Co-op Syllabus

Professor: Lee L. Lowery, Jr., PhD, P.E.

 

 

 

Textbook used in course: None

Students interested in joining the co-op program should click here for initial instructions.

Catalog Description:  ENGR 385. Problems for Co-Op Students. Credit 1 to 3 each semester. I, II, S – Special problems in engineering for cooperative education students. Problems related to a student’s outside work assignment culminating in a research or work experience paper.  Prerequisite: Approval of department head.

Course Objectives:  To introduce the student to the principles of engineering through actual work experience.

Learning Outcomes

• (a) Ability to apply knowledge of basic mathematics, science, and engineering.
• (b) Ability to analyze and interpret data.
• (c) Ability to design a civil and/or ocean engineering system to meet desired needs.
• (e) Ability to formulate and solve civil and/or ocean engineering problems.
• (l) Ability to use computers to solve civil and/or ocean engineering problems.

Course Prerequisites: Approval of department head.

Course Assessment:

• Graded final report @ 50%
• Employer evaluation @ 50%

REPORT DUE DATES: A week or so before the end of the semester.  Because of signature requirements from the employer, this date is approximate.  You should never pay for overnight delivery of required documents.  Reasonable extensions are available upon request to Dr. Lowery.  NOTE: This deadline is the departmental deadline for your Co-op report and related materials that need to come to Dr. Lowery. This may differ from any materials that need to go to the Co-op Office.

Note that the following comments, suggestions, and reminders are intended to be supplemental to the materials prepared by the Office of Cooperative Education. Each co-op student should pick up copies of these guidelines from the Co-op Office on campus before beginning each work term. Some information will be repetitious to students on second or higher work terms but please check through everything to refresh your memory and make sure you get any more recent changes or additions.

Please note that I serve as “Co-op Advisor” for reports and report-related issues. Your regular Co-op advisor will continue to advise you on matters related to administrative issues pertaining to the co-op program.  Your regular C.E. Department advisor will continue to advise you on matters related to the curriculum, degree plans, etc.

My key task is keeping in touch with you, finding out how you are doing during your work experience, grading reports and handling questions related to your reports. You can contact me directly by e-mail at Lowery@tamu.edu or call me at 979-845-4395. You should email me a report on how you are doing, and what you are doing, and who you are doing it for at least every few weeks.

Reports

You should have already received information from the Co-op Office about accessing the “GUIDELINES FOR ENGINEERING CO-OP REPORTS” through the web. The following items are intended to supplement these guidelines for the reports and also provide additional information on other issues. Any CVEN directions or guidelines supersede or override the more general guidelines.

Students may do either a work experience report or research report. It would be my opinion that the work experience might be suitable for the first one or two terms, while for the third term, it may be more appropriate to write a research paper.  The following suggestions will help you in preparation of the papers.

Work Experience

For a work experience report, you should focus on your activities while on the co-op assignment. You may identify several activities that you have done during your work term. I am not looking for a daily diary of your activities. However, I suggest that you consider mentioning two to four activities in summary fashion. Each activity should be in the range of ½ to 1 page in length. It is important that at least one of your jobs be expanded to include the engineering significance or importance of that particular activity to the company or to the particular project you were working on. Such questions as the following may be addressed:

-What did you actually do? (Be specific and give details.) It is okay to use “I” when saying what you did.  (Click here for an actual example from a student.)
-How did that fit into the bigger picture for the company or the project?
-What were the engineering aspects of the activity? (Testing, measuring, calculations, reporting, etc.) Include engineering calculations where appropriate.
-References to methods or equipment used in your work should be included in this section.  Mention what type of equipment your used, what types of inspections you made, what computer programs you used in your analysis, what report writing tools,  …    Basically just list how you got your assignments accomplished.

A list or summary of what you did every day, kept in a spiral notebook, will be invaluable to help you quickly and easily write such a paper.  A few photos you took during construction and a few notes made of what you did will be invaluable, both for such a report, and to fill in your resume when you graduate, and later.

NOTE:  A copy of these papers and reports MUST be transmitted to me by email.  You can also send it by snail mail and insured for $500, but if (when) they get lost (and they will, I’ve seen it many times over the years) you have no proof you ever even wrote them and must start over.  I want an email of your evaluation from the company, an email of your evaluation of the company and your job, and an email copy of your final report, photos, figures, the whole thing.

Research Paper

For a research paper I would recommend that you choose a topic related to your work activity. It is not a requirement that you do this. You may be passionate about a subject that is not related to your work. If you are short on ideas, many of your supervisors will have suggested topics that you might write about or you can call or e-mail me and we can discuss subjects.

General Report Comments

If the company you are working for has strict proprietary/trade secret limitations about what you can write, please come to agreement with your supervisor about what you can write about generically, with key information omitted or altered. Also, you may work with me so that I am the only one viewing and grading the paper. Then, I can have the report shredded or returned to your supervisor.

