Industrial Partners Provide Progress Report Card Feedback On Newly Developed Industrial Control Systems Laboratory

æ In order for engineering technology programs to provide more formidable state-ofthe-art programs for their students, program administrators must gain insight into the worthiness of their curricula. Engineering technology programs and courses supported and evaluated by industry representatives are quite valuable in preparing students for responding to local and national market needs. After two years in development, a newly created Industrial Control Systems Laboratory supported in this manner, was implemented at Northeastern University’s School of Engineering Technology in Boston, Massachusetts. This paper presents a brief history of the development and implementation of this laboratory course. More importantly, it provides interesting evaluation feedback from the industrial partners who supported this project since its inception through both state-of-the-art equipment donations valued at greater than $500,000 as well as valuable feedback. Guidance from these important industrial resources is invaluable in making any midcourse corrections to the program and ensuring the material is relevant. This paper chronicles and outlines this process and shares the results with the reader. Background In the summer of 1998 during an informal lunch time meeting with the then director of engineering technology and the electrical engineering technology program coordinator, this author determined that a long overdue overhaul of the electrical engineering technology curricula was needed. Outdated existing courses coupled with declining program enrollments was leading to a severe decline in the Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) program. In an effort to eliminate this situation, this author suggested the university create an innovative programming approach. The idea was to create a “new” group of courses that simultaneously utilized current technologies while also addressing a need in the industrial sector. It was a requirement that course related cooperative-work assignments play an integral role in this new curriculum. The idea was to not only create a new curriculum of courses, but a “new” and modern way of presenting the materials in these courses. This was the “birth” of the “LectureLaboratory” venue at Northeastern University. This venue allowed students to gain technical expertise via standard lectures along with “hands-on” experience during the same class period. It called for the application of the “engineering team” design process to solve design and application problems. It was proposed that an Industrial Control Systems program be initiated as the first of these experimental courses. While clearly the concept had merit, there was legitimate concern about the cost of implementing such an idea. P ge 763.1 Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society for Engineering Education This author argued that to reverse the existing departmental downward trend required “out of the box” thinking. Moreover, since there appeared to be a serious lack of “degreed” engineers in the ICS industry, especially in the northeastern corridor of the United States, this program would be fulfilling a “real” industry need by providing this valuable and necessary resource. In fact, it was further reasoned that if this program was to be a main supplier of ICS engineering resources, industry themselves might be willing to support this program in some way. 2 After much discussion, it was decided the basic goal of this program would be to provide stateof-the-art education in the area of industrial control systems, to include the exploration of as many ICS devices as time permitted. This would enable students to acquire the required skills to be placed as engineers in this particular industrial market. By providing students with an appropriate and current ICS technical education, in addition to associated cooperative work experience, all parties involved would benefit. Students, industry-employers, and the electricalengineering technology program at Northeastern University would all benefit in this win-winwin situation. Setting The Stage In order to successfully design new curricula, many existing obstacles had to be overcome. Among the questions that needed to be answered were: