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 Engineering
Societies
and
Undergraduate
Engineering
Education
PROCEEDINGS OF A WORKSHOP

Steve Olson, Rapporteur

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS

Washington, DC
www.nap.edu
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

This activity was supported by grant No. EEC-1360962 from the National Science
Foundation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in
this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency
that provided support for the project.

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-46466-6

International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-46466-8
Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.17226/24878
Epub ISBN: 978-0-309-46469-7

Additional copies of this publication are available for sale from the National
Academies Press, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Keck 360, Washington, DC 20001; (800)
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Copyright 2017 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Suggested citation: National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Societies

and Undergraduate Engineering Education: Proceedings of a Workshop.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/248
78.
The National Academy of Sciences was established in 1863 by
an Act of Congress, signed by President Lincoln, as a private,
nongovernmental institution to advise the nation on issues related to
science and technology. Members are elected by their peers for
outstanding contributions to research. Dr. Marcia McNutt is
president.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964

under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences to bring the
practices of engineering to advising the nation. Members are elected
by their peers for extraordinary contributions to engineering. Dr. C.
D. Mote, Jr., is president.

The National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of

Medicine) was established in 1970 under the charter of the National
Academy of Sciences to advise the nation on medical and health
issues. Members are elected by their peers for distinguished
contributions to medicine and health. Dr. Victor J. Dzau is president.

The three Academies work together as the National Academies of

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activities to solve complex problems and inform public policy
decisions. The National Academies also encourage education and
research, recognize outstanding contributions to knowledge, and
increase public understanding in matters of science, engineering,
and medicine.

Learn more about the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,

and Medicine at www.nationalacademies.org.
Consensus Study Reports published by the National Academies of
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of task.

Proceedings published by the National Academies of Sciences,

Engineering, and Medicine chronicle the presentations and
discussions at a workshop, symposium, or other event convened by
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proceedings are those of the participants and are not endorsed by
other participants, the planning committee, or the National
Academies.

For information about other products and activities of the National

Academies, please visit www.nationalacademies.org/about/whatwed
o.
 STEERING COMMITTEE

Leah Jamieson (NAE), Chair, The John A. Edwardson Dean,

College of Engineering, and Ransburg Distinguished Professor of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University
Stephanie Adams, Dean, Frank Batten College of Engineering and
Technology, Old Dominion University
Marilyn Barger, Principal Investigator and Executive Director,
Florida Advanced Technological Education Center of Excellence
(FLATE), Hillsborough Community College
Steven Brown, Professor, Counseling Psychology Program School
of Education, Loyola University
Don Giddens (NAE), Dean Emeritus, College of Engineering,
Georgia Tech
Asad Madni (NAE), Former President, Chief Operating Officer, and
Chief Technology Officer, BEI Technologies Inc.
Tom Perry, Director, Engineering Education, ASME
Anne Spence, Professor of the Practice, University of Maryland,
Baltimore County
John Wall (NAE), Vice President and Chief Technical Officer (ret.),
Cummins, Inc.
Gregory Washington, The Stacey Nicholas Dean of Engineering,
University of California, Irvine

Wendy Cowan, AAES Observer

NAE Project Staff

Proctor Reid, Director of Programs
Kenan Jarboe, Senior Program Officer
Carl Anderson, Program Coordinator
Michael Holzer, Senior Program Assistant
Jason Williams, Senior Financial Assistant (until May 12, 2017)
 Acknowledgments

This Proceedings of a Workshop was reviewed in draft form by

individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical
expertise. The purpose of this independent review is to provide
candid and critical comments that will assist the National Academy of
Engineering in making each published proceedings as sound as
possible and to ensure that it meets the institutional standards for
quality, objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the charge. The
review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to
protect the integrity of the process.
We thank the following individuals for their review of this
proceedings:

Monitor:
John L. Anderson, Distinguished Professor of Chemical
Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology

Reviewers:
Stephanie G. Adams, Dean, Batten College of Engineering and
Technology, Old Dominion University
Nicholas L. Desport, Colonel (Ret.), USAF, Deputy Executive
Director and Director of Programs, Membership and Post
Operations, Society of American Military Engineers
Michael Gross, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry,
Wake Forest University
 Elizabeth Holloway, Assistant Dean of Engineering for
Undergraduate Education and Director of Women in Engineering
Program, College of Engineering, Purdue University
Harriet B. Nembhard, School Head and Eric R. Smith Professor of
Engineering, Department of Mechanical, Industrial and
Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University
James M. Tien (NAE), Distinguished Professor and Dean Emeritus,
College of Engineering, University of Miami
Phillip Westmoreland, Professor, Department of Chemical and
Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University, and
Director, Southeast Regional Manufacturing Center, Clean-
Energy Smart Manufacturing Institute™

Although the reviewers listed above provided many constructive

comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the
content of the proceedings nor did they see the final draft before its
release. The review of this proceedings was overseen by Janet
Hunziker, senior program officer with the National Academy of
Engineering. She was responsible for making certain that an
independent examination of this proceedings was carried out in
accordance with standards of the National Academies and that all
review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the
final content rests entirely with the rapporteur(s) and National
Academy of Engineering.
In addition to the workshop presenters, moderators, and session
rapporteurs, we especially thank those individuals who presented so
succinctly during the lightning round: Karin Anderson, Nichol
Campana, Chris Ciuca, Bob Fine, Jim Hill, Libby Jones, Glenda La
Rue, Larry Larson, Aisha Lawrey, Cathy Leslie, Bill Mahoney, Leslie
Nolan, Melissa Prelewicz, Karl Reid, Randi Rosebluth, Constance
Thompson, Kris Ward, Bill Wepfer, and Phil Westmoreland.
 Contents

1 Introduction, Background, and Organization of the Report

Background to the Workshop
Organization of the Workshop Proceedings

2 An Ecosystem Perspective
The Professional Formation of Engineers
The Roles of Professional Societies
A New Funding Model

3 The State of Engineering Education

The Attraction of Engineering
Implications for Engineering Education
Today’s Engineering Students
The Role of Professional Societies

4 The Need for Effective Assessment

An Assessment-Based Framework
Challenges to Effective Outreach
Applying What Engineers Practice
The Need for Leadership

5 Engineering Society Activities

What Societies Do
How Societies Do What They Do: Issues, Problems, and Barriers
Faced and Overcome
6 From Analysis to Action
Discussion Topics Raised in Lightning Rounds
Discussion Topics Chosen by Participants
Concluding Remarks

Appendixes

A Workshop Agenda
B Survey and Interviews
C Committee and Speaker Biographies
D Participants List
 1

Introduction, Background,
and Organization of the
Report

Engineering professional societies in the United States are engaged

in a wide range of activities involving undergraduate education.
However, these activities generally are not coordinated and have not
been assessed in such a way that information about their procedures
and outcomes can be shared. Nor have they been assessed to
determine whether they are optimally configured to mesh with
corresponding initiatives undertaken by industry and academia.
Engineering societies work largely independently on undergraduate
education, leaving open the question of how much more effective
their efforts could be if they worked more collaboratively—with each
other as well as with academia and industry.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has long been interested
in the role of professional societies in all levels of science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. To
explore the potential for enhancing societies’ role at the
undergraduate level, it asked the National Academy of Engineering
(NAE) to hold a workshop on the engagement of engineering
societies in undergraduate engineering education. The workshop
was held January 26–27, 2017, in Washington, DC. (The workshop
agenda is in appendix A.)
In her introduction at the workshop, Leah Jamieson, chair of the
workshop steering committee and the John A. Edwardson Dean of
Engineering and Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at Purdue University, noted that the goal was
to increase “mutual understanding of what engineering societies are
doing and can do.”
Societies are involved in education in many ways, Jamieson said. A
longtime active member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, she has worked throughout her career on involving
professional societies more effectively in undergraduate engineering
education. She noted that one obvious point of connection between
professional societies and engineering education is through
accreditation, including the criteria established by the Accreditation
Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). She added, “ABET is
a well-known mechanism of engagement, but our goal is to look
beyond ABET.”
Jamieson identified three questions to be addressed by workshop
participants:

1. How to promote more effective roles for societies in the

education of undergraduates.
2. How to increase mutual understanding between societies
and academic institutions.
3. How to foster collaboration.

Creating change requires thinking creatively about what

engineering societies can do separately and together, what they can
learn from each other, how they can serve both their own objectives
and those of students, and how much more they can do
collaboratively than on their own, Jamieson said. Larger and more
extensive partnerships can tackle bigger problems, she pointed out,
including systemic challenges.
 Proctor Reid, director of the NAE Program Office, observed that
the NAE is especially well placed to convene a broad range of
organizations and individuals with a stake in undergraduate
engineering education. The members of the Academy are leaders in
industry (40–50 percent have significant industry experience),
academia, government, nonprofit organizations, and other sectors.
NAE committees and other activities involve both members and
other volunteers with wide-ranging backgrounds and viewpoints. In
this way, he said, the Academy seeks “to marshal the expertise of
the nation’s eminent engineers to provide independent advice on
matters that involve engineering and technology.”

BACKGROUND TO THE WORKSHOP

To establish a foundation for the workshop discussions, a survey,
interviews, website review, and literature review were conducted
beforehand and summarized in the opening session.

Survey Results and Interviews

A survey of 121 engineering-related societies resulted in 58
responses, after which 30 interviews were conducted with
representatives of the responding societies.1 The results reveal that
the respondents are engaged in a range of education activities that
target a variety of audiences (see appendix B). Goals of these
activities include leadership development, diversity enhancement,
and student retention. “Somebody is working toward almost any
goal you could imagine,” reported Jamieson. Activities include
student chapters, faculty development, continuing education,
certification, and member communication.
Undergraduate education is not the top priority of most of the
societies surveyed but ranks highly across many: 50 percent of the
small and medium-sized societies rank undergraduate students as a
high-priority audience for their education efforts, as do 65 percent of
the large societies and 83 percent of the extra-large societies.2 Most
of the societies focus on creating greater awareness of the
importance of engineering in general or of a particular engineering
discipline.
Asked about barriers to change, survey respondents identified
communications, resistance to change, and limited time, funding,
and other resources. A subanalysis revealed that affinity societies are
more likely to report barriers than are disciplinary societies.3
The responding societies do not devote many resources to
evaluation and assessment of their educational activities, beyond
simply counting the number of participants in an activity. But they
expressed interest in evaluating the impact of their programs in
more coherent, rigorous, and longitudinal ways.
A majority of societies (85 percent) consider themselves leaders in
the educational field. Yet half rate themselves as having low or
“some” capacity to plan and implement education work; 38 percent
report that their capacity is high, and 12 percent that it is very high.
Societies’ efforts to disseminate their practices are largely limited
to their own memberships (via conferences, newsletters, meetings,
and other means), but respondents indicated that they are
interested in sharing practices beyond their membership.
Finally, societies report a number of gaps in engineering education
that educators and engineering organizations could address,
including precollege education, faculty preparation for teaching,
design education, and two-year preparation programs.
Jenifer Helms of Inverness Research Associates, which conducted
the survey, pointed out that close to 90 percent of respondents said
that they are partnering or collaborating with other societies in some
way, and more than three quarters partner with other organizations.
“There’s certainly a lot of capacity and desire to engage in
partnerships and opportunities to learn how these partnerships and
collaborations are established and sustained,” she said.

Literature and Website Review

The literature review revealed that formal documentation of the
influence of engineering societies on undergraduate engineering
education is limited. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE)
Body of Knowledge project4 is one outstanding exception, noted
Jamieson, as is the work of ABET. The literature also provides some
information on student chapters, the roles of societies in promoting
diversity, and informal education activities such as community
service projects.
A review of 122 websites associated with engineering societies
revealed that almost all have some form of direct engagement with
students—if not necessarily with engineering education—mainly
through student memberships and student chapters.5 In addition,
about one quarter offer some form of financial assistance such as
travel grants to meetings or scholarship support. More than three
quarters have some form of indirect engagement through technical
publications, standard setting, and educational research articles and
briefs. However, the websites of societies contain little or no
evidence of how these activities relate to the effectiveness of the
societies’ engagement with students, such as student retention or
preparedness to enter the workforce.

ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS

The material presented at the workshop is organized into six
chapters. After this introductory chapter, chapter 2 describes the
“ecosystem” for engineering education presented by Elliot Douglas,
program director in the NSF Division of Engineering Education and
Centers. His talk established a context for the workshop discussions.
Chapter 3 summarizes the keynote address on the state of
engineering education by Darryll Pines, dean and Nariman Farvardin
Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland’s
Clark School of Engineering.
Chapter 4 provides an account of the presentation by Barbara
Bogue and Betty Shanahan, principal investigator and co–principal
investigator of the Society of Women Engineers’ (SWE) Assessing
Women and Men in Engineering project, about the importance of
effective assessment.
 Chapter 5 presents brief summaries of educational activities being
conducted by engineering societies. These “lightning” presentations
are divided in two categories: examples of what societies are doing
and of how they are doing what they do (i.e., overcoming concerns,
problems, and barriers).
Finally, chapter 6, “From Analysis to Action,” compiles the
suggestions of subgroups that met during the two days of the
workshop to discuss specific issues and propose ways to enhance
the engagement of engineering societies in undergraduate
engineering education.

__________________
1 The 121 societies represented an attempt to reach out to all engineering-
related societies in the United States (some responded that engineering was not
their only priority). Representatives of the societies included executive directors,
presidents, chief executive officers, chairs of boards of directors, staff officers, and
directors of education or university programs.
2 Small societies are those with a membership of under 1,000; medium with a
membership of 1,000 to 9,999; large 10,000 to 49,999; and extra-large with over
50,000 members.
3 Disciplinary societies are those organized around a specific professional
discipline, such as the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and Society of
Manufacturing Engineers (SME). Affinity societies are those organized around a
specific demographic group or nondisciplinary interests, such as the Society of
Women Engineers (SWE), National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), and
Engineers Without Borders (EWB).
4 See www.asce.org/civil_engineering_body_of_knowledge.
5 The website review covered the 121 societies identified for the survey plus
ABET.
 2

An Ecosystem Perspective

Future engineers take many pathways through the educational

system, said Elliot Douglas, program director in the Division of
Engineering Education and Centers at the National Science
Foundation. They are subject to many influences and bring their own
characteristics and educational trajectories to their undergraduate
experiences. For these reasons, thinking of engineering education as
a leaky pipeline can be misleading. A better metaphor, he said, is
that of a much larger ecosystem—of which engineering education is
a part—characterized by myriad proximal and distal interactions
among a large number of actors and influences.

THE PROFESSIONAL FORMATION OF ENGINEERS

Professional societies are a prominent part of this ecosystem. Their
influence on students is often indirect, observed Douglas, although
in some cases they work directly with students. But they influence
many other parts of the system, and these other parts can influence
undergraduate engineering education.
Because the influence of engineering societies is often indirect,
NSF has not previously focused directly on their role in
undergraduate engineering education, Douglas noted. However, the
development of a new NSF initiative called the Professional
Formation of Engineers has expanded the foundation’s interests from
engineering education narrowly defined to the formation of an
engineering identity, which has in turn increased attention on
professional societies.
The professional formation of engineers encompasses the formal
and informal processes and value systems by which people become
engineers, Douglas explained. Elements include:

introduction to the profession at any age

acquisition of deep technical and professional skills,
knowledge, and abilities in both formal and informal settings
and domains
development of outlooks, perspectives, and ways of thinking,
knowing, and doing
development of identity as an engineer and its intersection
with other identities
acculturation to the profession, its standards, and its norms.

THE ROLES OF PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES

Professional societies are involved in all these elements, Douglas
observed. As one example, he pointed to recent discussion of the “T-
shaped” engineer who combines both breadth of knowledge and
depth of expertise (or the ability to apply knowledge across
situations as well as functional/disciplinary skills).
To develop breadth, students need an understanding of how their
field interfaces with other fields. They also need skills such as
communication, critical thinking, metacognition, and leadership,
Douglas said. Students with these abilities have the potential to
become adaptive experts, able to restructure knowledge depending
on the situation. Professional societies can help establish the norms
and expectations that build such expertise.
Societies also influence thinking about diversity, including not just
the representation and presence of diverse people but the inclusion
of diverse perspectives, knowledge of different social identity
groups, and considerations of social justice (including power,
privilege, and oppression). Douglas characterized engineering as a
sociotechnical profession, not just a technical profession, involving
noncognitive factors, such as motivation and self-regulation, as well
as cognitive factors. Educational success often depends on social
connections with communities, families, and social groups. (Lack of
social capital is also why first-generation college students can face
higher barriers to success, Douglas noted.) These are all factors in
the broad ecosystem of engineering education.
The traditional way of doing engineering has been to solve specific
problems. This approach to engineering may be why longitudinal
studies have found that belief in the importance of engineering’s
impact on society gradually diminishes among engineering students.
Some educational programs are countering this approach and
trend by focusing on the humanitarian and social justice aspects of
engineering. Furthermore, many opportunities for broader access
exist, for example through online education and the inclusion of
engineering in the Next Generation Science Standards.
“Again, professional societies are part of [all these opportunities]
because you have the ability to impact the field broadly, not just
within a single institution or a single classroom,” said Douglas.

A NEW FUNDING MODEL

Scalability cannot be ignored, Douglas said. The traditional funding
model has been to support principal investigators in developing
innovations for their classrooms. And the traditional dissemination
strategy has been to publish in peer-reviewed journals, create
websites, and give workshops at meetings such as those of the
American Society for Engineering Education.
The new funding model supports large integrated efforts such as
NSF’s REvolutionizing engineering and computer science
Departments (RED) program and the Improving Undergraduate
STEM Education Framework. A new dissemination strategy is to
consider models of change and the creation of national cohorts of
exemplars. “You don’t start from ‘I want to do this activity,’” said
Douglas. “You start from ‘I want to make this cultural change.’ That’s
a very different way of thinking.”
A goal of the workshop was to inculcate this different way of
thinking, Douglas concluded. “Let’s think about how to not just
cross-fertilize but cross-collaborate and create these larger
partnerships that can work more broadly and at a larger scale to
impact the engineering education field. What we want is broad,
radical change in engineering education.”
 3

The State of Engineering

Education

Every organization and every country on the planet is hungry for

talent, said NAE president C. D. Mote, Jr., in introducing keynote
speaker Darryll Pines, dean and Nariman Farvardin Professor of
Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland’s Clark School
of Engineering. At the same time, engineers and other workers are
changing jobs more often as the pace of change in society
accelerates. Both trends cast a spotlight on engineering education
and on the ways professional societies are involved with this
education.

THE ATTRACTION OF ENGINEERING

Engineering is one of today’s hottest professions, Pines began. Since
the year 2000, US enrollment in engineering has gone from less than
400,000 to more than 700,000. This surge in enrollment has
transformed undergraduate engineering programs. “It’s an exciting
time to be an engineer,” Pines said.

Increasing Enrollment
The increase in enrollment has encompassed both men and women
and all ethnic groups, although women and many ethnic groups
remain underrepresented in engineering compared with their
representation in the general population. For example, about 23
percent of US engineering undergraduates (not including foreign
students) are currently women, an increase from historical levels of
below 20 percent. “We are becoming more balanced,” said Pines.
“We are still not there by any stretch of the imagination, but the
demographics are slowly moving.”
The number of engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded increased
from fewer than 80,000 in 2005 to more than 115,000 in 2015. This
has put a greater burden on faculty members, Pines pointed out:
The average number of engineering students per tenure track faculty
member rose from about 17 to about 25.

Top Salaries
Notwithstanding the increase in degree production, engineers are
still getting good-paying jobs, Pines observed. Of the top 15 majors
by salary, according to the website www.payscale.com, 11 are in
engineering fields (the other four are in actuarial science, computer
science and mathematics, physics and mathematics, and applied
mathematics). Early career pay for these engineering fields ranges
from $63,000 to almost $100,000, and midcareer pay is between
$108,000 and $172,000.

What Is Engineering?
Despite success in the field, engineers traditionally have had a hard
time defining what they do, Pines pointed out. The Accreditation
Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) defines engineering as
“the profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and
natural sciences gained by study, experience, and practice is applied
with judgment to develop ways to utilize, economically, the materials
and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind.” Pines said that he
prefers the more succinct definition offered by NAE president Dan
Mote: “Engineers create solutions serving the welfare of humanity
and the needs of society.” The four words creation, solutions,
humanity, and society together create a value proposition for
engineering, Pines said, and offer a way to communicate what
engineering is to the public and to students.

Historical Perspective
Engineering and engineering education have changed radically
through history and are continuing to change today, Pines reported.
The first three schools in the United States to offer engineering
education were the US Military Academy, which modeled its
engineering curriculum after the École Polytechnique in France; an
institution now known as Norwich University in Vermont, which
began with instruction in civil engineering; and Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in New York. Engineering education greatly
expanded as part of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, which
created the land-grant colleges and universities and the historically
black colleges and universities.
Throughout the 19th century, engineering education was largely
focused on practice, including shop and foundry skills, technical
training, and manufacturing. This is the period that saw the creation
of some of the first professional societies—the American Society of
Civil Engineers (1852), American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(1880), and American Society for Engineering Education (1893).
In the first half of the 20th century, the emphasis shifted from
practice to theory and science, driven in part by World Wars I and II.
ABET was established in 1932 to help set standards for the
engineering curriculum, along with such societies as the American
Institute of Chemical Engineers (1908) and the precursors to the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
In the second half of the 20th century, an emphasis on
engineering design swung the pendulum back from theory toward
practice and hands-on engagement, said Pines, with a focus on
project-based learning, hands-on and applied work, ethical
reasoning, professional development, and industry collaboration.

Modern Engineering Education

Most recently, engineering education has emphasized research,
complex systems, pedagogy, active learning, service learning,
teamwork, online education, virtual laboratories, communication,
creativity, leadership, global contextual analysis, innovation, and
entrepreneurship. Furthermore, new departments of engineering
education mark “a paradigm change,” noted Pines, where research
on learning is being used to improve engineering education, and
faculty are being rewarded not only for their technical research but
for their contributions to teaching and learning.
Many forces have been driving change in engineering education,
said Pines, including engineering college and departmental or
program advisory boards, professional societies, the National
Academy of Engineering, the National Science Foundation, industry
and private foundations, ABET, and advances in research, facilities,
and technology. For example, the NAE reports The Engineer of
20201 and Educating the Engineer of 20202 are among a series of
reports demanding change in engineering to serve the welfare of
humanity and society.

IMPLICATIONS FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Modern engineering is increasingly complex, Pines pointed out, and
increasingly tied to US economic competitiveness and issues of great
societal importance. Data science and analytics are accelerating
research and steering it in new directions. The development of
engineering systems typically reflects and draws on the convergence
of the natural sciences, the social sciences, medicine, management,
the humanities, and other fields. Engineers need to be “more
systems oriented,” said Pines, “to develop large systems and have
people be able to model them.”
 Curricula in engineering education have evolved to reflect these
changes, said Pines. The overall goal has been to create a multiyear,
vertically integrated, hands-on, active learning experience.
The first-year experience may involve design, team building, novel
classroom environments (such as maker spaces or flipped
classrooms), and work involving innovation and entrepreneurship.
Second- and third-year engineering courses (which is when
community college transfer students enter) may involve leadership
and business management, international experiences, and
internships. Senior capstone experiences can include mentoring
younger students, making links to industry and graduate education,
and becoming involved with professional societies.
The engineering school at the University of Maryland, for example,
with seven four-year and two-year collaborators, has created the
Keystone program to respond to calls for active hands-on learning. It
is designed to transform the first- and second-year experience by
providing incentives to instructional faculty, improving facilities,
organizing team competitions, encouraging the use of
undergraduate teaching fellows, offering peer mentoring, and
enhancing the involvement of professional engineers as mentors,
advisors, and reviewers. This program has helped boost the six-year
completion rate at the school to 75 percent, compared with a
national average of 59 percent.
Throughout their undergraduate years, students at Maryland have
opportunities for individual learning experiences such as
“hackathons,” student competitions or challenge prizes, service
learning, and community engagement.

