classroom or textbook. Efforts de-
scribed above were platform specific, using the Mac-
intosh. Other efforts have been workstation based.
For the most part, the efforts have been local to
the course or institution where they were developed.
The fundamental problem was that programs were not
easily distributed and were not usually compatible
with more than one computer operating system. For
most educators, translation and distribution of soft-
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