P1010013 Engineering Education

Publications

NSF Department-Level Curriculum Reform Project: Integrated System-Level Design in Electrical Engineering

In 2005, the ECE Department was awarded a $1 million Department Level Curriculum Reform grant from the National Science Foundation. Under the direction of ECE professor, Cynthia Fusre, and with the support and involvement of nearly every professor in the department, this grant has helped to transform our laboratory experiences into system-oriented design projects where each week’s lab exercise is a piece of a functional final design. Bryan Stenquist, ECE alum, is the Lab Design Engineer on this project. Bryan works with ECE faculty and teaching assistants to design, prototype, and implement each new laboratory. Electrical Engineering students typically receive an excellent education in how transistors, diodes, capacitors, transmission lines, Fourier transforms, amplifiers, filters, lasers, digital circuits, and op amps work. They do a lot of homework that includes design of these individual components, and they experiment with each one individually in a laboratory or two, and compare the measured responses with theory. As each concept is passed off on the midterm or final, it can be summarily forgotten by many of our students (who, me?). Only sporadically throughout the curriculum do students have the opportunity to put these disparate ideas together into a system-level design and experiment with how each part impacts the design of the others and the system as a whole. Yet, when they reach the engineering workforce, this is exactly what they are expected to do.

At the University of Utah, we have had a number of very successful experiences with system-level design to improve student understanding, motivation, and capability. Dr. Reid Harrison’s Analog IC Design, for instance, remains one of our most popular courses. In this course, the students design, fabricate (via MOSIS), and test an ASIC of their choice. The senior design sequence for the electrical engineering students is also one of the most valuable learning experiences in our program. In this clinic program, industries sponsor groups of five students with a faculty mentor to complete a significant senior capstone design project. This program has now been extended to the computer engineering students in partnership with the School of Computing. Other projects that are part of this project include:

Cardiac Pacemaker Communication System: This project is designed in ECE 3300 (Introduction to Electromagnetics, Dr. Furse) and ECE 3500 (Signals and Systems, Dr. Farhang). Students build and test a wireless communication system for a cardiac pacemaker. This real-world problem stemmed from NSF-sponsored research projects, and provided an excellent catalyst for student interest, learning, and involvement.
BioSensor System: ECE 1000 (Introduction to ECE, Dr. Cotter) and BioEng 1000 (Introduction to Bioengineering, Dr. Christiansen). Students create a sensor system for physiological monitoring
Electromyogram (EMG) amplifier: ECE 3110 (Dr. Harrison) also build on his research by building an EMG amplifier that records electric potentials on the skin produced by underlying muscle activity and drives a speaker so the students can hear their own muscle activity.
In Digital Signal Processing class, students develop a digital communication system based on quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signaling. New courses on Software Radio (Dr. Farhang) and Implementation of DSP further enhance the system-level hands-on experience in signals courses.
Magnetic Levitation Control System: ECE 3510 - Intro to Feedback Systems. Students build a small electromagnetic and a control system to adjust its resting height.
Electric Motor Control System: ECE 3510 Feedback Systems and ECE 5570 Control of Electric Motors (Dr. Bodson) have been integrated with mechanical engineering to provide a multidisciplinary project for our students.
In electromagnetics, a multi-course project is underway. In Microwave I, students will build a microstrip FSK wireless local area network receiver. In Microwave II, the transmitter will be built, and in Antennas, the students can design an antenna array to improve the data link. The circuits are further analyzed in the Numerical Methods course.
Antenna Design: ECE 5324 Antennas (Dr. Gandhi). Student design, fabricate, and test microstrip antennas.
In optics courses, the students will do complete systems designs of multiple FTTH implementations along with wireless, cable, DSL, and broadband over power-lines solutions. They will address issues such as performance, scalability, current and future services, engineering cost-tradeoffs, and economic benefits. In subsequent years, we will expand on this project to develop a comprehensive report applicable to any broadband to the home project. We will also link the engineering students with students in economics and business.
A microfabrication course has been implemented to allow students to prototype, and test devices and systems of their own design.

To see more about these labs, click here.

Several laboratory renovations have been necessary to facilitate these projects. In addition to the renovation of the physical space our laboratories occupy, equipment and capability has been expanded considerably in the past few years. Among the most extensive has been the remodeling and upgrade of the HEDCO Microfabrication laboratory. The Optics and DSP Teaching labs have also received significant upgrades. The Microwave Laboratory is currently undergoing upgrade.

Write-to-Learn in Electrical Engineering

We have also working with the College of Engineering Center for Engineering Leadership (CLEAR) to formally teach and improve written and oral communication skills and team work throughout the curriculum. Each year, two PhD students from the Department of Communication work directly with ECE students to improve lab and final reports, formal and informal presentations, etc. This fits in very well with the project-oriented enhancements to the curriculum, and may be a catalyst for learning that helps students better understand the systems themselves. CLEAR advisors help seniors improve their senior project reports and presentations and meet with undergraduate classes periodically throughout the year. This coming year, ECE will be teaching our own technical writing course in the junior year. For more details, click here.

