Works in Progress: Impact of First-Year Micro-/Nano-Technology Research Project Course on Future Research and Graduate/Professional School Involvement

摘要

The first-year engineering program at The Ohio State University provides honors students with the option to undertake a research and development design project with a focus on lab-on-a-chip (LOC) and nanotechnology applications. This project is an alternative to a robot design-build course which has a focus on mechanical engineering and computer programming. This paper will ask the evidence-based practice question: "Does a research and development design project course influence a student's decision to become involved in future research projects and pursue higher education in the form of graduate and professional school?" We hypothesize that a significantly greater percentage of the research project course alumni will be involved in various research roles and activities and pursue higher education as compared to the alumni from the robot design course. To measure future research involvement, alumni who have completed the first-year engineering honors program within the past four years have been surveyed. As LOCs and nanotechnology have many applications in medicine, many students that enroll in this course are biomedical engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering majors.