DESIGN EXPERIENCE

The Electrical Engineering Curriculum seeks to educate students so that they can demonstrate:

• an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data,
• an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams,
• an ability to design a system, component or process to meet desired needs, and
• an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice

To accomplish these outcomes, the Electrical Engineering Curriculum places strong emphasis upon fundamental concepts by providing for the students courses that have rich theoretical foundations in physics, in mathematics, and in a broad range of electrical engineering technical areas. With this background, a student is encouraged to develop his individual initiative and creative ability to enable him to derive useful engineering results from basic principles. The most important courses, through which the student practices this philosophy as related to design, are the following courses:

These design courses in our program complement the design content taught in other courses and require that the individual pursue his or her own design or pursue a design with a team under the supervision of an instructor or industry sponsor. This design sequence introduces fundamental concepts of the design process and offers instruction in formulation of the design problems, techniques of innovation and creativity in design, design considerations, project planning, and communication. This approach provides the student with the knowledge and background for practice in "real-world" engineering design.

The capstone design course sequence (EL.E 461/462 - Senior Design in EE I & II) is used to assess the student's ability to use the fundamentals of science, mathematics, and engineering science to develop design solutions for open-ended electrical engineering projects. The capstone design sequence requires students to evaluate large amounts of information, think critically, and experience a multi-disciplinary team environment. To graduate, students are required to earn at least a "C" grade in Senior Design II with formal evaluation of final oral presentation by faculty, students, or external reviewers.