Bridging the gender gap [engineering education]

A typical thirteen year-old girl is likely to think that engineering is about men in dirty overalls working with noisy machinery. In this paper, the author asks whether a different approach in the classroom can help to end this misconception     

CAS 101 [electronic engineering education]

This article focuses on undergraduate electrical engineering educational philosophy, pedagogy, and curricular content. In this article I present an academic philosophy believed to bring about excellence in the undergraduate electrical engineering program. This article also offers several general suggestions for strengthening coursework in the circuits, systems, and electronics areas     

The Olin experiment [engineering education experiment]

This paper describes the engineering education experiment conducted at the Franklin W. Olin College in Needham, MA, aimed at increasing the quality and quantity of the engineering workforce in the US. Instead of the usual theory-heavy lectures, segregated disciplines, and individual efforts, the experiment emphasizes design exercises, interdisciplinary studies and teamwork. Olin's radically new way of training engineers incorporates changes that many in industry and academia say are long overdue. Judging by some of their internships, it appears that Olin's first graduates will have no problems landing their desired jobs. Meanwhile, people are keeping an eye on these graduates as they make their way into the real world.     

In academe's grungy groves [engineering education]

Analyzing the shortcomings of the US engineering education system is a growth industry. There have been numerous editorials, commission reports, commentaries, and complaints on the subject. Blame has been placed on every party in sight, including the secondary school system, television, uninvolved parents, high school science programs and teachers, legislators, high equipment cost, obsolete laboratories, textbooks, and curricula. No-one however has taken a careful look at the environment within the university and its effect on the engineering faculty. Here, the author presents some anecdotal reports to start such an examination. He has intentionally limited them to a factual recounting of events as they actually occurred; readers are left to draw their own conclusions without being influenced by his biases     

Wizard of watts [electronics engineering education]

IEEE Medal of Honor winner, James D Meindl, blazed an adventure-packed trail in low-power semiconductors and took generations of graduates students along with him. Meindl, a professor of microelectronics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says that the most important part of his job is making graduate school fun and exciting. This paper presents a story of Meindl that made an impact on his students' careers and on the field he loves.     

Taiwan: meeting the new challenges [engineering education]

The state of engineering education in Taiwan is presented in terms of the number of engineering departments in Taiwanese universities and the number of students graduated from those departments. The basic philosophy of undergraduate engineering education in Taiwan, providing a general-purpose training to most people who want it, is discussed. The manner in which the education system is managed in Taiwan and the challenges it faces in the future are outlined     

A view from the other side [engineering education]

A former General Electric engineer and manager who turned to teaching dispels seven common myths about academia. These myths are that academia is highly inefficient; those who can't practice, teach; teaching is a nice way to retire; tenure breeds mediocrity; only people with practical experience should teach; the US lost its competitive edge in manufacturing because of research-dominated engineering schools; and the MBA distorts engineers' values     

Core studies make comeback [nuclear engineering education]

A number of surprised nuclear engineering department heads are reporting their enrollments are up, in some cases for the first time in almost a decade, and are cautiously optimistic that this heralds a turnaround. Several explanations are possible. There's the Bush administration's pro-nuclear energy plan and the concern about the effects of burning fossil fuels on global warming. Also, some 40-year nuclear plant licenses nearing their end are being extended for 20 years, and new reactor designs are on the drawing boards. So a nuclear career looks less of a dead end than it did only a few years ago; there may be a new positive attitude toward the field as universities, industry, and the US federal government have stepped up efforts to recruit students in the past few years with an infusion of scholarship money     

Leaders for every occasion [French engineering education]

In France, graduate engineers enjoy a higher prestige and better career prospects than in most Western countries. The reasons for this lie in the educational system. The author discusses the role played by grandes ecoles-small or medium sized autonomous establishments created in response to precise needs, notably in engineering, applied science and management studies. The curriculum is briefly described. The author then discusses in more detail the way in which the students are trained for leadership     

A question of quality [in electrical engineering education]

As UK universities digest the results of the 1996 HEFC Research Assessment Exercise, the author reports on the work of the panel that was responsible for appraising the quality of research staff in the country's electrical engineering departments     

SARTOR is dead, long live SARTOR! [engineering education]

Faced with what it saw as an oversupply of UK Chartered Engineers a decade ago, the Engineering Council decided to limit degree course accreditation for CEng to courses with tough A-level requirements. Five years on from the introduction of new 'Standards and Routes to Registration', the author explains how the move has left the profession 'in a mess'.     