A University of Maryland group was one of the teams

selected to participate in a hyperloop design competition
organized by Tesla founder Elon Musk.
A program called StartupShell has resulted in startup
companies that are selling consumer 3D printers and
recovering leftover food from university dining halls to feed
the hungry.
 A solar decathlon brought together people from business,
science, public policy, architecture, and other fields to design
an energy-efficient house that was sold to a leading energy
firm to use as a model for new technology.
A course on engineering for social change, in which students
work with a local community to design an innovative solution
to a problem and pitch their ideas for foundation funding,
resulted in an educational program that integrates
gardening, cooking, and nutrition in the curriculum of local
schools.

Innovations in engineering education can encompass the K–12

level as well. A University of Maryland hackathon for middle and high
school girls was designed to get more girls interested in computer
science and engineering.
Another approach to engineering education that reflects the needs
of the 21st century is based on the 14 Grand Challenges for
Engineering (www.engineeringchallenges.org) identified by an NAE
committee in 2008. The Grand Challenges Scholars Program
(www.grandchallengescholars.org) guides students, through
curricular and extracurricular activities, to gain skills in five required
areas: research related to a Grand Challenge, a multidisciplinary
experience, exposure to the global dimension of a Grand Challenge,
entrepreneurship, and service learning. More than 40 universities in
the United States and abroad have adopted the program, and
another 80 have committed to participating.
These disparate approaches embody common desires for
engineering education and engineering students, said Pines:

the inculcation of engineers as problem definers as well as

problem solvers
the development of engineers who are better able to
straddle uncertainty, risk, disciplines, cultures, ethics, and
evolving technologies
engineers who are prepared for creativity, innovation,
business management, entrepreneurship, and public policy
 leadership
engineers who have stronger application skills without losing
theoretical strength.

TODAY’S ENGINEERING STUDENTS

The millennial and Gen Z students in college today are different from
past generations of students, Pines said. They have different work
ethics, career expectations, management styles, and knowledge of
technology. “They want to see significant change in their lives, and
they want it quickly,” he said. “They want to work on projects that
inspire and have social impact.” They are already making a
difference in the workforce, and that influence will grow.
One important aspect of young workers is that they are digital
natives. They are always online, socially conscious, and socially
connected. They understand blogs, social networks, mobile devices,
and online tools. “They are confident, they are connected, and they
are open to change,” said Pines. “They want to make a difference
with their knowledge and with the skills they get from our schools.”
This comfort with technology is helping to drive a new approach to
education, one that includes blended learning with online lectures,
automated assessments of student performance, flipped classrooms
with peer-to-peer and instructional coaches, and massive online
open courses (MOOCs) to enhance learning outcomes.
“Learning is in a transition,” said Pines. It is increasingly self-
paced, self-serviced, virtual, and on demand. Technologies such as
content capture, online laboratories, learner profiles, and e-portfolios
are the future of instruction and learning. Virtual laboratories make it
possible to have students go to an online location, run an
experiment, get the data back, and report on those data even if they
were not physically present in a lab.
Higher education got an early taste of radical changes in the
ecology and economics of education with the advent of MOOCs in
the late 1990s and early 2000s. Today, a new generation of online
courses, such as those made available through Udacity, Coursera,
edX, and the Khan Academy, are providing new capabilities in an era
of economic pressures and a social readiness to embrace distributed
relationships between students and instructors. For example, Arizona
State University and the State University of New York (SUNY)–
Oswego are offering the first two ABET-accredited online
undergraduate engineering programs in electrical and computer
engineering.
But residential universities, especially in STEM fields, are not going
away, Pines continued. Although many engineering courses could be
taught online, design is a creative activity that probably needs to be
taught in an integrated environment. Hands-on laboratory
experiences remain crucial, even if some laboratory experiences can
occur online. An optimal education still requires interactions between
students and teachers, and no professor can do that for thousands
of students in an online course.
Pines also pointed out, in response to a question, that much more
is needed to increase the representation of women in engineering.
Engineering for social change—for example, through the Engineers
Without Borders program—is particularly engaging to women.
Engineering programs also need to work with K–12 engineering
education so that fewer girls lose interest in STEM subjects in high
school, middle school, and even elementary school. “Engineering has
to become part of the core education for K through 12, not a fringe
topic,” Pines said. For example, the Engineering Is Elementary
program developed by the Museum of Science in Boston focuses on
teaching engineering habits of mind to elementary students, getting
them thinking about design and connecting them to creativity.

THE ROLE OF PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES

Professional societies have critical roles to play as this new
engineering education paradigm emerges, said Pines.

By fostering industry-university collaborations, they can help

define real-world challenges that require innovative
contributions from universities.
 They can help organize student-directed, hands-on learning
such as annual competitions, and they can provide advice,
guidance, and critical review for capstone educational
experiences.
They can further competency-based education, with
companies helping to define particular competencies for
students to acquire in university courses. One possibility, for
example, would be a course series designed by professional
societies to teach skills and content that students need, such
as standards or ethics.

A new normal is evolving in engineering education, Pines said in

summary. The value proposition that centers on creation, solutions,
humanity, and society is creating a greater emphasis on hands-on
and experiential learning opportunities in the context of current and
future societal challenges. Professional societies can play a critical
role in this new paradigm by:

connecting engineering education to real-world practice and

solutions
serving as design team reviewers, mentors, advisors, and
educators
creating challenge projects to advance technology and skills
providing opportunities for international and service learning
serving as ambassadors to the profession through outreach
to K–12 education.

__________________
1 NAE [National Academy of Engineering]. 2004. The Engineer of 2020: Visions
of Engineering in the New Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press.
2 NAE. 2005. Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education
to the New Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
 4

The Need for Effective

Assessment

Engineers strive to apply good practices in their profession, said

Barbara Bogue and Betty Shanahan, principal investigator and co–
principal investigator of the Society of Women Engineers’ Assessing
Women and Men in Engineering project, yet they often fail to do so
when engaged in outreach. The survey and interviews conducted
before the workshop revealed that assessment is a critical but often
missing influence on professional societies’ outreach efforts. Bogue
and Shanahan made the case that effective assessment should be
the basis for all engineering outreach initiatives.

AN ASSESSMENT-BASED FRAMEWORK
An assessment-based framework aligns collaboration and outreach
practices with typical engineering design and project management
practices. It involves identifying audiences, specifying goals and
objectives, and defining the metrics and data to be used in
measuring outcomes. An assessment-based framework is a core tool
for successful initiatives, Bogue and Shanahan said.
 An assessment-based framework can apply at a meta level and at
the level of specific actions, Shanahan explained. For both an overall
collaboration and individual societies, it can ensure that goals are
relevant to the mission and goals of each partner as well as the
collaboration. It can have built-in measures of the impacts of
activities and create a continuous improvement platform that serves
the overall outreach programming.
Bogue and Shanahan illustrated some assessment issues by
recounting the outcomes of an outreach program Bogue offered at
Pennsylvania State University. A one-week residential engineering
camp had the objective of recruiting high school girls into the
engineering profession. The program specifically recruited girls who
did not plan to become engineers. The program emphasized hands-
on projects led by role models, and 42 girls participated. Postevent
survey results indicated that all 42 participants were enthusiastic
about the event. Before the program, 40 of the participants said
they did not plan to study engineering; after the program the same
number said they wanted to become engineers. In addition, all 12 of
the participants who were high school seniors said they planned to
apply to engineering at Penn State.
Postcamp tracking revealed, however, that only two participants
followed through in applying to Penn State, and only one was
accepted. Furthermore, the camp was expensive to administer—
about $1,400 per girl—and a time analysis revealed that only about
a quarter of their time at the camp was spent on engineering
activities. “In the postreview, [the program] failed on a lot of
different points,” said Bogue.
Based on these findings, the camp was radically redone. It moved
from an overnight camp to a day camp with modules that had a
different interdisciplinary focus each day. Young women could come
to the camp on one day, two days, three days, or five days, and the
camp served many more girls—more than 300 as opposed to a
maximum of 60 in the overnight camp.
Moreover, the revised camp design had a much greater
concentration on objectives and outcomes, and better pre- and
postcamp assessments produced more relevant data. Ninety percent
of time was now spent on engineering-related activities. Resources
also were used more efficiently, with a cost of $142 per girl per day.
In addition, the organizers avoided areas of nonexpertise: “no more
slumber parties,” said Bogue.
Bogue identified several lessons from this experience:

Participants having fun is a success indicator only if the only

goal is fun.
Poor or incomplete data can lead to wrong overall
evaluations and decision making.
Surveys that do not ask the right questions produce the
wrong answers.
Adding data through postassessments can lead to more
accurate evaluations.

CHALLENGES TO EFFECTIVE OUTREACH

Shanahan noted that engineers would never approach a problem the
way we often approach outreach. Companies would not begin
product development without reviewing relevant technologies,
determining customer needs, and establishing product goals and
objectives around costs, performance, and safety. So why does
outreach by engineering societies so often fail to incorporate
standard engineering design? One reason is a failure to identify and
serve an intended audience. In practice, the de facto audience often
becomes the member volunteers or funders rather than the kids that
the activity is supposed to reach. As Bogue put it, “Are we going to
make Joe unhappy because we’re not offering his camp the tenth
year in a row?”
Another reason for unsuccessful outreach is a failure to define the
value added for every partner, including the volunteers. Limits on
human and financial resources are a barrier, as are actions that belie
the goal of an outreach program. For example, if a goal is to attract
underrepresented students to engineering, why are members of a
society so often unaware of outreach programs and why are the
programs poorly resourced?
 APPLYING WHAT ENGINEERS PRACTICE
An assessment-based framework can help meet these challenges,
said Shanahan and Bogue. The framework is based on an agreed-
upon, shared, and overarching goal. With the goal established,
measurable objectives should be determined that will fulfill that goal,
they said. These objectives describe what the initiative will achieve
rather than describing an activity, and they create the foundation for
planning, assessment, and continuous improvement.
The next step is to leverage resources and define initiatives, using
research to inform choices and designing initiatives based on the
goal and objectives, not the other way around. This research can
come from many different sources, including the social sciences, and
can be informed by the practices of other organizations. Shanahan
mentioned TED talks as a particularly useful source; they can be
distributed to volunteers as 15-minute videos that capture the
essence of research results.
A data collection plan with defined metrics needs to be created,
Shanahan and Bogue continued. If the goal is to reach
underrepresented populations, count the number of people who are
reached. Use before and after questions to assess changes in
knowledge, interest, skills, or confidence. Surveys, formal
observations, and formal interviews are all ways of gathering data;
anecdotal information may be interesting or useful but it is not
trackable, comparable, or objective. Longitudinal data are the gold
standard, but they are often difficult to gather.
Time needs to be scheduled for data collection and analysis, with
online tools to facilitate these steps. Collaboration in data collection
and analysis can ease obstacles to sharing information and provide
information that is useful for shaping other initiatives.
Assessment can be affordable if it is integrated into an overall plan
and scheduled from the beginning. Bogue and Shanahan offered
several pointers:

Identify a volunteer who enjoys working with data, enlist the

educational arm of a society in data collection and analysis,
 centralize data, use off-the-shelf resources, and create a
bank of common surveys and tools.
Recruiting, selecting, and training volunteers is crucial to
success, and they need to understand the goals and
objectives, the assessment-based approach, and outcome
metrics.
Break down tasks by interests and skills so that no role is too
big and a small number of volunteers do not carry an
intensive load.
Enlisting experts at developing and analyzing outreach
initiatives can be much more effective than training
nonexperts to serve in a key role.

Once data are collected and analyzed, they can be used for
continuous improvement. “It’s not just what we know,” said
Shanahan. “It’s what we do with what we know. Use the results to
say, ‘This went well, this didn’t go well. How do we change? How do
we improve? How do we enhance?’ and invest in making those
changes.” Initiatives that do not work are more expensive than good
assessment.
Finally, tell the story to recruit participants, motivate volunteers,
engage and convince board members and sponsors, enhance and
expand collaborations, and share positive and negative lessons. A
good story, backed by solid data, can enable programs to be scaled
up to have greatly magnified impact.

