Dr. Moshe Kam, 2011 President and CEO of IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional association, says engineering education must undergo significant transformation in the next decade to continue to push innovation forward, or global economic expansion will slow. Kam believes engineers of all disciplines need a deeper understanding of computing and networking, cross-disciplinary education, and sharper analytical skills.
Dr. Kam is the Robert Quinn Professor and Department Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering at Drexel University.
Additional curriculum areas that are likely to undergo significant changes include:
• Incorporation of considerations from economics, psychology, law, and even advertising in engineering design.
• International opportunities to study and work abroad.
• Engineering applications of life sciences and biology.
• The shift of many engineering enterprises from products to services.
• Progress in automated computing tools and symbolic computation.
“The engineering and computing education system is the backbone for key industries,” says Kam. “There would be no Silicon Valley without Stanford. No high-tech Route 128 in Boston without Harvard, MIT and Tufts. The dramatic advances by India’s information technology industry wouldn’t be possible without the 15 Indian Institutes of Technology, and it is not a coincidence that Europe’s technology centers are found where a major university is located (e.g., Silicon Fen near Cambridge University, and Technopolis Innovation Park Delft near Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands).”
Read the full article here: IEEE President Calls for Engineering Education Transformation
See Prof. Kam’s presentation: Transformating Engineering Education Summary during the conference titled ‘Transforming Engineering Education: Creating Interdisciplinary Skills for Complex Global Environments‘ co-hosted by IBM and IEEE.
The senior design team of Eric Eisele, Courtney Reid, Dan Pugh, Sarah Byrnes, and Charlie Woods was awarded a Phase II People, Prosperity, and Planet Award from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). See Senior Design Team wins EPA funding for more details.
Eric and his team used several Library resources over a period of time. These include:
- ASCE Civil Engineering Database
- ASCE Conference Proceedings Online
- BuildingGreen – (BuildingGreen Suite integrates online versions of GreenSpec, Environmental Building News, and a database of more than 160 high-performance building case studies.)
- DoE Energy Codes
- Ei Compendex and INSPEC
- Environmental Engineering Abstracts
- Google Scholar
- Home Depot Smart Home
- Knovel: Engineering and Scientific Online References
- MAD CAD – (NOTE: access to cross-referenced collections of building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, fire, and maintenance codes from BOCA, SBCCI, ICBO, ICC, and NFPA.)
- ScienceDirect
- Statistical Resources
- Statistical Resources on the Web-Energy
- Web of Knowledge
Eric also needed some ASTM standards for the Solar Coating project. Using How Do I access ASTM, SAE, ASHRAE, ISO or ANSI standards? Any other standards? Eric was able to obtain ASTM standards that he needed for the project. Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering and Materials Engineering Site include a few resources that may also help in future for other projects. See also Cool Roofs and Cool Roofing Materials Database available from Heat Island Group Resources.
Eric also contributed in creating Drexel’s web site for Sustainability and Drexel Green.
Congratulations to the Senior Design Team!
Drexel University Libraries’ Scholarly Communication Symposium:
For What It’s Worth: The Hidden Costs of Scholarly Communication
Date: April 16, 2009 8:30 am – 1:30 pm
Location: Drexel University, Bossone Lobby
Faculty, university administrators, granting institutions, publishers, governments and librarians are dealing with issues such as open access, intellectual property management, and digital content preservation. Increasing globalization, pressure for public access to federally funded research, and new measures of informative value intensify the mix of issues.
Information is more accessible than ever before. Internet search engines and protocols afford users more communication venues than anyone could have imagined just a few years ago. Open source and service-oriented architecture (SOA), wikis, blogs, and personal networks are examples of the sharing ethos of the web, and are challenging the traditional models of scholarly communication.
Information is not free. There are costs to its creation, distribution and access despite the current movements to make it “free or freely accessible”. What are these costs, hidden and otherwise? Who pays? Who benefits? What are the implications for researchers? What does this mean for publishers? Who the heck is in charge?
These are some of the questions and issues that will be explored at the annual Symposium of Scholarly Communication held at Drexel University on April 16, 2009.
See: Drexel University Libraries’ Scholarly Communication Symposium
To Register: Registration Form
A collaboration between the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute (DNI) and the A.J. Drexel Plasma Institute (DPI) has enabled high-impact research results, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The paper, “Nanoscale Corona Discharge in Liquids Enabling Nanosecond Optical Emission Spectroscopy” has been selected as a VIP (very important paper). Only 5% of all manuscripts submitted to this journal receive this honor.
Read the full article in CoE News archives at: Nanotechnology – Plasma Collaboration Leads to Very Important Paper
