Assessment and Outcomes

The Mission of College of Engineering at Tennessee Technological University states, "Through education, research, and service we will prepare our graduates to integrate their experience as engineers and technologists with cultural understanding to improve life in the region and the world."

The doctoral program in engineering strives to accomplish the mission in whole, more particularly, in research. The degree is a research based one which requires that the graduate demonstrate his/her capability to perform scientifically valid engineering research to find solutions to appropriate problems faced by industry and society in general. The educational aspect of the program delves in preparing the student to gain the knowledge and confidence to perform such research work.

Ph.D. Enrollments and Graduations Fall 2000 - Summer 2005

Term	Enrollment1	Graduated	No.	Time
Fall 2000	31	3	1	3 yrs.
			1	3 yrs.
			1	5 yrs. + 2 sem
Spring 2001	30	2	1	2 yrs + 2 sems
			1	5 yrs. + 2 sem
Summer 2001	NA	1	1	2 yrs + 2 sems
Fall 2001	29	2	2	3 yrs.
Spring 2002	29	2	1	3 yrs + 2 sems
			1	6 yrs. + 2 sems
Summer 2002	NA	2	1	2 yrs. + 2 sems.
			1	3 yrs.
Fall 2002	31	2	1	2 yrs + 1 sem
			1	4 yrs.
Spring 2003	33	3	1	2 yrs + 2 sems
			1	3 yrs + 1 sem
			1	3 yrs + 2 sems
Summer 2003	NA	2	1	4 yrs.
			1	4 yrs + 2 sems
Fall 2003	43	1	1	5 yrs + 2 sems
Spring 2004	47	1	1	5 yrs + 1 sem
Summer 2004	NA	3	1	4 yrs
			1	4 yrs. + 1 sem.
			1	9 yrs.
Fall 2004	48	4	1	3 yrs
			1	3 yrs + 1 sem
			1	4 yrs + 1 sem
			1	5 yrs + 1 sem
Spring 2005	47	1	1	3 yrs. + 2 sems
Summer 2005	NA	*2 expected	1	3 yrs
			1	3 yrs + 2 sems
			1	4 yrs
			1	5 yrs

¹ Enrollment data captured for Fall and Spring terms only per Institutional Research Tech Trends.

³ One year equals three terms (Fall, Spring, Summer).

Completion time counted from first term enrolled through term graduated. Includes any break.