THE NEED FOR LEADERSHIP

Research in change management shows that change does not
happen without leadership driving it, said Shanahan. “You are the
ones who are going to make change happen. It’s not going to be
your volunteers. . . . As someone who was . . . a society leader, I
know it’s not easy to say to your volunteers, ‘You’re going to have to
do more work’ or ‘We’ve got some bad news here, and we need to
respond to it.’ It is challenging. But our mission as engineering
societies [doing] outreach programs is not to create fun for
volunteers. It’s to have effective outreach.”
 5

Engineering Society
Activities

In two sets of “lightning rounds” on the first day of the workshop,

representatives of engineering societies presented brief descriptions
of the activities of their organizations related to undergraduate
engineering education. The first set of presentations focused largely
on what societies do; the second focused largely on how societies do
what they do, though some overlap with the previous presentations
was inevitable.

WHAT SOCIETIES DO

Developing Partnerships for Innovation in Education

SME Certified Manufacturing Technologists (Kris Ward)

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Certified
Manufacturing Technologists (CMfgT) certification benefits entry-
level manufacturing technologists and experienced manufacturing
engineers without other credentials. The end-of-program assessment
is used in both two- and four-year programs in engineering
technology, manufacturing technology, manufacturing engineering,
and mechanical engineering.
The CMfgT is built on an industry-driven competency framework
and on a body of knowledge that reflects the entry-level
requirements for engineering and manufacturing technologists. A
number of optional resources are provided through the academic
market to help students prepare for the assessment. The exam is
not only an effective student evaluation but also a tool that provides
insight into academic program performance. Individual and group
reports allow instructors, deans, and department heads to assess
student knowledge and identify gaps in curriculum against a
standard body of knowledge. These measures help to continually
improve the program so that graduating students meet industry-
driven requirements.
The assessment supports ABET accreditation requirements, and
students who pass the exam also get an industry credential that
differentiates them to employers. The program’s continuing
education requirement gives schools the opportunity to engage with
students after graduation. The CMfgT offers an industry-driven
alternative to the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam.
For more information visit www.sme.org/cmfgt.

SWE Collegiate Leadership Institute (Randi Rosebluth)

The objective of the Collegiate Leadership Institute (CLI) is to
provide cutting-edge leadership and career development training for
college and graduate students in technology and engineering. The
school-year-long program accommodates 125 students and serves
as an ongoing dynamic research platform for Society of Women
Engineers (SWE) college leaders. In 2018 the CLI will expand to
local conferences and a conference in India.
The CLI is modeled around pre- and postconference online
learning. The institute includes a three-day live event, online
engagement, webinars, mentors, individual coaching, a $150 stipend
for transportation, and networking. Small groups are also offered
career and professional coaching. The purpose of the program is to
provide tools for the workplace, develop a leadership pipeline that
enables women to take on roles in SWE within 5–15 years, and
foster lifelong involvement with SWE.
For more information visit http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.or
g.

ASME Faculty/Industry Standards Experts Teams (Bill Wepfer)

About 10 years ago the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
established a task force in the spirit of the NAE Engineer of 2020
Initiative to determine how the mechanical engineering profession
can make its curriculum relevant for students over the next 20 years.
Department heads, hiring managers, and industry leaders were
surveyed to define the most pressing issues. Communication and
understanding of codes and standards in undergraduate programs
emerged as the strongest theme.
Three task forces were developed to embed standards in the
undergraduate curriculum for design track/senior capstone design,
mechanics of materials, and fluid mechanics. Each was led by both
faculty experts and standards experts. Two primary questions that
the task forces hope to address are how to embed codes and
standards in a more positive context that facilitates problem solving
and economic development, and how to recruit more talented and
qualified faculty to help successfully run the program.
For more information visit https://www.asme.org/about-asme/stan
dards/engineering-student-resources.

AIChE Manufacturing Institutes (Phil Westmoreland)

AIChE: The Global Home of Chemical Engineers is participating in a
leadership position in two Manufacturing USA institutes, which are
an initiative of the US Department of Defense, the National Institute
of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Energy, to help
foster a cross-disciplinary culture across engineering disciplines.
Through its RAPID Manufacturing Institute, AIChE is working with
key partners to increase efficiencies and lower capital costs through
rapid advancement in process intensification deployment. The Clean
Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute is working to spur
advances in smart sensors and digital process controls that can
radically improve the efficiency of US advanced manufacturing.
Faculty and student involvement is an important part of the
institutes’ activities.
For more information visit https://www.aiche.org/rapid and http
s://www.cesmii.org.

Promoting Diversity

NSBE Student Retention Toolkit (Karl Reid)

Despite the high demand for engineers, only about one third of
African Americans who start on the engineering track complete the
program in six years. The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
recently announced a 2025 strategy to triple the number of African
American engineers produced by colleges and universities. To fulfill
that goal, NSBE is working with colleges of engineering to increase
the success rate of African American students. The program, with
support from ExxonMobil, first recognized exemplar institutions that
produce above-average numbers of underrepresented minority
engineers. Through literature reviews and interviews about specific
programs at these institutions, nine engagement strategies were
identified in a white paper: institutional leadership, summer bridge
programs, collaborative learning and living environments, early alert
systems, facilitated study groups, faculty development, scholarships,
self-efficacy, and positive identity development.
In partnership with the American Society for Engineering
Education (ASEE), this work led to the publication of the NSBE
Student Retention Toolkit, available both in print and online, which
operationalizes the engagement strategies. This 170-page document
is part of NSBE’s comprehensive strategy to increase the success of
underrepresented minorities in engineering education. The society
plans to offer training (as part of preconference workshops) in ASEE
and NSBE programs and grants as well as technical assistance to
increase the capacity of colleges and universities to implement these
strategies.
For more information visit www.nsbe.org.

Transforming Engineering Culture to Advance Inclusion and

Diversity (Glenda La Rue)
Led by the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN), the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and Purdue
University, Transforming Engineering Culture to Advance Inclusion
and Diversity (TECAID) is a three-year-long project involving five
mechanical engineering departments across the country. The
program aims to equip faculty teams of five with the tools needed to
create and sustain inclusive department cultures for faculty, staff,
and students.
TECAID is an intensive professional development curriculum based
on the literature on inclusion, diversity, team building, team-based
change leadership, and strategies and processes in academia. The
program is run through virtual learning communities, four two-day
workshops, subject matter expert consults, and department projects.
Goals include academic change, climate and culture improvements,
better department leadership policies and practices, and increases in
collaboration. TECAID aims to provide faculty with both
understanding and comfort with diversity and inclusion concepts, a
way to create and implement plans to address these concepts, and
confidence and skills in change making.
Departments using the TECAID program have improved in all
these areas, particularly through individual growth. Individuals in the
program are starting to implement change, and these effects should
ripple out to teams, departments, and institutions. TECAID will
publish a training model to prepare engineering faculty to lead
diversity, equity, and inclusion change.
For more information visit www.wskc.org/tecaid.
 Fostering Interdisciplinary Engineering Education

Engineering Competency Model (Melissa Prelewicz)

The Engineering Competency Model, a joint initiative of the US
Department of Labor and the American Association of Engineering
Societies, serves as a guide for the development of professionals and
the engineering workforce. Intended for educators, guidance
counselors, and students, the model promotes understanding of the
skills and competencies needed for a globally competitive workforce.
It can inform educators in the development of a competency-based
curriculum, assist guidance counselors in the development of
resources for career exploration, and help students gain a clear
understanding of the skills and abilities needed to not only enter but
advance in an engineering profession.
The model uses a five-tier pyramid to depict the key
competencies. The first level is personal effectiveness, including
interpersonal skills, integrity, and interest in lifelong learning. Tier
two, academic excellence, involves communication and writing skills
along with science and technology skills. Tier three, workplace skills,
focuses on teamwork, creative thinking, and business fundamentals.
Tier four is industrywide technical competencies; it concerns not only
the fundamentals of engineering but also areas such as professional
ethics. Tier five is an opportunity to include discipline-specific
competencies, which several societies are developing. A two-minute
video, a PowerPoint presentation with a speaker’s guide, and a
handout are available for faculty, guidance counselors, and others
who work with individuals who are entering and working in STEM
professions.
For more information visit www.aaes.org/model.

Engineers Without Borders–USA Global Classroom

(Libby Jones)
The overarching goal of the Engineers Without Borders–USA Global
Classroom program is to provide training for members and
volunteers that will enable them to work successfully with
community partners in America and around the world. The program
aims to provide an understanding of the skills and tools needed for
development and humanitarian engineering and to prepare the
participants to apply these skills and tools in the service of small
rural farms in Costa Rica under the supervision of experienced
engineers. Costa Rica is the global frontrunner in sustainable
development and offers unmatched opportunities to observe
sustainable best practices in action. By the end of the course,
students produce a successful model of project management, from
planning to implementation to monitoring and evaluation.
The curriculum is being improved using assessment feedback from
the approximately 50 participants, instructors, and farmers. This
input helps guide the development of online modules that can reach
a larger population of about 5,000 people.
For more information visit www.ewb-usa.org.

Raising Awareness of Engineering Disciplines

ASM Materials Camps (Nichol Campana)

The ASM Materials Education Foundation, the philanthropic division
of ASM International, aims to guide young people into materials
science and engineering careers to help create a skilled STEM
workforce. The foundation’s signature program is its Materials Camps
for teachers and students. Teachers’ camps are week-long, hands-on
laboratory experiences that show educators how to use applied
engineering techniques in their classrooms. They include an idea-
generating workshop introducing teachers to methods that make
mathematics and core science principles more appealing and
relevant to middle and high school students. Student camps are for
high school students with strong abilities in mathematics and science
who have completed their sophomore and junior years. Eighty-six
percent of student camp participants enroll in science and
engineering programs in college.
 The more than 70 camps are held at universities and other
institutions across the United States as well as in Canada, France,
India, and Brazil. Undergraduate students are encouraged to get
involved as volunteer mentors, team leaders, laboratory assistants,
and occasionally organizers of the camps. The five-day camps can
be residential, commuter, or minicamps, and many are held in
conjunction with other ASM events.
For more information visit www.asminternational.org/foundation/t
eachers/teacher-material-camps.

ANS Annual Student Conference (Bob Fine)

American Nuclear Society (ANS) members under the age of 35 are
the fastest growing segment of the society’s membership. The
society has student sections at 52 universities across the country,
and about 14 percent of its members are students.
Every year a student section hosts a student conference,
representing one of a variety of activities offered to student
members. Students plan and organize an educational meeting,
conduct sessions, present research findings, hear talks by
nonstudents on topics of interest (such as public policy issues), and
network, including with recruiters. Participants also include
professors, professionals, and job recruiters.
In addition to the annual conference, faculty and guest speakers
attend monthly or bimonthly events at these universities.
For more information visit www.ans.org.

SAE Collegiate Design Series (Chris Ciuca)

The SAE Collegiate Design Series aims to facilitate connections
between industry and education by providing experiential learning
for students. Approximately 120,000 students from pre-K to college
age—including 10,000 undergraduate students—participate in SAE
STEM programs each year through integrated educational design
challenges. The series includes Baja SAE, Formula SAE, SAE Aero
Design, SAE Clean Snowmobile, SAE Supermileage, and the new
AutoDrive Challenge. Participating students meet and take on the
roles of a range of experts in the field, from engineers to business
developers and marketing and finance professionals. The series aims
to create an environment that prepares students for a career
through a university-simulated business-like setting.
SAE’s collegiate programming engages teams from all of the top
US engineering degree–granting universities (as ranked by ASEE’s
Profiles of Engineering and Technology Degree Colleges), with many
participating in multiple SAE Collegiate Design Series competitions.
For more information visit http://students.sae.org/cds/.

