This Publication Has Class

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INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER – VOLUME 47, NUMBER 5
BY MICHAEL HUGHES

Last year, San Jose State University’s professors started getting directives to include general education domain topics in senior design. Administrators dubbed the requirement to add “self, society and equality in the U.S.” or called “Area S” and “culture, civilization, and global understanding” or called “Area V.” Back then, Freund -one of the professors from San Jose State University- gave first semester senior project design students two types of assignments to facilitate teamwork, a necessary skill for IEs. One type had his charges summarize the content of a particular issue of the magazine, and every week a group of three or four-person would meet him to review their work while they developed a presentation. The second type is the presentation form the magazine summary.

Mantecon, who is scheduled to graduate soon took the challenge of melding this new edict with the idea of assigning topics from the magazine. The fall 2014 semester was worth one credit and was the first to integrate Area S. The second semester worth three credits, debuted the inclusion of Area V. Both classes are offered each semester for students who have met the prerequisites. The first assignment for Area S and Area V were the same, so he took different articles with various topics and then we have different assignments that are not associated with Industrial Engineer Magazine.

“What I’ve noticed from my perspective is that it links to the things that are happening in the real world, whether that’s research or actual applied projects,” Mantecon said. It gives students idea of where they can go after they graduated. Freund’s goal is to make transition on his students’ way of thinking toward a professional way of thinking. He also thought he could use Industrial Engineer magazine to introduce students to IIE and give explanation about the advantages they can get from the institute.

The variety of articles and authors at different points in their careers matched the needs of senior year engineering students. Freund looked at other magazines and compare it with Industrial Engineer, and he said that IE magazine is more readable for purpose of project courses and more diversified in terms of topics. It covered a lot of topics so they could see things they were studying reflected in articles that the magazine was publishing.