Utah's Engineers: A Statewide Initiative for Growth

The National Science Foundation has recommended a new $2 million program for student outreach, recruitment, and retention in the University of Utah College of Engineering. Headed by ECE professor, Cynthia Furse, the program provides support in all seven departments in the college. The program follows the Utah Engineering Initiative, where in 2000, Utah’s then-governor, Mike Leavitt, challenged Utah’s higher education system to double the number of engineering and computer science graduates. Since 2000, engineering and computer science graduates have increased by 46%, and a number of independent recruitment and retention programs have sprung up across the state. This proposed project supports that vision by providing a catalyst to integrate the most successful of these programs via a university/community college/high school partnership that will captivate the imaginations of high school students at an early age, mentor them through a pre-engineering curriculum, and seamlessly transition them through to successful college graduation in their selected engineering discipline. Once entering the university program, this program will help them gain confidence as tutors/mentors, collaborating in curriculum module development and team engineering projects, and participating in service learning community engineering projects. We believe this approach will be favorable to dramatically increasing the number of students, both underrepresented and traditional, in our engineering program.

The goal of this project is to establish a sustainable high school / 2-year college / University of Utah transition process that will nurture students and increase the number of engineering/computer science graduates at the U of U by at least 180 per year. This accomplishes the UofU portion of the statewide goal of doubling the number of engineering/CS graduates from 2000 to 2011, but also will substantially increase the number of Utah high school students that select and successfully accomplish college degrees at other institutions in Utah and other states in engineering and other STEM fields. Our goal will be achieved through a student-centered initiative by

· Establishing stronger partnerships between the U of U College of Engineering and potential feeder populations including Academy for Math, Engineering and Science, MESA-STEP, International Baccalaureate programs, Project Lead-the-Way, and Salt Lake Community College.

· Nurturing these partnerships by establishing a Community Impact service learning community, which includes classes and interdisciplinary team projects that integrate HS, undergrad and grad students in the planning, preparation, and presentation of hands-on modules of real-world engineering experiences. This mentoring/team-based/service-oriented active learning community will be effective in attracting high school students to STEM and helping them transition between schools to achieve their 4-year degree.

· Fully assessing why Utah students do or don’t choose engineering/computer science using a state-of-the-art choice-based market survey to complement our more traditional assessment methods. Applying this assessment to guide us over a 5-year program towards best practices that can be implemented for STEM enhancement in other Utah schools and other states.

The vision has been nurtured by a grass-roots team of highly motivated, enthusiastic professors from each of the engineering departments at the University of Utah and evolved into a five-year development plan. Community partners have enthusiastically bought in, including Salt Lake Community College (SLCC, the major feeder to the U of U of transfer students with two years of engineering instruction), the Academy of Math, Engineering and Science (AMES, a charter high school with a priority to prepare underrepresented students for engineering and science careers), Project Lead the Way (PLTW, administered through Weber State University, in the early stage of implementing pre-engineering curricula in several school districts in Utah with plans to go state-wide), the Utah Office of Education, the U of U Bennion Center for Service Learning, MESA-STEP, the Colleges of Engineering and Education, and the U of U Vice Presidents of Research and Academic Affairs. All of these bring expertise and independent resources that provide significant leverage for the funding from NSF.

Utah is a rapidly growing state in both population and high technology industry. With only 1% of the nation’s population, Utah is projected to support 13% of the nation’s increase in incoming freshmen in the next decade. This program plus the leverage from the programs of our partners will bring more engineers for an expanding industrial base in a fundamental and systematic way that will lead to a sustainable process that will cultivate future engineers/CS at the high school level and smoothly transition them through to their engineering/CS degrees. This program will have broad impact on development of engineers in Utah and a technologically sound basis for transitioning the best practices elsewhere in Utah and other states.

Utah’s increasing population will have a measurable impact on the number of engineers in the U.S. Since this program already involves K12, 2-year and 4-year schools and will involve transition between multiple schools in Utah, it will already be prepared for transition to schools in other parts of the country. This project integrates a number of best practices into a cohesive state –wide recruitment and retention program. The specific modules developed are unique, and the assessment strategies include a unique market-driven approach.

What Can You Do to Help? We need technical mentors for undergraduate student engineering teams. In addition, we will be developing a number of hands-on activities to take to local schools, and will help facilitate outreach visits. We also are also seeking industrial sponsors for several of these outreach modules. To find out more about how you can help, please contact Dr. Cynthia Furse, Electrical and Computer Engineering, cfurse@ece.utah.edu , ph: (801) 585-7234.

First Annual Women in Electromagnetics Workshop

June 5-7, 2009, University of Utah

Salt Lake City, Utah

Why Teaching is So Much Fun !

Thank you to our Sponsors:

National Science Foundation

Utah Center of Excellence Program

IEEE

Last revised: June 2009

For more information, contact Dr. Cynthia Furse