HOW SOCIETIES DO WHAT THEY DO: ISSUES, PROBLEMS,

AND BARRIERS FACED AND OVERCOME

Establishing Effective Inter-Society Collaborations

The 50K Coalition (Constance Thompson)

The American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES),
Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), Society of Women
Engineers (SWE), and National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
have formed a coalition with one major goal: to graduate 50,000
female, Black, Hispanic, and Native American engineers by the year
2025. Led by the 50K Coalition Leadership Circle, the project has 43
member organizations representing engineering professional
societies and schools of engineering that share this focus. The
United Engineering Foundation and National Science Foundation
have provided half a million dollars in funding.
The coalition uses a collective impact approach, with a common
agenda, project plans, and defined metrics. The agenda has six
elements: undergraduate support and retention, public awareness
and marketing, K–12 support, community college linkages, culture
and climate, and funding and financial support. Each organization
contributes a project plan that includes an agreed upon matrix and
measurable agenda items to serve as its commitment to reaching
the goal.
For more information visit http://50kcoalition.org.

Material Advantage Student Program (Bill Mahoney)

The Material Advantage Student Program was created for
undergraduate and graduate students in materials science,
engineering, and other technical engineering programs at
universities around the world. It is operated by the American
Ceramic Society, Association for Iron and Steel Technology, Materials
Information Society, and Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. Each
organization shares expenses and revenue, operates programs and
procedures on behalf of Material Advantage, and may maintain both
Material Advantage–branded programs and their own society
programs.
The $30 US membership fee provides full access to all four
societies. Students can use their membership to enhance their
personal development and to build a career foundation with long-
term benefits.
A number of events are executed on behalf of the Material
Advantage Program. The culminating event, the Material Science and
Technology Conference held every year in the fall, exposes students
to a large number of networking, learning, and collaborative
opportunities as well as various contests and awards.
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 “You won’t have to,” Dan told him. “Fact is, it’s a spade you’ll have to
use more than anything else, a spade and a pick and a shovel, all of which
fortunately we brought along with us.”
“Do you mean to dig a grave for the gorilla after you get him?” asked
Peg.
“Well, hardly, when we promised Mr. Holwell that we wouldn’t hurt the
poor creature,” laughed Dan. “What I want you to do is to dig a pit about
ten feet deep, with walls so smooth that no gorilla that ever walked on two
legs could manage to climb up again, once he fell in.”
“Oh, so that’s the game!” exclaimed Phil. “A pit trap, is it? Seems to me
I’ve read of them in books about life in the jungles of Africa and South
America.”
“That’s just where I cribbed the scheme!” exclaimed Dan. “Don’t you
remember, Phil, lending me those books that you said used to belong to
your father years ago? But what’s the difference anyway who was the
originator of the idea? The author of the books got it from the natives who
were accustomed to catching wild animals in pits. As soon as we’re through
lunch I want some of you fellows to go with me and show what you’re
worth as diggers.”
None of them backed out, though all realized that their muscles would
be stiff and sore before a ten-foot pit could be finished. Still, “Rome was
not built in a day” the minister told them, and they must not expect to rush
things. Better divide the job into two periods, and by the close of the next
day it could easily be completed.
 CHAPTER XXV
THE BERRY PICKERS

That was an unusually long afternoon to the “willing workers” in the

pit. From the way in which every little while one or another would stop
digging and, climbing out of the hole, take an anxious look toward the west,
it could be easily seen that the diggers were getting weary.
Dan, of course, noticed it, and chuckled slily. He realized that they
would stand by him to the finish. At the same time he was not above taking
what he called “a rise” out of Fred Bonnicastle, who emerged from the pit
oftener than the others.
So, on one occasion, when about to suggest stopping work for the day,
he casually remarked, as Fred again climbed up out of the hole, now some
four feet in depth:
“I guess you think the old days have come around again, Fred.”
Fred looked at him blankly.
“Oh, the days of the Children of Israel when they took possession of the
Promised Land, you remember,” continued Dan, grinning.
“I’m still groping in the dark. What have we got to do with Moses and
his followers, when they fought with the Philistines?” asked Fred.
“Well,” replied Dan, drily, “from the way you fellows keep staring into
the west I just made up my mind some of you had begun to believe Joshua
had come along with us, and that he was again commanding the sun to
stand still.” At this Fred laughed, as did the others.
“So far as that goes,” acknowledged Peg, “it certainly has seemed a
coon’s age since we started grubbing here. Four hours, with only little rests
in between when some one spelled me, is going some for my father’s son.”
“Whee! wouldn’t my folks at home stare though, if they could have
watched me actually work?” added Phil Harkness, greatly amused. “Why,
it’s always been the hardest thing going to coax me to weed a little flower
bed up to now.”
 “I’m sore, all right,” admitted Fred, candidly; “but it may wear away by
morning. Guess Nature didn’t mean me to earn my bread by the sweat of
my brow. I think after all I’d better take to the law, as my dad wants me to.”
“Perhaps some of the other fellows may want to change places with you
three in the morning,” said Dan, calmly. “My pit is more’n a third
completed now, though the worst is still to come, for every shovel of dirt
has to be lifted out, and carried away, so as not to excite the suspicions of
the beast. Let’s call it off, and meander into camp.”
There was much animated talk around the supper table that night, as
Dan and his assistants entered into arguments with some of the others. It
ended in three new recruits offering to do their turn in the pit on the
following day.
Fred and the two others did not say much, for fear of alarming the
volunteers, and causing them to back out. At the same time they might have
been observed exchanging significant winks, and the expression on their
faces showed satisfaction.
Nothing unusual happened on that night, though some of the boys felt
restless. If the prowling animal came around no one saw or heard him; nor
was anything missing when morning finally arrived, so far as any one could
discover.
“But that means he’ll be with us to-night, never fear,” ventured Dan,
with such confidence in his manner that every one knew he did not mean to
abandon his pit-digging.
The plans for the day had already been laid out. Dick had concluded to
accompany the berry pickers during the morning. He wanted to feel that he
had had a hand in helping Eddie, Ban and Cub accumulate a large store of
the berries, for they were to be shipped to the market in Cliffwood on the
following morning.
Leslie’s father, Mr. Capes, had promised to run up on this day in his car,
to see what the boys were doing. He would spend a night in camp, and start
back on the following morning. He was also to bring with him receptacles
in which such blueberries as had been gathered could be carried back to
town.
 That was one reason why Dick planned to go out with the three mill
boys on this morning, so as to feel that he had helped give them a half
holiday. In the afternoon he planned to go fishing with the trio, for Eddie
and the others dearly loved all manner of sports, though not able to indulge
in them as frequently as some of the other boys, unless, as usually
happened, they took Sunday for their outings.
There was certainly no lack of the large berries on Bass Island. Eddie
Grant told Dick he could take him to a place they had hardly touched as yet,
and where their buckets could easily be filled in two hours.
The berry pickers set off, Fred and Peg going with the party.
“We haven’t seen a sign of a snake so far,” Eddie remarked, as they
walked along through the brush and amidst the trees.
“Well, since this is an island, and so far from the mainland,” observed
Dick, “perhaps there isn’t a single snake of any kind on it.”
“I’m glad of that,” ventured Ban Jansen, frankly, “’cause I’m not any
too fond of the crawlers. My folks told me to keep my eyes peeled for
rattlers up in this region. I’d sure hate to run across one of ’em just when I
was in the middle of a thick patch of berry bushes.”
The berry pickers enlivened the time with pleasant chatter as they
pushed along through the brush, heading toward the distant spot where
Eddie had noted the unusually heavily laden blueberry bushes.
Arriving on the ground the boys began to pick. It is slow work at the
best, no matter if the berries can be fairly stripped off by a deft motion of
the hand; and they could count on a couple of hours at the work if they
expected to fill their pails.
By degrees they would, of course, separate as each became absorbed in
his own picking. At the same time, they had agreed not to drift so far apart
but that a loud shout would bring them together again.
Dick busied himself. And as his fingers worked, so his mind also found
employment in going over some of the recent happenings that had served to
enliven their camp life.
Among other things he remembered Asa Gardner. It was nice to know
that the poor chap had brightened up so much of late. The pitiful expression
had left his pinched face.
“He begins to feel now,” Dick was telling himself, “that he has really
mastered that old weakness of his about taking things, whether he needed
them or not. It was a terrible thing to have grip him, and I’m mighty glad
he’s won out. Besides, he needs all the outdoor exercise he can get, so as to
throw off that tendency to tuberculosis that runs in his family.”
Thus Dick was thinking of others as he deftly stripped the small twigs
of their rich stores. Suddenly he stopped work and stared at the ground.
“Whee! there’s another of those queer footprints again,” he muttered.
“Seems that the monkey likes blueberries as well as any human can, or the
partridges even. He’s been browsing around here all right, for I can see
where something has cleaned off a heap of branches.”
The thought that even then the gorilla, or whatever it was, might not be
far away gave Dick a thrill. He was a brave boy, however, as he had proved
on numerous occasions in the past; and this was made manifest when he
almost unconsciously started to follow the spoor of the animal.
A short distance away he came to a well defined trail. It looked as
though the gorilla must have passed along back and forth scores of times.
Dick stood still and stared.
“Here’s a find,” he muttered to himself. “Chances are ten to one that this
leads to his den, all right. A nervy hunter might follow it up and come on
the big beast in his own quarters; but I reckon it would be silly for me to
think of doing such a thing as that.”
The temptation to follow just a little way, to see where the trail led,
caused Dick to start hesitatingly forward. A gorilla in his native Borneo
haunt is considered one of the most terrible creatures known to big game
hunters the world over, not even excepting the grizzly bear of our own
country, and Dick’s pulses were bounding, and his nerves were on edge, for
he realized that at any minute he might find himself face to face with the
animal.
And, indeed, that was just what did happen, for Dick suddenly heard a
horrible gurgling sound close by, and turning his head found himself staring
at a squatty, hairy figure that looked like a misshapen man with amazingly
broad shoulders, and long dangling arms.
 CHAPTER XXVI
POACHING ON STRANGE PRESERVES

