NIST Standards Coordination Office Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program: News Items

News Items

NIST Awardee Case Western Reserve University Seeks Collaborators for Case Studies

CWRU’s Case School of Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Kelvin Smith Library have completed their 2021 NIST SCO CD CAP project. The goal of the project was to develop standards education modules centered on case studies involving quality systems, biocompatibility, and software development for medical devices. They have developed lesson plans, tutorials, videos, homework assignments, and four case studies, including a moot court exercise on product liability that can be integrated into introductory biomedical engineering courses, senior design capstone courses, and graduate BioDesign curriculum. An impressive video of CWRU students’ moot court exercise can be viewed here, and the curriculum is available at https://osf.io/79s6z/. Looking ahead, PI’s Colin Drummond, Daniela Solomon, and Matthew Williams are actively seeking partners from standards development organizations and industry to co-develop additional case studies that will enhance the awareness, knowledge, and importance of industry standards. Please contact the PI’s directly for more information.

NIST Awardees Publish Book on Standards Information Literacy

Credit: PURDUE INFORMATION LITERACY HANDBOOKS

A new publication, Teaching and Collecting Technical Standards: A Handbook for Librarians and Educators, is available for free download or purchase from Purdue University Press. Comprising 13 chapters, the handbook provides background information on standards and information on how to access standards, best practices for developing a useful collection of standards, and integrating standards into the curriculum. Additionally, it includes 14 case studies in many disciplines, including engineering, business, and law. NIST Standards Coordination Office Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program (SCOCD CAP) awardees Margaret Philips, Purdue University, and Daniela Solomon, Case Western Reserve University, are co-authors and co-editors of the book, along with Chelsea Leachman, Washington State University, and Erin Rowley, University of Buffalo. In addition to the chapters and case studies contributed by Ms. Philips, Ms. Solomon, and several others, the handbook also includes a case study on Environmental Engineering, written by NIST SCOCD CAP awardees Jennifer Schneider and Lisa Greenwood, Rochester Institute of Technology, and a case study on Transportation Engineering, co-written by NIST SCOCD CAP awardee Angelo Lampousis, City University of New York. The full table of contents is available here. Purdue University Press also published an interview with the four co-authors and -editors about their new book and the growing demand to incorporate standards education into the classroom. 

Penn Program on Regulation launches a new curricular resource site that showcases the importance of voluntary codes and standards

January 12, 2023

The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Program on Regulation (PPR) recently launched its Voluntary Codes and Standards website: Codes-and-Standards.org. The content includes original teaching guides, case studies, and video interviews with experts that detail the important ways that voluntary codes and standards interact with the law and public policy. All of the materials needed to support one or more class modules are provided and can be used to integrate the study of codes and standards into the curriculum of core and elective courses in law schools and public policy graduate programs. The modules are organized into five segments: (1) Introduction to Codes and Standards, which provides a general overview that instructors can use to supplement the other modules or adapt to meet any instructional need; (2) Standard Essential Patents, drawing on a case study of an intellectual property dispute between Microsoft and Motorola; (3) Incorporation by Reference, the process by which federal agencies build the standards developed by nongovernmental standard-setting organizations into their public regulations; (4) Risk Regulation, incorporating a lesson about private standards into the teaching of the Supreme Court’s Benzene decision; and (5) Federal Preemption, drawing on case studies of federal energy efficiency standards and state and local green building code requirements. Each module also includes selected readings, teaching notes, slides, supplemental videos, and discussion questions. This project, led by Cary Coglianese, PPR Director, was funded under the NIST Standards Services Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program.

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Launches NIST-Funded Project to Develop Standards Education Curricula

November 28, 2022

RIT was recently awarded a grant to develop curricular modules on infrastructure improvement and resilience to introduce undergraduate and graduate students to standards. The modules will include case studies and simulation exercises that can be used in traditional classroom and online courses. The new curricula will be integrated into RIT degree programs in construction management, environmental sustainability, health and safety, and computing security, as well as smart grid and architectural engineering curriculum at partnering institutions. 

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