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UNT College of Engineering's $100,000 National Science Foundation grant will help future Texas workforce
DENTON (UNT), Texas — The University of North Texas was recently awarded $100,000 by the National Science Foundation for the UNT Project and Design-Oriented Electrical Engineering Curriculum. More than just sitting in a classroom learning theory, this innovative curriculum is a partnership between industry and academic engineers, who engage students in working on actual engineering projects.
“The program is designed to recruit students who could become competent engineers, but might otherwise not attend a university,” said Dr. Oscar Garcia, founding dean of UNT’s College of Engineering and co-principle investigator for the project. “The discipline of electrical engineering was chosen as the basis for the curriculum, because it affects so many fields.”
Garcia explained that this type of curriculum has broad application for career choices.
“Electrical engineers can be found in such diverse areas as communications, electronic device fabrication and design, computer engineering and power generation, automotive and aerospace systems, bioengineering, software design and testing, consumer electronics/appliances and industrial manufacturing,” he said.
Dr. Reza Mirshams, interim chair of UNT’s College of Engineering Department of Materials Science and Engineering and co-principal investigator for the project agreed.
“We need to enlarge the pool of talented and creative engineering students and future members of the engineering workforce by offering a curriculum that can produce many professional options.” he said. “We are not only helping students from all backgrounds, but we are also helping to improve many economic sectors.”
The electrical engineering curriculum will link real-world problems to theory and give students a preview of professional engineering work. Students will work in classrooms and labs with multidisciplinary teams comprised of UNT faculty members and engineering professionals currently working in industry, he said.
Kathy Swigger, UNT professor of computer science and principal co-investigator for the NSF project said that while traditional engineering programs emphasize modular structures and specialty disciplines, the UNT program combines insights from how people perceive with practical challenges of project-based learning.”
This innovative project-based program is intended to create a more favorable response from students of all backgrounds and ultimately improve readiness of graduating engineers to contribute to the workplace, she said.
“When students are interested in a subject, they are more likely to persist in their studies,” she added.
UNT News Service Phone Number: (940) 565-2108
Contact: Cathy Cashio (940) 565-4644
Email: news_service@unt.edu
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