Breathe deeply [back story]

Rebreathers, an advanced kind of scuba-diving gear, let divers stay underwater for hours, silently, like the ?fish men? that Jacques Cousteau envisioned at the dawn of the age of underwater exploration. So we jumped at the chance to review an innovative new rebreather. And then we had to wait almost a year before we could actually publish the review (?Winner: Poseidon Discovery,? in this issue).     

Putting consumers first [electricity supply industry]

All consumers-residential and commercial, small and large alike-are entitled to reliable, universal electricity service priced at a reasonable rate. This principle has been the bedrock of US state and federal regulation of the electric industry for decades, and, here, the author argues that it is being carelessly tossed aside in the name of “competition” or “choice”     

Putting passives in their place [PCB integration]

The next big thing in miniaturization is integrating resistors, capacitors, and inductors into circuit boards. These integrated passives would be a part of the circuit board itself, formed when the board was, so their overall cost would eventually be less than what manufacturers pay at present to buy and solder attach discrete devices. This article examines the advantages of this integration scheme, and looks at the difficulties involved.     

Putting computers to work [Lyons Electronic Office]

Fifty years after British catering company J.C. Lyons embarked on a project to develop its own 'electronic office', the author recalls how an act of faith resulted in the creation of the world's first business IT system. Lyons decided to build an electronic computer to master the mountains of paper in its offices. Business computing was unknown and Lyons Electronic Office effectively started with a blank sheet of paper. The only work that had been done on a stored program computer anywhere in the world was sequences of a handful of instructions of a mathematical nature. These were on the 'Baby' at Manchester University and the EDSAC system at Cambridge University; systems which at that time still possessed no mechanism for inserting data or printing out results. It could be said to have been an enormous act of faith to go ahead on that flimsy basis. But to the office management at Lyons, the possibilities seemed so great that this first trivial demonstration was deemed to be enough. The author describes the development the computer system and some of the issues raised such as data entry and output, security and accuracy of data     

Putting Electricity Where The Rubber Meets the Road [NEWS]

In-wheel motors can improve fuel economy and safety for hybrid electric vehicles. A motor housed inside a wheel hub can shunt up to 96 percent of the torque it generates directly to the patch of tire that touches the road. With a conventional drivetrain, roughly 20 percent of the power generated by the motor is lost to friction.     

Chip detectives [reverse engineering]

The chip industry is finding new uses for reverse engineering-to defend patents, spur innovation, and trace product failures. Intellectual property negotiations rely on technical ammunition, and over the last decade or so, a handful of laboratories specializing in IC reverse engineering (including Taeus) have sprung up to provide it. As their clients will attest, the ability of these labs to dissect even the most complicated IC is essential for pinpointing cases of patent infringement, and also determining whether a patented technology is worth licensing or buying. Beyond that, semiconductor manufacturers turn to these reverse-engineering houses to get a sense of how their products stack up against the competition, to test the quality of their products, and to trace the root cause of device failures     

Dream jobs [engineering career]

This paper features the Dream Jobs 2006 special report which lists 10 people who have found success in a variety of engineering disciplines. A common motif of these 10 successful engineers is that, when the right opportunities came along, they simply listened to both their guts and their hearts.     

Concurrent engineering tools: are the human issues being ignored?

Concurrent engineering (CE) tools are intended to increase the concurrency of multidisciplinary design by integrating various enabling technologies such as computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, group decision support systems, expert systems, and communication networks. If the long term viability of CE depends on effectively developing and deploying CE tools, the assumptions about how CE design tasks are most successfully performed and the roles of tools in facilitating that work should be carefully reviewed. This paper identifies the human factors assumptions made by the CE tool development community and compares them to conclusions drawn from existing literature on the role of technologies in performing technical work. This comparison suggests that the assumptions made by the CE tool development community are likely to inhibit CE tools from successfully enabling the CE process. Recommendations for remedying this state of affairs are offered in the form of restated assumptions that are consistent with documented behaviors of people using similar technologies and potential development strategies for CE tool developers