Employment and Publications of

Fall 2000 -Summer 2005

ID No.	Term Graduated	Recent Known Employment	Publication(s)
1	2000 Fall	Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA	1. Convection Heat Transfer Measurements to Fine Stationary Wires with Application to Fiber Dry Spinning, Heat Transfer Engineering, Accepted for publication, 2005
			2. A Comprehensive One-Dimensional Model of Fiber Dry Spinning, Heat Transfer Engineering, Accepted for publication, 2005
			3. An Improved 1D Fiber Dry Spinning Mass Transfer Model, Mechanics Research Communications, Vol. 29, 2002, pp. 351-357
			4. Theoretical Modeling of the Acetone Removal Process, Final Report, Eastman Chemical Co., 1999
2	2000 Fall	SPX Contech Metalforge Miskawaka, IN	1. Team Based Interventions: When You 'Haven't Got The Time', Presented at Southwestern Academy of Management, Feb. 28 - March 3, 2001
			2. Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Design Team-Building: A 45-Minute Investment Pays Off, Proceedings of the 1998 ASEE National Convention, July 1998
3	2000 Fall	Not available	Not Known
4	2001 Spring	BFGoodrich Aerospace, Fuel and Utility Systems Vergennes, VT	Not Known
5	2001 Spring	Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA	1. Transverse Vibration of Elastic-viscoelastic-elastic Sandwich Beams, Part I: Compression-Experimental and Analytical Study, Journal of Sound and Vibration, Vol. 252 (1), pp. 155-167, 2002
6	2001 Summer	TTU, Cookeville, TN	1. Computational Study of Secondary Air Flow in Wall-Fired Fossil Units, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Hydrodynamics, Tainan, Taiwan, pp. 511-516, Oct. 31- Nov. 2, 2002
7	2001 Fall	IMPulse NC, Inc., Mt. Olive, NC	Not Known
8	2001 Fall	MTSU	1. Polish Resistance of Tennessee Bituminous Surface Aggregates
			2. Polish Resistance of Rogers Group, Inc. Gordonsville Limestone
			3. Predicting Tennessee Pavement Frictional Performance with Coarse Aggregate Tests
9	2002 Spring	Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA	1. with Ventrice; The Equilibrium Shape of Re-fueling Pellets Exposed to Fusion Plasmas, Presented at the DPP98 Meeting of The American Physical Society, New Orleans, LA, November 1998, also in Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 43, 1874, 1998
			2. with Ventrice; Radial Movement of Pellet Ablation Material in Tokamaks Due to the Grad-B Effect, Presented at the DPP98 Meeting of The American Physical Society, New Orleans, LA, November 1998, also in Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 43, 1874, 1998
			3. With Ventrice; Three-Dimensional Simulation of Ablation Cloudlets in Tokamaks, APS – Division of Plasma Physics, Seattle, Washington, November 1999
10	2002 Spring	Not available	1. With Sekar; Study of Linear Models in Steady State Analysis of Power Systems, Proceedings of the 33rd Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, pp. 127-131, Athens, OH, March 2001
11	2002 Summer	Not available	1. With Sekar; Graph Theory Application to Deregulated Power System, Proceedings of the 33rd Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, March 2001.
			2. With Sekar; Identify Overloaded Transmission Lines in TTC and ATC Determination, Proceedings American Power Conference, October 2004
12	2002 Summer	Assistant Professor, Dept of Civil Engineering, Louisiana Tech University	Not Known
13	2002 Fall	NASA, Huntsville, AL	1. Development of a Pressure-Dependent Constitutive Model with Combined Multilinear Kinematic and Isotropic Hardening, 2004 Abaqus Users’ Conference
			2. Hydrostatic Stress Effect on the Yield Behavior of Inconel 100, Journal of Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Vol. 15, Nos. 1-2, 2004
14	2002 Fall	Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, TN	1. Phosphor Thermometry in an Operating Turbine Engine, 41st AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, Tucson, AZ, July 2005
15	2003 Spring	TTU, Cookeville, TN	1. Improved Development Cycle of a Spatial Compliant Manipulator, Proc. of the 2003 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Chicago, IL, Sept. 2-6, DETC2003/MECH-48805, 2003
			2. Development of a Spatial Compliant Manipulator, International Journal of Robotics and Automation, Vol. 17, Issue 1, pp. 63-72, 2002
			3. Optimization and Control of a Spatial Compliant Manipulator, Proc. of the 2002 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Montreal, Canada, DETC2002/MECH-34201, 2002
			4. Development of Parallel Architecture Spatial Compliant Manipulators, ASME 2001 Design Engineering Technical Conference, Pennsylvania, September 9-12, 2001
16	2003 Spring	University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY	1. Two-Dimensional Hyperbolic Conduction with Temperature Dependent Properties, J. Thermophysics and Heat Transfer, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 285-287, 2004
			2. A Numerical Solution of Two-Dimensional Hyperbolic Heat Conduction with Nonlinear Boundary Conditions, Heat and Mass Transfer Journal, Vol. 39, pp. 499-507, 2003
			3. An Explicit TVD Numerical Scheme for Hyperbolic Heat Conduction in Complex Geometry, Numerical Heat Transfer, Part B, Vol. 41, pp. 1-26, 2002
			4. Numerical Solution of Two-Dimensional, Axisymmetric Hyperbolic Heat Conduction, Journal of Computational Mechanics, Vol. 29, pp. 122-128, 2002
17	2003 Spring	Unilux Boilers, Niskayuna, NY	Not Known
18	2003 Summer	Hisense Co. Ltd., Beijing, China	1. With Rajan; Multiple Description Coding Using Transforms and Data Fusion, Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Digital and Computational Video (DCV 2002), Clearwater, FL, November 21-22, 2002, pp. 192-199.
			2. With Rajan; Image Coding Based on Multi-Wavelet Transform, Proceedings of the International Signal Processing Conference, Dallas, Texas, March 31-April 3, 2003
			3. With Rajan; Transforms Based on Bi-Orthogonal Wavelet and SVD, Proceedings of the International Signal Processing Conference, Dallas, Texas, March 31-April 3, 2003
			4. With Rajan; Multiple Description Coding Using Transforms and Data Fusion, Proceedings of International Conference on Information Technology (ITCC 2005), Las Vegas, Nevada, April 4-6 2005, Vol. 1, pp. 85-90
19	2003 Summer	NeuroDimension, Inc., Gainesville, FL	1. With Rajan; Independent Component Analysis of Digital Image Watermarking, Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, March 26-29, 2002, Scottsdale, AZ, Vol. 3, pp. III-217 – III-220
			2. With Rajan; Supergaussian Data Denoising using Semi-ICA Estimation, Proceedings of 37th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, March 20-22, 2005, Tuskegee, AL, pp. 475-480
20	2004 Fall	NASA, Huntsville, AL	1. Multivariate Parameter Sets for Optimization of Compliant Mechanisms, 2005 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Long Beach, CA, 2005
			2. Optimal Synthesis of Compliant Mechanisms Using Subdivision and Commercial FEA, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, in press, 2004
			3. Modeling and Control of Shape Memory Alloys Using Cylindrical Concentrators, Mechatronics, Vol. 14, pp. 757-775, 2004
21	2004 Fall	Sandvik Coromant, Mebane, NC	Not Known
22	2004 Fall	LHP Software, LLC, Columbus, IN	Not Known
23	2004 Fall	Not available	Not Known
24	2005 Spring	Not available	1. with Mahajan and Collett; Optimization of Torque on an Optically Driven Micromotor by Manipulation of the Index of Refraction, Proceedings of SPIE, Vol. 5641, pp. 300-308, International Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, Beijing, China, November 2004

