Microelectronic manufacturing engineering curriculum development

The author reviews the current status of semiconductor manufacturing education in US universities and identifies some shortcomings. He describes the development of an initiative in microelectronic manufacturing engineering curriculum that was recently implemented at Florida State University. This program utilizes an interdisciplinary curriculum to address the problems identified by the author. A workshop with representatives from Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) companies, university leaders and SRC managers was held to define appropriate curricula. In addition, a comprehensive independent survey which attempts to assess the current semiconductor industry needs in education is presented. Finally, the lessons learned, including specific recommendations of students, faculty, and industry representatives, are presented     

Engineering your electrical engineering education

Electrical and computer engineering (ECE) courses are usually structured in such a way to provide the student with the basics to solve problems in the field and then challenge the student with increasingly more difficult problems to effectively stretch those basic problem-solving approaches into more advanced techniques. While most of this problem-solving focus is placed on the technical arena, this is only one part of the educational experience for an ECE student. There are many nontechnical facets to one problem-solving repertoire that require development to become a successful practicing engineer in industry or academia after graduation. This article serves to provide some of these facets in a career-direction informational guide to junior- and senior-level undergraduate students and graduate students early in their ECE career. It also serves as a guide to outline some useful strategies not found in an engineering text to maximize one's educational experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as the transition between them.     

Collaborative distance education in power engineering

This paper presents a perspective on offering “shared-courses,” or courses simultaneously offered at two or more universities via various distance educational frameworks. Over a three year duration, two senior/graduate level courses were jointly developed and offered to the students at the University of Missouri-Rolla, the University of Arkansas, Kansas State University, and Purdue University. This paper discusses the various distance educational technologies including two-way audio/visual via ISDN line, video-tapes, and web-based conferencing. Both instructor and student reactions to these mediums are included. Pedagogical methods appropriate for these mediums are outlined. The paper concludes with recommendations and strategies for engineering institutions who would like to "course-share" with other universities and industry     

Biomedical engineering education and technology transfer

The author examines the role of a biomedical engineering educator in the technology transfer in health care delivery. He identifies the problem as lack of proper communication between the physician and the engineer and suggests ways to remedy it. He discusses the role that the biomedical engineering educator can play in enhancing the acceptability of technological. He concludes that technology transfer will proceed as the normal course of events only when the biomedical engineer establishes him/herself as a part of the health care delivery team.     

A one-room-schoolhouse plan for engineering education

The one room schoolhouse plan for education, which stipulates that one lead professor works with a small group of students in most of their major courses during their junior, senior, and graduate years, is proposed. The program would rely on regular courses and faculty to supply the technical content of some major courses and all the minor courses. The intent is to have a dedicated and strongly interactive group that will overcome the distracting effects of today's information explosion, technology explosion, and expanded curricula. To this end, the relevant curriculum factors (course selection, course priorities, and course contents) will be more efficiently managed, taught, and coordinated. Within the limitations of time and energy, the students should cover more effectively and widely the disparate curriculums of both major and minor courses in the program     

A computer-aided, total quality approach to manufacturing educationin engineering

This paper describes an ongoing study in improving entry-level engineering education through the deployment of new teaching and learning tools. We introduce a computer-aided interactive multimedia manufacturing courseware. To improve manufacturing education we need to change not only the process of teaching and learning, but also provide new tools and technology that promote efficient learning and make it widely available and continuously improving. To address this manufacturing education challenge, we are presently designing a program based on a new computer-aided education paradigm that embodies total quality management (TQM) and critical thinking (CT) concepts. An interactive multimedia manufacturing courseware lies at the heart of this new computer-aided education paradigm. The manufacturing engineering multimedia courseware (MEMC) includes: on-line lectures, audiovideo education tools, interactive computer software, on-line assignment and exams, information about faculty, and on-line evaluation tools to obtain users' feedback to enhance teaching. It also makes access available to related academia, industry, and government research and education information through the World Wide Web. In this paper, we briefly review the status of engineering education in the United States and describe the appropriateness of unifying the concepts of TQM and CT. Additionally, we provide details of how these concepts can be used in an educational model     

工业工程在制造企业管理中的应用

一、工业工程在国内外的应用与发展概况工业工程(IndustrialEngineering,IE)产生于1911年,泰勒《科学管理原理》一书的发表,标志着科学管理的诞生。工业工程是企业需求驱动的一门管理技术。工业工程通过数学和工程技术方法的引入,使得管理从传统的经验管理模式上升为以数学定量分析为基础的科学管理模式,有效支持了当时长期困扰企业的效率问题,极大解放了生产力。工业工程的发展直接支持了管理科学与实践从传统管理到科学管理,到系统管理再到现代管理的不断发展。表1粗略说明了IE发展与管理发展及社会生产力进步之间的关系。科学管理阶段…     

Status and trends in biomedical engineering education

An overview of graduate and undergraduate programs is given, including a brief history of each. With respect to undergraduate studies, the issues of accreditation, department status versus option programs, employment, registration, and medical and professional school opportunities are examined. Enrollment trends are examined. A survey of biomedical engineering textbooks and a bibliography containing 102 references are given in an appendix.     

Embedding remote experimentation in power engineering education

Engineering education by its nature is a costly program in university environments. Perhaps the most costly component is the laboratory facility, usually consisting of specialized equipment. Effective instruction of some topics in power engineering education requires experience with actual equipment, rather than small-scale replicas or simulation. In this paper, a new laboratory approach is described, as implemented in a virtual, Internet-based, experimentation platform. This virtual laboratory (VLab) utilizes real equipment distributed among multiple universities from which remotely located students can perform experiments. The software solution is a multiuser, client-server architecture developed in the LabVIEW environment. Implementation details including video, chat, archiving, and the hardware and software platforms are presented in the paper. An example presented herein is the study of current and voltage waveforms while controlling relays and low-voltage contactors. The applications have been tested with student teams enrolled in the electrical engineering department of Politehnica University of Bucharest and the power engineering program at Arizona State University.     

Integrated biomedical engineering education using studio-based learning

Discovery-based learning in early biomedical engineering courses promotes the development of skills that are required in later courses and in professional practice. Studio learning is an alternative to the conventional lecture/recitation/laboratory format, and it is shown to encourage student inquiry and foster faculty and peer mentoring. This method also allows significant integration of foundational course materials that are essential for biomedical engineering while engaging students' interest in the field. This article discusses the application of studio-based learning to biomedical engineering using examples from New Jersey Institute of Technology's (NJIT) two introductory sophomore courses in biomedical engineering.     

Expanding engineering education: building better bridges

There have been numerous calls to broaden the education of engineers and thus prepare them to serve society with an awareness of and sensitivity to the cultural, political, economic and social dimensions of their work. This article describes one response to this need: a five-year “Engineering and Society” degree program, now in its tenth year at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, makes the “bridge” between technology and society both broader and longer     

Collaborative web-based experimentation in flexible engineering education

The Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, is deploying a flexible learning scheme for selected pilot courses in engineering education. In such a scheme, traditional lectures and written exercises are combined with additional Web-based learning resources. The main objective of this initiative is to sustain the evolution from traditional teaching to active learning and to better integrate the increasing number of educational resources available online. In engineering education, a key activity to sustain the learning process is hands-on experimentation carried out using either simulation tools or real equipment. This paper describes how a collaborative Web-based experimentation environment has been introduced at the EPFL for providing more flexibility to students performing laboratory experiments in automatic control, biomechanics, and fluid mechanics. It particularly describes the eJournal, a Web service integrated in the proposed learning environment that enables the collection and sharing of preparatory notes and experimental results with both peers and teaching assistants.     

Use of symbolic computation in engineering education

The growing use of “computer algebra” (or “symbolic computation”) makes it very attractive for employment in engineering education. Also the compromise between the analytic and numerical methods may be very useful. The objective of this paper is to draw the attention of broad engineering and educational circles to the enormous capabilities of symbolic computation and, via a few examples, show their application to the teaching of engineering     

Novel applications of SPICE in engineering education

The author presents several novel applications of the SPICE circuit analysis computer program which should be of use to engineering students of various disciplines. Attention is directed to an implementation of SPICE for the MS-DOS operating system environment, named PSPICE. Three specific examples are presented. The first example shows a method of simultaneously displayed several parametric solutions. The second example demonstrates a method in which PSPICE simulates an analog computer. The third example illustrates the solution to a nonlinear differential equation