1. At the end of the semester, you will send me a letter of transmittal, a copy of your signed report (Be sure to have your supervisor sign the cover page.), Co-op evaluation), and the employer evaluation form. A sample of letter of transmittal is attached to this memo. Please address your package as follows:

Dr. Lee Lowery, Jr.
Zachry Department of Civil Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-3136

1. Please keep a copy of your report so that I can keep the copy sent to me. As long as I get copies by email, I don’t need any hard copies.
2. Copies of your work experience evaluation and employer evaluation should be mailed to the TAMU Office of Cooperative Education. Be sure to make and retain a copy of the report and related documents for yourself just in case the others are lost in the mail. Submit the addendum on-line. You do not need to send a copy of your report to the Co-op office.
3. It is preferred that you send all materials by email, since that is the way all the rest of the world is going.  Thus if you use Word, and make copies of all figures and graphs and insert them into that document, you can simply email the report to Lowery@tamu.edu.  You can also make electronic copies of your evaluation documents and other materials and email them too.  If this is not possible (sometimes the documents are large sheets) that is ok, but I would prefer you get acquainted with electronic delivery.
4.  The posted report due dates to me for each work term are flexible. The report will hopefully be e-mailed by the due date to be considered “on time”.  I realize that circumstances will arise that prevent the report being submitted on time. In this event, please follow the procedures listed below.
5. Contact me by e-mail at lowery@tamu.eduor by phone (979-845-4395) to get permission for late submission, almost always granted.
6. Be sure to note in your letter of transmittal that we agreed to an extension and indicate the reason.
7. Please see the due dates on page 1.
8. If I do not receive a report, you will receive an incomplete which will turn into an F by the start of the following semester, about 5 months later.  I don’t do this, the University does it.  And if I remembered that I turned in an incomplete, I would contact you and make you cough up a report.  But I will never remember that 5 months later.  I just won’t.  Don’t risk getting an F; email a report to me. If there is a problem, I will try and work with you.
9. Also, don’t forget that the responsibility for ultimately submitting a late report rests with you the student. You will not be reminded that your report is late or overdue. Grades not changed from “I” will automatically be changed to “F” one semester later, as described in University policies.
10. Please encourage your supervisor to fill out your evaluation and if received, an ABET related evaluation form that may be sent to them as part of the online package of evaluation forms. This information is used by the College of Engineering, but is not always required unless we are in the accreditation process.

Detailed Guidelines

1. Follow the format of the sample title pages.
2. Follow the guidelines for the content of the Abstract. Remember that the entire report should be summarized in the Abstract. The abstract should include What, Why, How, and Results. Brevity is important; generally 150 words or about ½ a page is sufficient. The person reading the title of the report, the authors name and the abstract needs to be able to make a decision whether or not they want to read the paper or report. No mention of figures or references or page numbers should be included in the abstract.
3. Include page numbers and major subheadings in the Table of Contents. Number all pages in the report, including those in any appendices. Note that a List of Tables and List of Figures is required if you have figures and tables in your report.
4. The body of the paper should generally be divided into sections with each section having a descriptive title, such as “Introduction”, “Work Assignments”, “Summary”, etc. plus any subheadings.
5. Always try to include figures or tables on the same or following page after the first reference to them in the text. If for some reason the figure or table is not on the same or following page, then give the page number in parentheses. This will be a tremendous aid to the reader and avoid excessive thumbing through pages “hunting” for information. By the time it is found, the point may very well be lost. Also include the page number for any specific information in any Appendix that may be referred to in the main body of the report. This of course implies that all pages in the Appendix should be numbered as well. Each figure should have a number and descriptive title that is below the figure. Each table should have a number and descriptive title that is above the table.
6. Use an Appendix (or several) to place information containing “excessive detail”. This is admittedly somewhat of a judgment call, but simply try to be reasonable (put yourself in the place of the reader). All figures or calculations should not be automatically placed in an Appendix.
7. Each item listed in the References must be cited within the text somewhere. Note as well that every paper is required to have at least 5 references and not all can be “Personal Communications” or web based. Follow the format of the examples given in your Guidelines. List the references in alphabetical order or in the order they are used. Examples follow:

… research has shown that rectifiers generate heat (Hall, 1993). According to Wooldridge (1992) the human brain is a machine. Several studies confirm …  (Hall, 1993; Wooldridge, 1992; Smith et al., 1994; Jones and Smith, 1989).  {note separation by semicolons}

1. An acceptable alternate method for citing and listing references is to list them numerically in the order in which they are cited within the text. Follow the same format as the examples for listing the references but number them accordingly. Use square brackets [ ] and numbers to cite them in the text.

… research has shown that rectifiers are neat [1]. According to Wooldridge [2] the human brain is a machine². Several studies confirm …  [1, 2, 5, 8].

Best wishes for an enjoyable, productive, and educational work term.

FAQ

1. How long?
2. The paper should be around 10 pages in length, not counting appendices.

   Q. Where do titles and figure captions go?
   A. For tables the caption goes at the top, while for figures the caption goes underneath. This is the most common method for technical publications.

   Q. What font size and spacing should be used?
   A. Please use font size 12.

   Q. May I send my co-op report electronically?
   A. Yes, and that is greatly preferred.  Simply make pdf’s of your report in a single document, including figures, and email it to Lowery@tamu.edu.  Also, make pdf’s of all other signed documents such as your signed evaluations, etc.