“Oh! good-bye!”
As Dick gasped these two words he flung himself squarely around, and
ran wildly. At the same time he listened, with his heart almost in his mouth,
to ascertain whether the terrible animal were chasing after him. Yes, he
could catch that odd thumping sound so like the roll of a distant bass drum.
The boy ran in the direction that would take him close to where his
companions were busily engaged in picking berries. He did not mean to
lead the beast so as to include Eddie and the rest in his own danger; but he
wished to warn them so that they, too, might flee from that perilous section.
When they heard him shout they quickly understood. Even before that it
had dawned upon their comprehension that something was amiss, for they
had caught the noise made by Dick’s frantic passage through the bushes.
Besides, the booming sound from beyond had also been carried to their
ears.
Now all six were tearing off like mad, and for a brief time it seemed as
though the berry picking must be abandoned for that day at least. Dick soon
found that they were not being pursued. Then the ridiculous character of the
wild flight broke in upon him, and he laughed aloud.
This caused the others to feel safer. Surely the situation could not be so
very desperate if Dick, wise Dick, could give way to merriment.
Eddie Grant joined in the laughter, and Ban and Cub, not to show the
white feather, followed suit, until all of them threw themselves down on the
ground and tried to catch their breath again.
There was considerable badgering, for each chose to believe that all
save himself were panic-stricken. Of course, he had galloped along just
because it was the fashion, and he did not wish to be left to face the ugly
beast alone.
 When Dick candidly admitted that he had been badly scared the others
realized that confession was good for the soul; and in the end everybody
owned up.
“Do we give up the job then for to-day?” asked Fred Bonnicastle.
“Oh! I know lots of other places where the berries are just about as thick
as off there,” asserted Eddie Grant, who, having undertaken a task, however
unpleasant, never wished to relinquish it.
“Who’s afraid?” demanded Cub Mannis.
Of course, after all this manifestation of valor no one dared hint at
stopping work just because there chanced to be an escaped gorilla loose on
Bass Island.
“We can arrange to keep closer together after this,” suggested Eddie,
“and have a signal to close up in a bunch if the old critter bobs up again.
But like as not we happened on his private preserves when we tackled that
batch of berries, and he ain’t goin’ to bother us if we keep away.”
It was natural that the boys remained in a nervous frame of mind during
the remainder of that morning. If a bird flew up suddenly, or a branch
scraped against the trunk of a tree, emitting a harsh sound, some of them
were sure to take in a long breath and stare around uneasily.
The pails were slow in filling up, too, on account of this vigilance and
of the fact that the pickers stuck close together. In fact, the time dragged
until it was well on toward noon before Eddie announced that his pail was
running over.
“Can’t seem to hold another handful, fellows,” he observed. “And as
you’re all in the same fix I move we start back to camp.”
“That suits me all right!” declared Fred; and not a murmur of dissent
was heard, for every one was only too glad that the long strain had come to
an end.
When the berry pickers told of their experience that noon, as they
munched the lunch that had been prepared, dinner being reserved for the
evening when Mr. Capes would in all probability be with them, the others
listened with a sort of awe.
 Although, boy like, some of them ventured to make fun of the berry
pickers on account of their panic, secretly they were ready to confess that
under similar conditions they would have done the same thing—would have
run wildly.
“Well, my pit is four-fifths dug,” announced Dan, proudly. “And if I can
get a new shift of workers this afternoon I’ll have it done easily, so the trap
could be set this very night.”
Several volunteers were immediately forthcoming, among others Asa
Gardner, who, while not as strong physically as most of the others, wished
to do his share.
“You see,” he explained to Dan when making the offer, “I don’t want to
be left out of the running.”
“Well,” observed Fred Bonnicastle, drily, “you wouldn’t have if you’d
gone off with our bunch this morning, I can tell you that. Eh, fellows?”
Dick, true to his promise, after certain camp duties had been performed,
went out in one of the boats with Eddie, Ban and Cub to try for the bass.
“We’d like to give Mr. Capes a treat and the finest dinner possible while
he’s up here over night with us,” he told his companions, while rowing
toward his favorite fishing grounds. “So everybody must do his level best to
land some big fellows, if only we can tempt them to take hold.”
The conditions seemed especially favorable. The sun was hidden much
of the time behind friendly clouds, and a gentle wind blew from the
southwest, causing a ripple on the water such as fishermen delight to see.
The sport turned out to be excellent, and some extra fine fish were taken
during the several hours the quartette spent at their pleasant task.
“Let me tell you this beats picking berries all hollow,” remarked Eddie,
as he played a sturdy bronze-backed warrior, and watched the captive leap
wildly from the water time after time, always attempting to throw his
weight upon the line so as to break the hook loose from his jaw.
“I never seem to get enough of it,” added Cub, all aglow as he, too, felt
a savage jerk, and succeeded in fastening a mate to Eddie’s fellow, so that
there were lively times at both ends of the anchored boat.
 Indeed, the pleasures of that single afternoon were enough to repay the
mill boys for all their labors. One and all they confessed, when later on
heading for the camp, that they had never had such glorious fishing in all
their lives.
Dan was found in camp fairly palpitating with satisfaction. Dick knew
before a single word had been said that the pit was completed.
“Come out and see it, Dick,” urged the proud architect. And as there
was still an hour and more before sundown, Dick gladly complied.
He found that the pit had been neatly covered with a matting of slender
poles, upon which both earth and leaves had been deftly strewn. In fact,
Dick might himself have stepped upon this disguising covering only that
Dan caught his arm and held him back.
“You see where I’ve hung the bait,” he observed, pointing upward as he
spoke. “The gorilla can’t reach it without stepping squarely out on the weak
platform, and he’ll go plump down so fast there’ll be no chance for him to
throw out those long arms of his and grab a branch above. I guess his goose
will be cooked all right if only he browses around this way to-night, as I
hope will happen.”
Dick shook hands with the originator of the pit trap.
“Here’s hoping he comes—and stays, Dan!” he said.
“You like the way we fixed it, then, do you, Dick?” demanded the other.
For according to his way of thinking commendation from Dick was always
to be accepted as a certificate of real merit.
“It couldn’t be better, Dan, and you have cause to be proud of your
work.”
They had just returned to the camp when one of the boys was heard
shouting:
“There’s a big car arrived across the bay from us, where Leslie and Phil
are waiting with the boat.”
“Seems to be something of a crowd along,” remarked Dan; “I can see
the chauffeur all right, and Mr. Capes; but there’s another, too. Wonder now
who he brought up here with him to-day?”
 “They’re fixing some sort of canvas over the car, so as to leave it there
for the night,” ventured Asa, straining his eyes in the effort to make things
out.
“Now they’re beginning to get into the boat, after the boys have taken
aboard some bundles that may be containers for the berries,” said Dick. “I
can give a pretty good guess who that third person is, boys.”
“Mr. Nocker, Dick, don’t you think?” asked Peg. “Seems to me he looks
kind of familiar, with his tall figure, and queer way of walking.”
“Just who it is,” replied Dick, without hesitation. “Mr. Nocker has taken
the trouble to come all the way up here to spend a night with us boys, and
see how we carry on when in camp.”
“Just to think of him, doing such a thing,” ventured Dan, “when only a
short time ago he detested every type of boy, because they reminded him of
his own son who gave him so much trouble, and finally ran away from
home and died.”
“Yes,” interrupted Dick, softly. “But that was before Mr. Nocker met his
little grandson, Billy, and felt a new sensation in his withered old heart.
Nowadays he loves boys, and can’t do too much for them. Forget all about
the past, fellows, and only remember that Mr. Nocker is now one of our best
friends.”
 CHAPTER XXVII
A NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN CAMPFIRE

When finally the boat arrived at the island landing, and the passengers
came ashore, they were greeted with three rousing cheers by the score of
lads. Mr. Holwell, Mr. Bartlett and the athletic director added their voices to
the chorus, and then shook hands with the guests, who were soon made to
feel at home.
A brush shanty had been erected during the day by some of the busy
workers. This was to be used to house the “overflow.” It was intended that
one of the tents should be handed over to Mr. Capes. The deacon would
occupy a part of it, while the chauffeur could be taken care of elsewhere.
There was a great feast that night, the assistant cooks “doing themselves
proud,” so they declared, in their desire to let these gentlemen see that boys
know how to serve as accomplished chefs when they are in camp.
“I don’t remember enjoying a meal so much as this in many a long day,”
admitted Deacon Nocker, when he had to decline any further helping.
“That fresh bass was simply delicious,” observed Mr. Capes, smacking
his lips, and then adding, when several started to try to fill up his pannikin
again: “Not another mouthful, or I’ll be foundered. This takes me away
back to the days when I too was a boy, and used to camp out. I quite envy
you, Mr. Holwell, the opportunity to spend a week with these fellows.”
After the meal was finished what a glorious time they had sitting around
the blazing campfire, and talking “a blue streak,” as Leslie called it. Scores
of things had to be told, all connected with the trip, though it could easily be
seen that the chief subject of all was the presence of the gorilla on the
island.
To the surprise of the boys Mr. Nocker, as soon as he learned about the
animal, declared that he could explain where it had come from, though
probably no one would ever be able to find out how the gorilla managed to
get to the island, almost a mile from the main shore.
 “Last spring there was an accident to a circus that was showing over in
Hastings,” he went on to say, “and some of the animals escaped. I
remember that among them was an enormous gorilla, though I never
learned whether the animal had been captured again or not. Apparently he
never was, and has found his way up here, to frighten a lot of people, and
rob their camps on the island.”
“Then that was what you meant, was it, Mr. Nocker,” asked Dick,
“when you told us to beware of the mysterious thief while up here on your
property?”
“Exactly,” replied the gentleman, grimly. “Though it never once
occurred to me to connect the thievery with the disappearance of the gorilla.
Some gentlemen I knew came up here when the fishing season opened, to
enjoy casting the fly for the gamy black bass of Lake Russabaga. They
camped on this island, and had a fine time. The only thing that annoyed
them was the remarkable manner in which through some unknown agency
various valuable articles vanished.”
“He seems to like things that have a shine to them,” remarked Mr.
Holwell, humorously, “judging from the fact that he took not only my gold
watch and Dan’s nickel one, but the aluminum frying-pan as well. We don’t
believe he could have any particular need for that, unless to use it as a
looking-glass.”
“Well,” Mr. Nocker continued, “according to my recollection those
gentlemen from Creston lost a field-glass they valued highly, as well as a
watch, and several other things, that they would surely pay a good reward to
recover.”
“That makes me think of something,” Dick spoke up.
“Tell us what it is, then, please?” urged Leslie, quickly.
“The trail I started to follow at the time I glimpsed the gorilla standing
so close by, was so well beaten that I felt sure it must lead to his den,
somewhere in the thickest part of the jungle.”
“It stands to reason that would be the case,” admitted Mr. Nocker. “I
suppose you are going to say, Dick, that if the pit trap works and the
monster is caught, so there need be no further fear of him, you mean to
follow up that trail and find his den?”
 “Why, yes, sir, that was what I had in mind,” admitted the boy,
modestly. “If he is like some monkeys I’ve read about, that had such a
weakness for pretty and shiny things that they stole them, he’ll keep his
trophies there, and we’ll be apt to get back everything that’s been taken.”
“Thank you for that comforting assurance, Dick,” said Mr. Holwell.
“There’s a standing reward of ten dollars out for the safe return of my
watch. I’d feel that I was getting off pretty cheap at that, for I cherish that
keepsake considerably above its intrinsic value. Then Dan, here, is to be
heard from also, for he’s in the same boat with me.”
“Ten cents reward, and no questions asked,” declared Dan, “for the safe
return of my dollar watch! That’s ten per cent. you know. I only hope the
rascal hasn’t gone and stowed it away in his cheek, as I saw a tricky
monkey do when he’d hooked a man’s watch right from his pocket.”
Many times during the evening Dan might have been observed listening
eagerly. He half fancied he had caught some significant sound which
indicated that his expected guest had arrived at the trap, and taken the
plunge.
On each occasion, however, he concluded he must have been mistaken.
At any rate Dan did not see fit to ask any one to accompany him thither,
lantern in hand, to investigate. Indeed, it is questionable if he could have
found a single recruit had he proposed such a thing. The boys were not keen
to wander far from the protection of that jolly campfire, knowing, as they
did, what sort of terrible beast was making its home on Bass Island.
Both Mr. Nocker and Mr. Capes asked so many questions that it is
doubtful whether anything escaped being told during those delightful hours
spent around the crackling fire. The evening had turned out a bit chilly, too,
which made the blaze all the more appreciated.
Then at the suggestion of Mr. Holwell, who knew how splendidly the Y.
M. C. A. boys could sing, they gave a number of their school songs, and
patriotic airs as well. Dick, learning that the minister had a special liking for
“Onward Christian Soldiers,” coaxed Leslie to strike up with his clear tenor,
and the rest came thundering along in the chorus, greatly to the delight of
Mr. Holwell, in whose eyes dewdrops sparkled when they were through.
 “I have heard that inspiring song on many notable occasions, boys,” he
assured them, “but I give you my word for it, never sung as to-night. Here
on this lonely island in the vast lake the sound seems to roll over the water
with telling effect. I never before realized how wonderfully charming songs
can sound on the water. It gives them a special value that could not be
attained in any other way. I shall never, never forget this night, and the ones
who have entertained us so well.”
Mr. Nocker was almost as enthusiastic in his praise.
“I want to say to you, young fellows,” he told them, with considerable
emotion in his voice and manner, “that I am proud to be reckoned your
friend in these days of reconstruction. I would not go back to the life I used
to lead for all the money in the United States. Since little Billy came into
my life it seems as though the scales have dropped from my eyes, and the
whole world has taken on a new and glorious aspect. And I owe it mostly to
Dick here. God bless him.”
“Hear! hear!” shouted some of the lads.
“The best chum going!” others roared.
“For he’s a jolly good fellow, which none can deny!” chanted Leslie and
several of the rest in chorus. Nor did the camp director have the heart to
restrain this boisterous demonstration.
Dick laughed, and turned red; but, of course, he would not have been
human if he had not felt his heart beating faster than its wont with
happiness, when he realized that these good friends thought so well of him,
and that Mr. Nocker no longer deemed all boys “Sons of Belial,” as he used
to affirm.
Much as they enjoyed that evening, the hour grew late, and some of the
campers were found to be secretly yawning behind their palms. So Mr.
Bartlett said it would be just as well for them to consider retiring, as they
would want to be up early in the morning.
“Don’t forget we’ve got to have breakfast,” he remarked at the same
time. “And all that heap of fine, hard blueberries must be placed in the
containers our friends have taken the trouble to bring along with them. They
wish to make a start before the sun gets too high, because it’s a long and
rough ride to Cliffwood.”
 Dan lingered around while the others were preparing to seek their
blankets. He often cast an anxious look off toward the place where his trap
had been set, and Dick found no trouble in guessing what his thoughts were.
“Try to forget all about it until you wake up in the morning, Dan,” he
told the other. “I’ll want to go over with you, remember, to see if anything
happened while we slept.”
“I’ll be mighty glad to have you along, Dick,” Dan replied. “I reckon I
fixed everything just right, and if the creature comes snooping around and
tries to hook the bait hung up out of his reach, he’s liable to take a sudden
tumble, believe me! All right,” he went on, “I’ll turn in, as you say; so good
night, Dick!”
Ten minutes afterwards the camp was wrapped in silence.
 CHAPTER XXVIII
WHEN THE PIT TRAP WORKED

