UNION COLLEGE

OFFICE OF THE DEAN OF ENGINEERING

AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

TO: Division IV Faculty

FROM: Robert T. Balmer, Dean of Engineering (original memo signed)

DATE: March 9, 2001

RE: Summary of Presentation by the Engineering Dean at the

March 2, 2001 Board of Trustees Meeting.

Attached please find a copy of the Summary of Presentation by the Engineering Dean at the March 2, 2001 Board of Trustees Meeting.

Thank you,

Summary of Presentation by the Engineering Dean

at the March 2, 2001 Board of Trustees Meeting

The presentation was focused on the strengths of engineering at Union and it went very well. I began with background about myself and my philosophy, and stated that my objective was to get them as excited about the future of engineering at Union as I was (apparently there were some Trustees ready to discuss the elimination of engineering at Union). Then I posed and answered the following five questions.

Where are we now?

• I discussed the engineering renaissance at Union from 1994-2000.
• I talked in general terms about the curricular changes in the freshman and sophomore years, the foreign experience requirement, engineering design integrated throughout the curricula, and undergraduate research.

Why change?

What do we want to be?

What have we done so far?

What will it take?

However, the central issues in all of this are:

1) how do we deal with the lack of faculty, and

2) how will a Converging Technologies theme improve our future.

1) Lack of Faculty

We are currently understaffed by 6 to 8 faculty, and make up for it by hiring adjuncts and faculty overloads. While a high compliment of adjunct faculty is not unusual at state colleges, it is unacceptable at select private colleges that proclaim teaching as their first priority. This produces two serious problems.

In addition, the College administration has added the following constraints:

Thus we are being asked to solve this problem by reallocation of resources within Division 4, and, after looking at all the existing programs within Division 4, I concluded that the reallocation of resources from the Civil Engineering department was one possible solution.

2) How will a Converging Technologies theme improve our future?

• This is a more complex question that goes to the heart of the purpose of an engineering education. The answer requires an understanding of the technology base existing in the world today, and some careful extrapolation into the future.
• It is quite clear to me that we are on the threshold of another major technological revolution. New technologies are appearing almost daily, many of which are driven by the rapid expansion of engineering and the digital world. If one has a historical perspective, it is easy to see that the events of today are very similar to the events that accompany the onset of a technological revolution. For example, the rate of development of new electrical appliances and products at the turn of the twentieth century parallels the rate of the development of digital appliances and products today.
• We all know that an excellent engineering education concentrates on the "fundamentals," and that the body of knowledge we designate as "fundamental" changes with time (e.g., vacuum tubes to transistors to digital). Thus it would not be unusual if Converging Technologies phenomena added new fundamental knowledge to engineering curricula.
• In an excellent engineering program, engineering "fundamentals" are always augmented with supportive reinforcing material called "applications" that demonstrate the use of the fundamentals. These applications are often drawn from existing state-of-the-art engineering technologies.
• The major impact of Converging Technologies on Union’s engineering curricula will occur as applications of a broader base of fundamentals that now includes some material normally taught outside a specific major (e.g., chemistry, biology, computer science).
• We have already made this transition in the freshman engineering course through the introduction of the "smart car" theme in which we discussed the impact of the computer on engines, controls, and transportation infrastructure.
• This spring we will be experimenting with an applied ME fluid mechanics course. It will have some of the standard applications in fluids (pipe networks, turbomachinery), then we will add topics in fluid power (a mechatronics), computational fluid dynamics (convergence of fluid mechanics and computer science), and non-Newtonian fluid mechanics (convergence of fluid mechanics, polymer chemistry and biology). This will produce a state-of-the art course in this topic.
• Perhaps the most exciting new Converging Technologies area is that of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the new frontier of science and engineering likely to change the way almost everything - from vaccines to computers to automobile to objects not yet imagined - is designed and made. Nanotechnology is the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules to produce the smallest human-made objects. This will result in a technological revolution that is expected to have more impact on our lives in the 21^st century than the combined influences of antibiotics, man-made polymers, and microelectronics in the 20^th century.
• Nanotechnology is the convergence of chemistry, physics, biology, electronics, and materials science at the nanometer level with the goal of manufacturing cost-effective innovative products. One nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter (about 1/50,000 of the diameter of a human hair), or the space occupied by 3-4 atoms placed end-to-end. The term "nanotechnology" is used to describe any system in which at least one characteristic dimension is less than about 100 nanometers. In this range material behavior often emerges that cannot be explained by traditional theories. The essence of nanotechnology is the ability to work at these levels to generate larger structures with fundamentally new molecular organization.

Some examples of Nanostructures are:

• Dispersions and coatings - Nanolayers and nanoparticles for printing, sunscreens, data storage, photography, and pharmaceuticals. Thermal and optical barriers, image enhancement, inkjet materials, coated abrasive slurries, and information recording layers.
• High surface area materials - Nanoparticles for porous membranes or molecular sieves, drug delivery, tailored catalysts, and absorption/desorption materials. Molecule-specific sensors, large hydrocarbon or bacterial filters, energy storage, and Gratzel-type solar sells.1
• Functional nanodevices - Single electron transistor (SET), giant magnetoresistance (GMR for magnetic memory and sensors), carbon nanotubes. This is the top down vs. bottom up issue. To be effective these devices need to be assembled into circuits or systems.
• Consolidated materials - Altered bulk material behavior when constituted of (or consolidated from) nanoscale building blocks. Nanoparticle filters, nanocomposites (e.g., nanotubes or nanoparticles in polymer matrices), magnetic liquids.

My vision for developing a new, exciting, and modern engineering curricula is to provide a structure that embraces the concept of Converging Technologies (CT) without completely redesigning the all curricula. I think this can be done as follows:

• Revisit the freshman and sophomore ESc courses and existing program technical electives to redesign them to be consistent with the vision CT where appropriate. We have already done this in the freshman course through the introduction of the "smart car" theme and will be experimenting this spring with an ME technical elective in applied fluid mechanics.
• Develop three or four strategic CT areas at the junior level and provide CT technical elective courses specific to those areas. I have been collecting data from engineering and science departments to survey their interests and strengths in the CT initiative. I will use this data to suggest the three or four strategic areas we can pursue.
• I see the CT areas we decide to embrace as the centerpiece in the IBM Center for Converging Technologies proposal to John Kelly. This Center has the potential to transform Union, and I will move carefully and with much faculty input.
• Finally, provide CT working experience in the senior year through senior project or research courses. Students would work individually or in three or four person interdisciplinary teams on different state-of-the-art CT projects. These would come largely from industry partners (like GE and IBM).

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