The following were the 1996 objectives of the IMSE department:

Students will be able to

The IMSE department is currently in the second year of a new undergraduate curriculum. As of this spring, the first students will graduate under the new system. The key aspect of the new curriculum are the senior specialty areas. It is hoped that continued assessment will identify strengths and weaknesses in the senior specialty areas.

The following sections will detail the evaluation of the IMSE department.

The IMSE department assessment committee met and determined a set of assessment measures and their individual merit. The following are those measures and their merit.

Weighing the factors, three measures were determined. They are: senior project hosts, graduate surveys and faculty reviews. These three measures cover the product (student), process (faculty/curriculum) and user (employer).

This section will analyze the IMSE Department's progress in general and the status vis-à-vis each of the goals.

As industrial engineers, our graduates will be required to design and implement complex man-machine systems. The primary methods of assessment will be the senior design course, graduate surveys and faculty assessments.

ISE 445 is a senior design course in which the students perform actual engineering tasks for external organizations. In most cases, the students, in teams of two or three, work off-campus on a project specified by a practicing engineer. The students draw upon their class work and other experiences to successfully complete the project in two quarters.

The instructor sends to each team's outside manager an end of project review form in which they are asked questions about the student's professional performance. The topics include:

As with last year's report, the data compiled is from the 1995-6 year. Because of the early due date of the 1997 report, data from the outside engineers and managers is not ready. Figure 1 shows the grading directly from the outside reviewer.

The only strong negative response was from the company working with team 4. Subsequent telephone calls revealed that the problem existed with one of the company team members and that the team performed good work. In fact, the company signified that they might donate funds to the department. It is unclear as to why they graded the group so harshly. If the grades from team four are ignored, the bottom row would read: 4.00, 3.75, 3.75, 3.63, 3.50, 4.00, 3.75, 3.50.

The lowest scores involved analysis, communication, presentation and results. In the case of weak analysis, most reviewers that added comments responded that the work was close to the correct approach or solution. The lower score in "results", was in response to the fact that some organizations had not determined if the proposed solutions would be implemented. The communication and presentation scores indicate that our students are not communicating as well as they should.

In their work as engineers, our graduates apply the knowledge and skills that they learned in their major courses. Institutional Research conducts a yearly survey to determine student satisfaction with the courses in their major. Table 1 contains the results of the previous 5 years, with X representing the number of respondents and the percentage of all respondents in the next column under each year. Values for X were determined by multiplying p (proportion) by n (sample size). A visual analysis of the data indicates that the distribution has changed over the previous 5 years.

A goodness of fit test (c ²) was performed on the distribution obtained by adding all observations [f(x) = {0.08, 0.46, 0.44, .03} for x = (Extremely Satisfied, Very Satisfied, Somewhat Satisfied, Not At All Satisfied)]. The results of the goodness of fit test showed that the distribution has changed over time (significant with a = 0.005). We feel that the data suggests a positive trend toward improved satisfaction.

Much of the work an IMSE student performs in his or her classes is direct professional preparation. Consequently, it is very important that they leave here with both the knowledge and the skills to practice as engineers. Table 2, contains the results of the previous 5 years. The number of individuals responding could not be determined; (n x p) yielded non integers in several cases. A visual analysis of the data indicates that the distribution has changed over the previous 5 years. (Using the real numbers in the c ² showed no significant change.) It is evident that ISE students are responding with higher levels of satisfaction about their career preparation.

Many of our ISE students continue their education at OU or other institutions. In addition, as practicing industrial engineers, many of our students have the opportunity to work on advanced degrees through company programs. Therefore, the IMSE department prepares students for future academic work. Table 3, contains the results of the previous 5 years. The number of individuals responding could not be determined; (n x p) yielded non integers in several cases.

It can be seen from Table 3 that in each year the majority of respondents felt that OU prepared them very well for future academic work.

A survey of IMSE department faculty was conducted during the seventh week of the Spring 1997 quarter. Related to general education the faculty were asked to rate the senior students on the following skills: mathematics, science, computers, writing and design. The levels for each rating were: Deficient (0), Weak (1), Good (2), Strong (3) and Very Strong (4). The following list gives the average scores for each skill.

Based on the faculty survey, it appears that the ISE students are strongest in computer skills and software and weakest in writing and mathematics. A department wide effort should be made to increase the amount of written work required of our students. However, additional resources should be available to grade and manage the increased work load.

The limited scope and duration of the senior projects limits the project hosts capability to evaluate the students abilities to design and engineer a complete manufacturing facility. Also, given the current questions on the Institutional Research survey, this objective cannot be assessed from graduate data. The remaining method is faculty evaluation of the students.

Using the same faculty survey, the question have "students (demonstrated the skills to) properly engineer the design of manufacturing systems and their associated facilities." The response of the faculty were either good or strong, for an average of 2.33. Given this response, we conclude that the faculty feel that the students are capable of performing satisfactorily.

In their capstone senior design course, ISE 445, ISE majors will develop engineered solutions to real-world problems. In the process, the students develop cost justifications for their solutions and present them to the management of their sponsoring organization. Using the summary data from figure 1, student performance can be assessed. Questions 1, 6 and 7 best assess the students above student abilities.

#1 Professionalism "Did each group member act in a professional manner at all times?"

The response was almost universally A, or the highest possible. With such a strong response, ISE students demonstrated that they have the ability to perform their work in an ethical and professional manner.

#6 Recommendations "Were their recommendations practical and implementable?"

Again, the response was almost unanimously A. This high level of performance indicates that the students were able to use economic analysis and their engineering skills to recommend only sound, reasonable solutions.

#7 Presentation "Did they effectively communicate results/recommendations in their oral presentation?"

The responses from the outside sponsors were not as uniformly high for this question. While still high, ISE students might benefit from an increased number oral presentations in their courses.

The faculty were specifically questioned about the students' abilities in these three areas. In the first area, economic analysis, the faculty were split between good and strong, for a 2.50 average. Regarding oral and written communication skills, the response was more varied, ranging from weak to very strong and averaging 2.33. Lastly, the faculty felt that the students showed good or strong ethical judgment, with an average of 2.50. Overall, these scores indicate no major dissatisfaction with the students skills and the objective.

A major component of graduate education is faculty/student interaction. That is, a student’s major professor and committee members are often the best judge of the significance of a student's work. Consistent with the goal of making Ohio University a premier research institution, graduate student education and research should improve. The faculty of the IMSE department were asked a series of questions about the general skills of graduate students and specific questions about the level of graduate student research. The following section details the faculty's response to these questions.

Table 4 presents the results from the faculty survey. It can be seen that the faculty are generally satisfied with the students mathematical, science and computer skills. However, the writing and design skills are not considered adequate.

Table 4 Graduate Student Evaluations

With these skills and the education provided by Ohio University, these students are expected to perform research at an advanced level. Faculty were asked specifically to rate the research skills of graduate students using the same deficient to very strong scale. The response was varied with half the faculty rating performance as weak. The average was 1.67. Clearly, improvement is needed to bring OU up to the level anticipated.

Faculty were also asked to rate the quality of work performed by graduate students in the ISE program. These scores were slightly higher, averaging 2.00. As an overall measure, the faculty assessed the level of thesis work and the response was 1.83, also low.

As a final measure of graduate student performance, the faculty were asked three yes/no questions about student performance: one in a general context and the other two in relation to scholarly standards. First asked if graduate students performed at an advanced level, 33% responded yes. When asked: "Do you feel that work performed by the graduate students can be considered for refereed publications without significant contributions from a faculty member?" 0% of faculty responded yes. When "conference publication" was substituted for "refereed publications" 33% responded yes.