Dick had just succeeded in hurriedly dressing on the following morning,

after the regular turn in the lake, when some one nervously gripped his arm.
Turning, he discovered, just as he expected, that it was Dan with an eager
look of anticipation on his face.
“Dick, you haven’t forgotten, I hope?” was his anxious greeting.
“Oh, no! if by that you mean I’m to go along with you to the trap,”
answered the other, smiling at the look on Dan’s face.
“You won’t be long, I hope, Dick?” Dan continued, pleadingly, as the
other turned back toward his tent.
“I’ll join you just as quickly as I can, Dan.”
“And Dick, did you happen to wake up during the night? If so, tell me:
Was there any sort of noise from that region?”
“Nothing that I noticed, Dan; though I slept sounder than usual I’m
afraid. But we’ll soon settle that, you know.”
“Whew! I’m all in a tremble to find out,” muttered the other, as he cast
another quick glance toward the quarter where his thoughts were centered.
Dick took pity on him, and did hurry, even postponing some of his
customary morning duties until later. He found Dan waiting, almost
consumed with impatience. No one noticed them steal quietly off, which
was just as well. Indeed, Dan breathed an audible sigh of relief when he
made sure of this fact.
“Course if there isn’t any Old Man of the Woods squatting down in my
pit trap,” he went on to explain as they walked, “we needn’t hurry to say
anything about it. If anybody happens to mention the subject later on I’ll
tell ’em I hardly expected to strike oil the first thing, and that they’ve just
got to give me time.”
 Like most boys Dan was very sensitive to ridicule, as his words proved.
Dick said nothing further, for already they were beginning to draw near the
spot where the pit had been dug.
That Dan was very much on the alert his actions speedily proved. He
suddenly clutched his companion rigidly by the arm, and his voice was
husky with self-suppressed excitement as he gasped:
“Dick, I do believe it worked after all!”
“What makes you think so?” asked Dick, who had as yet seen nothing
to disclose this fact.
“Because the bait is gone!” continued Dan, growing more and more
excited. “I hung it up on that branch you can see moving in the wind, and
now it’s bare. No danger of its having fallen off either. Something’s taken it,
Dick!”
“So? Then let’s move along and make sure,” remarked the second boy.
Ten seconds later Dan made another discovery.
“Oh! the mat over the hole has been broken in, Dick—it certainly has!”
he cried in growing excitement.
“Good enough!” his chum observed. “Then let’s hope Mr. Gorilla is
right now down in the pit, waiting for us to come and explain what we
mean by deceiving a poor old simian in such a mean way. Come along,
Dan. The chances are you’ve caught him.”
All doubt was removed shortly afterwards, when creeping cautiously up
the two boys peered over the edge of the pit. Most of the covering had been
dragged down with the heavy descending body of the gorilla when he fell
in, so that enough daylight managed to struggle to the bottom to disclose a
fearful sight.
There sat the gorilla, blinking his wicked little eyes up at the faces of his
captors, of whose presence he seemed to be fully aware. He was all that
Dan had pictured him, short of stature, with an immense girth of chest, long
muscular arms, and squatty lower limbs. Ugly though he seemed to the
boys, Dick was rather of the opinion that the animal could not be quite as
ferocious as those of his species when met in their native Borneo haunts.
 “He must have got used to folks in the years of his captivity,” Dick
remarked to the shivering Dan; “and that’s why he doesn’t take on dreadful,
now that he understands he’s caught in a trap, and will have to go back to
his cage again.”
“My stars!” muttered the entranced Dan, “if he’s a tame gorilla deliver
me from ever running across a real wild one. All the money in the world
couldn’t tempt me to drop down in that pit alongside that old chap. Ugh!
excuse me! Even the thought of it makes me creep all over.”
“We’ll try not to have any such accident as that,” remarked Dick,
experiencing a squeamish feeling himself at the idea. “And now, what are
you going to do with Bob, since you’ve trapped him?”
“I’ve figured all that out,” replied Dan. “We’ll have Mr. Capes find
where that circus proprietor is holding out this week. There must be ways of
doing that, you see. And then he can wire him that his gorilla is trapped,
and for him to come along as fast as he can, with a cage and experienced
help to get him out.”
“That’s a good scheme, Dan,” commended the other, slapping his chum
on the back. “And in the meantime we’ll have to see that the old fellow
doesn’t want for his regular allowance of grub.”
“No danger of his climbing out, is there, Dick?”
“I should hardly think so,” the other replied, after again taking a survey
of the deep pit. “The only way he could ever do that would be to dig holes
in the side, and I don’t believe he’s up to that game. Anyhow we’ll keep tab
of his doings, and if we find he’s trying a game like that we’ll check him in
a hurry.”
Dan began to take on the airs of a world conqueror. The look of anxiety
gradually left his face, giving way to one of conscious triumph. Indeed, it
must be confessed that he puffed his chest out a little as, in company with
Dick, he returned to the camp.
Their coming was noticed, if their flitting had passed without comment.
“Any luck, Dan?” called Andy Hale, who was trying to get his
refractory crop of bristly hair to stay down, always a difficult morning task
with him.
 “Say, do we have gorilla steak for breakfast?” demanded Nat Silmore,
trying to be funny, though his recent actions had shown that the presence of
the animal in the vicinity of the camp was anything but a joke with him.
“Oh, well, you can settle that yourself,” said Dan, carelessly. “I make a
standing offer right here and now. Any fellow who cares to drop down into
that pit this morning may have all my coop of homing pigeons free, gratis,
for nothing.”
The offer caused a sensation.
“Did you get him, Dan?” demanded Eddie Grant.
“Whoop! Dan’s trapped the old thief after all! Bully for Dan!” yelled
Peg.
“Did you, Dan, and is the Jabberwock mad about it?” asked Andy Hale.
Even the grown members of the party evinced considerable interest in
the matter. Mr. Bartlett knew that some of the boys, more impetuous than
wise, would be apt to rush toward the pit in order to gratify their curiosity.
He wished to warn them of the danger involved in carelessness.
“Mr. Holwell,” he said, “Dan invites us all to come and see for
ourselves. But before we go I wish to tell the boys to be very particular not
to crowd up close to the edge of the pit. If the earth crumbled under any one
and he fell in I’m afraid he’d never come out alive again.”
Accordingly, the boys promised to exercise the greatest care. Then the
whole troop followed in the wake of the proud originator of the scheme to
trap the disturber of their peace.
Judging from the broad grin decorating the face of Dan Fenwick when
he looked around once or twice, it was the happiest moment of his whole
young life. He could understand the feelings that must have filled the heart
of some ancient conqueror, when crowned with the laurel wreath of victory
and watching the strings of captives paraded before the throngs filling the
public square in Rome.
The captured gorilla must have been quite used to seeing human faces
about his cage, for he never once got up from his squatting position, but just
blinked up at them, and scowled frightfully.
 “Deliver me from meeting that chap in the woods after night sets in!”
remarked Clint Babbett.
“And Nat, I’m going to ask your pardon for laughing at you because
you yelled when that monster took to playing leap-frog over you,” said Peg
Fosdick, humbly. “If I waked from a sound sleep and saw him sailing past I
reckon my heart would nearly jump out of my mouth with fear. Say, he’s
the limit!”
“Look at the muscles in his arms, would you?” cried Andy Hale. “Huh!
no wonder he smashed that first trap of yours to flinders, Dan. After this I
can easily believe the stories about a gorilla tying a gun-barrel into a knot.”
The sight of the beast sitting so close to them, though unable to do them
injury, was so fascinating that Mr. Bartlett had to order the boys back to the
camp.
“And remember,” he added sternly, “not one of you except Dan or Dick
must ever approach this place without special permission. What that rascal
might do should any one fall into the pit I am not prepared to say. So far
we’ve managed to get on without any serious trouble; and we don’t want
our camping trip to be marred by tragedy. Please remember those are my
positive orders, and I shall hold each one of you responsible for any
disobedience.”
The boys had never seen Mr. Bartlett so serious, and his words made a
deep impression on even Nat and his two reckless cronies. But the camp
director knew it was no time for trifling; and he believed in closing the
stable-door before the horse was stolen, not afterwards, when it was too
late.
Breakfast followed, after which preparations were made looking to the
departure of the guests. All of them declared they had enjoyed their too
brief stay greatly, and shook hands with each member of the camp guard.
The berries had been placed in the carriers provided and were loaded into
one of the boats, which Elmer and Peg offered to row over to the landing.
Mr. Bartlett had been privately asked by the minister to select Asa
Gardner to help Leslie ferry the three guests across to where their car
awaited them. Of course, Mr. Holwell had an object in so doing, wishing
Asa to understand that he was considered a member in good standing of the
party, and that whatever the past held in the shape of regrets need not bother
him a particle now.
Asa looked quite cheerful. With the capture of the thieving gorilla the
last doubt had been removed from his mind. Dick secretly found himself
rejoicing with the boy who had had to fight so desperately in order to
conquer his evil tendencies. He meant to keep in close touch with Asa after
this, realizing that the person who has won a victory over himself deserves
ten times more credit than those who have never had to engage in a fight
with their weak natures.
In good time the car started back toward Cliffwood, with a long journey
before the travelers. And across the intervening water came the cheers of
those who from the distant island watched the departure of the guests. A
few half wished they, too, were starting for dear old Cliffwood. It was only
natural that a feeling akin to home-sickness should for a moment grip their
young hearts. But all this was soon forgotten, when they began to plan for
another day of good times.
 CHAPTER XXIX
CLEARING UP THE MYSTERY

