Development Of An Innovative Engineering Sciences And Systems Laboratory Course

In the fall of 1999 Georgia Tech changed from a ten week quarter to a fifteen week semester schedule. This change created the need and opportunity to revise the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum. An important overall curriculum change was to discontinue the dual track curriculum that featured some concentration on either mechanical systems or thermal energy and fluid systems. The curriculum and schedule changes required an evaluation and redesign of our required undergraduate laboratory courses. One result was the design of a new and innovative engineering sciences and systems lab course that is the subject of this paper. Our intention was to develop a course that could be taught by many faculty members and graduate teaching assistants, use a wide range of existing physical resources, broaden the technological experience of the students, and develop the full range of communications skills. This paper describes the development and implementation of the new course and reviews our experience and the results of course evaluation from the first semester of instruction.