Engineering News

Table of Contents

Engineering in the Strategic Plan

The Strategic Plan, approved by the Board of Trustees in February 2007, has identified engineering as a distinguishing feature of the College.

Several strategies are in place for defining our future directions:

  • Build on the Converging Technologies initiative by developing more programmatic ties between engineering and science departments and the arts while maintaining strong departments and high-quality accredited programs in engineering.
  • Pioneer the expansion of the liberal arts concept itself to include technology and serve as a national leader in this area.
  • Use engineering as a collaborative and supporting resource for courses and programs in other areas of the liberal arts.
  • Expand partnerships.

Initiatives to implement these strategies are under development. Highlights include:

  • Introduction of new interdisciplinary majors in bioengineering and environmental engineering.
  • Commitment to the digital art program through the creation of a tenure track position.
  • Integration of Converging Technologies into major programs.
  • Hosting a national symposium on engineering as a liberal art.
  • Establishing the Minerva Challenge, an annual competition between the Minerva houses to foster the integration engineering and the liberal arts.
  • Establishing a rotating “Engineer in Residence” with engineers from industry or academia who have expertise and a passion for the integration of engineering and the liberal arts.

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New Places - Facilities

If you have been on campus lately, you have seen the new Peter Irving Wold Center. The center is a gateway from the center of campus to the Science and Engineering complex. It provides space for interdisciplinary research as well as new classrooms and computer laboratories.

We have had significant success in recent years with major government grants for facilities renewal elsewhere as well. A $1.6M grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (led by Leo Fleishman, Biology) has provided funding to renovate half of the first floor of Butterfield Hall for classrooms, research labs, and support space for Bioengineering. The facility is now complete, faculty have moved into labs, classes are being conducted in the classrooms, and research projects are underway.

Another large grant of $1.7M from New York State (Ron Bucinell, Mechanical Engineering) was instrumental in allowing us to renovate the remainder of the first floor and the second floor of Butterfield Hall. The renovations included engineering faculty research laboratories, an elevator to make the building accessible, a teaching laboratory, and a clean room. This grant also provided funding for new equipment for materials characterization and testing, including an atomic force microscope and a scanning electron microscope.

A third grant from the National Science Foundation is being used to complete the renovation of the third floor of Butterfield Hall. This renovation will provide new laboratories and offices for Neuroscience and Bioengineering.

 

BU-206BU-207    

New Laboratories in Butterfield Hall

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Faculty Author First Year Engineering Text

The first year introduction to engineering course sequence that Union developed in the mid-1990s has evolved over the years and is now a favorite course for first-year engineering students. The Exploring Engineering course is offered in the fall, and typically attracts about a dozen non-engineering students in addition to the 80-100 engineering majors.

After teaching the course for a few years with a "Smart Car" theme, the co-authors (all instructors of the course) converted their class notes into a textbook.

A distinguishing feature of the textbook and the course is the focus on the design process. Students have weekly "design studio" sessions where they learn about all of the phases of the design process, and in the last half of the course they work on a design challenge and compete for prizes at the end of the term.

Exploring Engineering

Exploring Engineering (Elsevier Academic Press, 2007), a text for first-year students developed by Philip Kosky, George Wise, Bob Balmer, and Bill Keat, was named “Best New Undergraduate Textbook of the Year” by the Professional and Scholarly Publications division of the American Association of Publishers.

Design Studio Work

The Soccer Challenge

The Golf Challenge

Extraterrestrial Rock Grabbers

Students Going Global

Abroad in Prague

Students in Japan

Professor Tom Jewell – Director of Engineering International Programs

The engineering programs at Union continue to be among the nation’s leaders in sending students abroad to help them prepare to compete in the global engineering marketplace.

Seventy percent of engineering graduates typically spent either a full-term or mini-term in study abroad. An additional 18 percent met their general education requirements by studying a modern language. Of those going abroad, 23 percent tend to go on a regular Union term abroad, 34 percent participate in an engineering exchange, and 13 percent go on a mini-term.

Engineering students go on regular terms to Australia, China, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Tasmania. Engineering exchanges included students going to the Czech Technical University in Prague, and ESIGELEC in Rouen, France.

Exchanges are an excellent way for our students to gain international experience. In addition to being immersed in the culture, they can also take engineering courses at the host institution. As part of the exchange, engineering students from the host institution come to Union and take classes with our students. Mini-terms are three-week immersions in an international culture, with additional study about the country and its culture at Union. Class of 2007 graduates went on mini-terms to Brazil, New Zealand, and France.

The engineering programs continue to develop additional opportunities, with the goal of having 100 percent of those eligible participate in some type of program that includes study or work abroad. Recently, Union students, with faculty assistance, have started a chapter of Engineers Without Borders. Participation in EWB will allow students to design and implement service projects for developing regions of the world. We also continue to develop additional engineering exchange programs, and seek opportunities for international internships in industry. We hope to develop outside funding sources to assist in these latest initiatives. Prof. Tom Jewell has been doing a great job of overseeing the engineering international experiences, advertising experiences, and tracking students.

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