“Feel like coming with me this morning, Leslie?” asked Dick, after one
party had set off to fill the pails with berries, and while another group was
busy catching minnows for bait, as the supply had got somewhat low in the
reservoir where the bait was kept.
“Count on me if Mr. Bartlett is willing,” laughed Leslie Capes. “And I
say that without even asking what’s in the wind. I know that when you get
an idea in your head it’s generally worth something.”
“Listen,” said Dick. “When I saw that well-trodden trail the gorilla had
made you remember I remarked that it must lead to the place he’d been
using for his den. Now that the old fellow is safe, and there’s no danger of
meeting him on the way, I’m thinking of taking a look-in on his home.”
Leslie was interested immediately.
“Thank you then for selecting me to go along, Dick,” he cried.
“Just as if you weren’t always first choice with me, old fellow,” returned
Dick. “But honest, I’m curious to find out what sort of place the wily old
beast picked out for his den. More than likely we’ll never know how he got
across to this island; but we can find out what he’s done here in these
months since he broke away from the circus in that storm.”
“And,” continued Leslie, “I rather think you hope we may be lucky
enough to find some of the many things the thieving rascal has made away
with, not only from our camp, but from that of the sporting party up here for
the fly-fishing earlier in the summer.”
Dick nodded his head in the affirmative.
“There’s no telling,” he admitted. “Though perhaps we’d better not
count our chickens before they’re hatched. Even if we find nothing, it’ll be
interesting to follow that path made by the feet of the gorilla.”
“Sure it will,” agreed Leslie, “now that we know where the old gent is
stopping temporarily. If he were foot-free nothing could tempt me to
meander in that quarter, and take chances of meeting him face to face in the
brush, where running would be a hard job. Whee!”
He shrugged his shoulders to add emphasis to his words, and Dick
evidently quite agreed with his partner, to judge from the look on his face.
Some time later on the pair found themselves in that part of the big
island so well remembered by Dick as the scene of his panic of the former
day. They caught the sound of voices near by, and understood from this that
Eddie Grant and the other pickers had concluded to visit that rich harvest
field, now that all danger had been removed.
“No need of their knowing we’re around as yet,” whispered Dick. “So
come along over this way, for that’s where I struck the well-worn trail.”
He had made no mistake, Leslie soon learned. Even though so soon
afterwards compelled to fly for his life, Dick had noted the ground, and a
few minutes later he was pointing down at his feet.
Both boys examined the earth with interest, but their curiosity was so
great that they did not care to linger long. Following that plain trail was the
easiest kind of work, for the gorilla had not attempted to “blind” it in the
least.
At the end the boys reached a sort of strange shelter undoubtedly made
by the Borneo man-monkey. It was fashioned from branches, and matted in
such a clever way that the boys declared it would shed water as well as any
thatched roof they had ever seen.
“I never dreamed a gorilla could do such work as this,” Leslie said, as
they stood and examined the shelter.
“Oh!” explained Dick, quickly, “from what I’ve read about them, over
in Borneo, where they mostly come from, they have their homes in trees
and make many such shelters so the baby gorillas can be kept dry when the
tropical rains come on.”
“Well,” continued the wondering Leslie, “it seems that this old fellow
hadn’t forgotten the lessons of his younger years, even if he was shut up in
a cage for goodness knows how long.”
“That can be set down as the instinct,” said Dick, “which animals and
birds have in place of the reasoning powers of the human mind. A wild bird
can be taken from the nest when it’s just hatched, reared in a cage, and if set
free will be able to construct a nest exactly like those its species has been
building ever since the world began.”
“It’s just wonderful, that’s what, Dick! But let’s creep underneath and
see if we can find anything of the lost articles.”
No sooner were they inside the rude shelter than both boys uttered cries
of wonder mingled with delight.
“Here’s his treasure-chest as sure as anything!” yelled Leslie. “Oh, look,
Dick! Mr. Holwell’s gold watch, and not a bit hurt, either! Won’t he be
tickled half to death at getting it back? When I start winding it up I can hear
it begin to work. And here’s Dan’s nickel time-keeper too, as well as Peg’s
precious aluminum frying-pan.”
“Yes, and I’ve found the field-glasses that other party lost, as well as
lots of things besides,” added Dick, laughing happily, for it really did seem
as though the very last of their troubles had now been smoothed out.
“This is certainly a great picnic,” asserted Leslie. “I’d like Clint to come
and take a good picture of this ape-made shack. It’d be well worth showing,
with our crowd grouped around it as evidence that we’ve been here.”
“I’ll ask Mr. Bartlett to have it done to-morrow, for Mr. Holwell talks of
having to go back home on the next day!” Dick declared.
“We’ll all be sorry to see the last of him, Dick.”
“That’s right,” agreed the other, earnestly. “Mr. Holwell is one man
among a million when it comes to knowing just how to wind boys around
his finger. But then that’s because he loves boys so. No man can have
control over them unless he is thinking and planning for their benefit night
and day.”
“I reckon you’re right there,” Leslie asserted. “Boys are a heap like
animals. A dog knows by instinct who’s his friend. He’ll come up to one
fellow wagging his tail the minute he hears his voice, even if he never saw
him before; and growl as soon as another chap speaks to him. That’s the
way with boys—they just know.”
As there was nothing more to detain them, Dick and his chum set off to
find the berry pickers and lead them to the strange shelter fashioned by the
escaped gorilla.
Great was the astonishment of the mill lads when they looked upon the
“den,” and learned that everything that had been taken from their camp, as
well as numerous other articles, had been recovered.
That very afternoon all of the campers made their way to the spot, and
Clint, as well as several other contestants for the photograph prize, managed
to get several pictures of the “monkey shack” as the boys called it. They
took inside views also, with the array of recovered articles in plain sight, as
a reminder of the thievish propensities of the big ape.
Several days later some one was discovered making gestures, and
signalling from the mainland. Upon this a couple of the boys rowed over
and found that two men had arrived in a sort of wagon, that could be also
called a cage.
This was the circus proprietor and one of his assistants, who had come
to get the valuable animal that had been loose so long. The proprietor
brought a letter from Mr. Capes, as had been agreed upon. This told of the
reward of two hundred dollars which had been offered for the capture of the
gorilla, and which the proprietor had agreed to pay to the boys in camp.
After some little time the experienced circus men managed to get the
gorilla into the cage. Dick suspected that they made use of chloroform or
something of that nature, though he was never sure about it, because no one
was allowed to accompany them when they went to the pit.
On the following day the two skiffs were fastened together, and in this
way served as a ferryboat to take the cage and its occupant across to where
the wagon awaited them.
The money in cash was handed to Dick, greatly to the delight of Dan
and the rest of the boys; for it had been decided that the reward was to go
into the club treasury for future needs.
This was not all the good fortune that came their way. Mr. Holwell had
insisted in redeeming his word, and he placed ten dollars in Dick’s hand
when he was handed his valued gold watch, unharmed save by a single
scratch that would always serve to bring the exciting events of the occasion
fresh to his mind.
 Not to be outdone, Dan also handed his “magnificent reward” over,
swelling the aggregate receipts of the treasury by another ten cents. And
later on, when the sportsmen from Creston were communicated with and
told the wonderful story, they sent twenty-five dollars to Mr. Bartlett for the
boys of the Cliffwood Y. M. C. A. with their compliments.
Returning again to the afternoon just after the ape had been trapped, it
can be easily understood that there were many lighter hearts in the camp,
now that all danger of a night visit from the gorilla was past.
Nat and his two cronies in particular seemed to have recovered their lost
nerve—a fact that Dick was none too glad to see, for he half feared Mr.
Bartlett might have trouble with the trio after Mr. Holwell left. Still, as the
loyal ones were so overwhelmingly in the majority it hardly seemed likely
that Nat would try any of his tricks, with the odds so greatly against him.
The day finally came when Mr. Holwell had to leave the boys. He
showed that he disliked doing so very much. He had so heartily enjoyed
himself while among them that he felt keenly the severance of those
friendly ties that bound him to his boys.
In fact everybody was more or less subdued, and no one displayed any
ambition to do anything until after Mr. Holwell had said good-bye.
 CHAPTER XXX
BREAKING CAMP—CONCLUSION

Dick chanced to be talking with Mr. Holwell on the morning of

departure, asking his advice regarding several things that might arise later
on, when Asa Gardner approached.
Seeing the boy hesitate the minister smiled, and beckoned to him.
“I’m glad you’re having such a good time up here, Asa,” he said in his
kindly fashion, as his strong hand grasped that of the boy in whom he felt
such a deep interest.
“Oh! I certainly am feeling splendid just now,” Asa told him,
brightening up. “I was worried for a while, as Dick knows, sir, because I
had begun to be afraid that in spite of all I could do my old trouble was
getting the better of me. But when we found out about that gorilla, why, of
course, I just knew it couldn’t be so.”
“Take my advice, Asa,” said Mr. Holwell, steadily, “and never allow
yourself to believe for even a minute that you can go back to the old ways
again. That weakness is dead, I tell you! It lost its grip when you gave your
dear mother that solemn promise. I knew you would win out, and redeem
the past; and I’m proud of the way you’re doing it, son.”
Asa should have beamed with pleasure on hearing this, but then he was
an odd sort of boy, Dick knew. He was therefore not much surprised to hear
him give a big sigh, and then go on to say with a whimsical smile:
“Sometimes I do feel that I’ve done pretty well, sir; and then I think of
the story I once heard you tell at a meeting of boys.”
“What was that, Asa?” asked the minister, realizing that the shadow of
the past would be likely to haunt the sensitive lad for a long while, until
time had healed the wound.
“I’ll tell you, sir. It certainly did make a great impression on me,” said
Asa. “There was once a boy who got to doing so many bad things that his
father took him to task. He had him set up a nice clean post, and made him
promise that every time he did a thing that he shouldn’t he would drive a
nail into it. Then when he did a good deed he could draw a nail out.”
Mr. Holwell knew what was coming, but he only smiled, and said
encouragingly when Asa stopped to catch his breath:
“Yes, go on, Asa.”
“One day, sir, as you told us, that boy suddenly began to notice that his
post was getting pretty full of nails. That scared him, and made him feel
bad; so he set himself to stopping his bad deeds, and did things worth while.
Then one day he took his father out to look at the post. There wasn’t a nail
left in it, sir. He had drawn them every one out!”
Again Asa gulped hard, and then managed to continue.
“The boy’s father was proud of him, you said, because he knew he had
managed by his little scheme to make the boy think, which was just what he
had wished to do. So he told him that he was pleased to see the post without
a nail. And then, Mr. Holwell, the boy turned to him and said sadly: ‘But
Father, the holes are still there!’ And that’s the way with me, sir. I seem to
have managed to reform, but every little while I see all those terrible holes
in the post to remind me of what I’ve done in the past!”
Mr. Holwell patted Asa on the shoulder.
“Cheer up, my son,” he said, heartily. “It is that regret which is bound to
make your footing sure on the rocks. When any one can forget his
weaknesses of the past he is in danger of slipping again. That conscience of
yours is going to be your best asset. Don’t fret about what is past, but look
hopefully into the future. If the chance ever comes your way, help some
other fellow to get his feet on a firm and sure foundation. Remember, I
believe in you, and I have no fear.”
Dick’s hand-grip, too, caused Asa to color. With such good friends
beside him what boy need worry about the future? So the look of
foreboding began to leave his face from that hour, and Asa showed that he
could be a good comrade in the sports of the camp, as well as in its
obligations.
The campers gave Mr. Holwell a royal send-off. The cheers followed
him across the water, and broke out again when he and Dick started for the
station, for the latter insisted on accompanying him that far on his way, to
carry his bag, and have a last little talk.
It was well on toward noon when Dick and Asa returned to camp. The
boys, together with Harry Bartlett and the physical instructor, settled down
to enjoy the remainder of their stay on Bass Island as best they could. There
could be no doubt about their having a fine time; but all the same most of
them would miss Mr. Holwell very much.
Nat Silmore was beginning to grow tired of it all. He missed something
that he was accustomed to having when off on any such trip as this. This
was the liberty to play pranks without being reprimanded by Harry Bartlett
or the athletic director.
So Nat and his two cronies fretted under the galling conditions. They
would have only too willingly accompanied the circus men when they went
away with the captured gorilla, except for the fact that Mr. Bartlett had the
return railway tickets, and the distance was much too far for them to dream
of trying to walk.
Nat and his cronies on one occasion refused to do their share of the
work, whereupon Mr. Bartlett promptly gave them to understand that those
who did not take part in the camp routine and daily exercises could not have
anything to eat. That, of course, brought the rebels to terms, but from that
time on, while they picked berries and chopped wood in turn, and forced
themselves to play their parts, they kept pretty much to themselves, and
looked gloomy, as though counting the days when this irksome camp life
would come to an end.
With the three mill boys the exact opposite came about. They learned
that these other lads were not in the least snobbish. Then the kindly spirit in
which most of the boys helped pick berries so that Eddie, Ban and Cub
could enjoy their afternoons in any way they wished, made a deep
impression on the three.
“One thing sure!” Eddie told Dick, on the day before they were to break
camp and start back to Cliffwood. “You’ll see a lot of the mill boys fairly
tumble over themselves to join the Junior Department of the Y. M. C. A.
when they hear how royally we three have been taken care of up here. From
Mr. Holwell, Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Rowland, all the way down, I want to say