Week 11 Blog Assignment for ENGR 103

Next week our guest will be Dr. Riall Nolan from the Department of Anthropology.  Dr. Nolan worked overseas for nearly twenty years in the field of international development, and has experience as a development project designer, manager, and evaluator. He has lived and worked in Senegal, Tunisia, Papua New Guinea, and Sri Lanka. His experience with development includes grass-roots community projects with the Peace Corps, project design and management with USAID, and policy analysis with the World Bank. He has also participated in numerous consulting assignments for both bilateral agencies and NGOs.

Prior to coming to Purdue, Dr. Nolan directed international programs at the University of Cincinnati. He has also held administrative and teaching positions at Golden Gate University, the University of Pittsburgh, the School for International Training, Georgia State University, and the University of Papua New Guinea.

Your reading assignment (available on Blackboard under Week 11 Course Content) is an excerpt from Dr. Nolan's book "Development Anthropology."  You need only read the Mini-Cases 1, 2, and 3, not the text in between.  These mini case studies are intended to provide examples of how situations can be interpreted differently depending on your frame of reference.  

Dr. Nolan has experience working with multi-disciplinary teams of professionals (including engineers) in international development projects.  After reading the case studies, think about the intercultural competencies one might need to effectively work not only in international projects, but in multi-disciplinary teams. Also, think of a few questions you would like to ask Dr. Nolan about his diverse and many life experiences, and how training in anthropology is relevant to engineering.

Week 10 Blog Assignment for ENGR 103

Next week's guest is Dr. Ayşe Çiftçi. Ayşe was born and raised in Turkey where she attended Middle East Technical University and received her undergraduate and Masters degrees. Ayşe moved to the United States for her doctoral program at the University of Memphis, Tennessee in 2002.  After graduating in 2006, she moved to Purdue University as an Assistant Professor in the Counseling Psychology program. Ayşe's research interests lie in multicultural issues, cross cultural psychology, immigration, international students, and psychology well being. 


In preparation for her visit, she has asked you read Chapter 3 from Diversity Consciousness.  This reading is available under the Week 10 Course Content on Blackboard.  It is a longer reading assignment, but there are a lot of figures and it should be rather easy and interesting for you to read.  Dr. Çiftçi does not have any specific thought questions for you, but asks that you read this carefully and thoughtfully.  


In order to develop a blog post, I suggest you read the chapter and write about something that you found most interesting.  For example, I find the section about map projections to be quite interesting from a technical standpoint of how maps are developed, and from a cultural standpoint of who is generating the maps.  Perhaps from here I could expand upon what kinds of implications and perceptions this could develop in people who view these kinds of skewed maps, or other examples of how ethnocentrism influences how we portray information in popular media.

Week 9 Blog Assignment for ENGR 103

Next week's guest speaker will be Dr. Ghadir Haikal, an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering. Dr. Haikal holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Tishreen University, Syria, and her master’s and PhD degrees in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She previously worked as a graduate research assistant at UIUC. Dr. Haikal has research interests in computational mechanics, nonlinear finite element methods, material modeling, structural analysis, and nonlinear dynamics. Her recent work has focused on the modeling of contact interfaces in complex engineering systems.


Dr. Haikal's presentation will focus on structures of the Middle East (focused mainly on Syria and the surrounding region) and the aspects of their design that has allowed them to stand the test of time.


Under the Week 9 Course Content on Blackboard, you will find an article about "Five Machines that Changed the World."  Please read this article.  At first this article seems somewhat counter-intuitive to what a Civil Engineering professor in structures might have assigned, but explore this thought in your post.  Some writing prompts follow:
1. What does this article have to do with structures?
2. Think about some of the impressive ancient structures you know about in the Middle East. What are they? What do you know about them? How have they survived so long? It's okay to develop more questions than answers off of these, just be prepared to ask them in class!
3. Consider the relationship between structures, infrastructure, and conflict.