Program Outcomes and Assessment

1. Increase the enrollment to 50 students in order to exceed comfortably the critical mass of students needed to maintain the program without overstressing the faculty resources. The enrollment in Fall 2004 was 48 students compared to 31 students five years back and well on the way to reaching the goal of 50 students. (See Table 1 - PhD Enrollments and Graduations Fall 2000 - Summer 2005) Historically the vast majority of doctoral students were from ECE and ME departments. Within the past two years ChE and CEE departments have also developed plans to increase their participation and therefore we are on target to reach the goal.
2. Graduate 7 students per year. Table 1 shows the number of graduates by semesters since Fall 2000 which varied from 5 to 7 per year. The recent enrollment increases should result in increased graduation rates and we expect to accomplish the goal in the next two years as we have sufficient number of students enrolled and making progress.
3. Graduates employed in positions of responsibility in teaching and/or research. Table 2 shows the last known employment positions of recent graduates. It appears our graduates are working at academic institutions, industry or government with responsibility for research and teaching. The research publications of the students showing their continued professional activity are also shown in Table 2.

Papers Presented by Doctoral Students at Professional Meetings

Student	Major	Meeting and Date	Presentation Title
Dong, Gan	ECE	IEE/Industrial Applications Society 39th Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA; Oct. 2004	A Generalized Over-Modulation Methodology for Current Regulated Three-Phase Voltage Source Converters. (with Olorunfemi Ojo)
Gray, Audley	ECE	IEE Southeast Conference, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; April 2005	Power Factor Improvement using Fuzzy Logic Control of an AC Synchronous Motor.
Liu, Ning	ECE	SSST '05 Conference, Tuskegee, AL; March 2005	Robust and Adaptable Job Shop Scheduling Using Multiple Agents (with Mohamed Abdelrahman and Srini Ramaswamy)
Osaloni, Olufemi	ECE	SSST '05 Conference, Tuskegee, AL; March 2205	Integrated AC/DC Systems Power Flow Solution Using Newton-Raphson and Broyden Approaches. (with Ghadir Radman)
Shukla, Meera	ECE	SSST '05 Conference, Tuskegee, AL; March 2005	Optimal Power Flow Using Probabilistic Load Model. (with Ghadhir Radman)
Wu, Zhiqiao	ECE	IEE/Industrial Applications Society 39th Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA; Oct. 2004	High Performance Speed Sensorless Control of an Induction Motor Drive Using a Minimilast Single-Phase PWM Converter. (with Olorunfemi Ojo and Gan Dong)
Zhou, Ling	ME	10th AIAA/ISSMO Conference, Albany, NY; Aug. 2004	Uncertainty Analysis in the Preliminary Stage for Robust Multidisciplinary Design. (with Ken Currie)

Learning Outcomes and Assessment

1. The student should gain breadth of knowledge in the discipline and depth in the specific area of research topic. The advisory committee is responsible for the development of a program of study including advanced level courses in the discipline and verification that the student takes the courses prescribed. The comprehensive exam is taken at the end of the course work part of the program. The comprehensive exam, administered by the committee, tests the student's breadth and depth knowledge and the readiness to undertake independent research. A student performing successfully on the comprehensive examination has demonstrated the learning of the subject matters and the capability to perform research in the chosen area. The original paper copies of the comprehensive examination are kept in the departmental office for at least 10 years.
2. The student should learn and gain experience in doing independent academic work. The student is required to take at least 12 hours of course work at the 7000 level which requires significant independent work (laboratory, library, or industry), in addition to the regular class work. This is verified by the committee and the college office before the student is permitted to take the comprehensive examination.
3. The student should demonstrate his/her ability to identify and define the engineering research problem. The student meets this expected outcome by developing the research proposal and by obtaining the approval of the same from the committee.
4. The research work performed by the student should be of such a level to contribute to the existing knowledge in the engineering field. First, the student defends the research work to the advisory committee and other professionals in an open meeting by describing the work and answering questions to their satisfaction. Secondly, the students are encouraged to present papers at professional meetings and also publish in journals. Table 3 lists the presentations made by students at professional meetings during 2004-05.

Assessment Results and Adjustments and Modifications to the Program

The Chemical Engineering Department and Civil and Environmental Engineering Department are being encouraged to increase their participation in the Ph.D. program. Recent new faculty hires in these department have been more research oriented and interested in Ph.D. program. This is already showing up as increased enrollment in the program. In three to four years, more graduates will be expected to come out of the program.

The student learning assessment aspect is a continuous process and is less formal because of the relatively small number of students enrolled. However based on such assessments, the following modifications have been implemented.

1. Every student will undergo a preliminary assessment of his/her knowledge in the chosen field. This will be performed by the respective department prior to finalizing the program of study.
2. The comprehensive examination will be prepared and administered by the advisory committee when the student has completed most of the required course work. All parts of the examination will be given over a two week period instead of over a semester as was done in previous years.
3. Actively encourage students to present papers in professional meetings in front of peers and defend their work.