Professional Component

Students are prepared for engineering practice through a comprehensive curriculum, which includes a major design experience, senior design projects. The curriculum is designed to ensure adequate attention to ABET  Criterion 4

1.   Depth and Breadth of the Program

The curriculum fulfills the requirement for breadth by mandating foundation courses outside the Department, and courses inside the Department in Digital Logic, Analog Circuits, Analog Electronics, and Electromagnetics. It provides depth by requiring advanced level courses, courses at a level equivalent to that of the first year of graduate school, in Mathematics, Digital Circuits, Software, and Communications. The program offers advanced level courses in a number of Electrical Engineering specialties, including Communications and Controls, Digital Signal Processing, Computer Engineering, Material Science, Electro-Optics, Hybrid Microelectronics, and Microwaves.

Numbers above 100 are reserved for advanced courses. The Department insures that computer engineers take advanced level courses by requiring CEI02: Statistics and Probability (MTH161/162, EE108 or Bio 132), EEl07, EEl26, and EEl28.

Each student completes a senior design project for graduation.

2.   Basic Sciences and Mathematics

The program requires three courses in the Calculus and a course in Differential Equations, Math 38, normally to be completed by the end of the Sophomore year.  It also requires two introductory courses in Physics, a course in Chemistry, and a fourth course to be drawn from Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology, or Geology. In addition, computer engineers must take MTH22: Discrete Mathematics, CE 102: Probability and Statistics for Engineers or MTHl61:Probability, and the mathematics intensive course EEl02: "Linear Systems".

3. Engineering Science and Design

Since the program has 38 courses, it satisfies ABET requirements for engineering science and design by having an engineering science content in excess of 9.5 courses and a design content in excess of 4.75 courses.

The required Engineering Science courses, with COMP15, account for 3.9 courses in Engineering Science and 1.8 courses in Design.

                                                                  Eng. Science                                 Eng. Design

EN1     : Intro. to Engineering Design (1)           0.50                                         0.50

EN2     :Intro. to Engineering Design (2)            0.50                                         0.50

ES3      :Intro. to Electrical Engineering             0.75                                         0.25

ES4      :Digital Logic Circuits                            0.65                                         0.35

ES5      :Mechanics (Statics)                              1.00

COMP15: Data Structures                                  0.50                                         0.20

                                                                               3.90                                         1.80

The required concentration courses, including the senior design project, provide 5.1 courses in engineering science and 2.65 courses in design.

                                                                  Eng. Science                               Eng. Design

EE11: Intro. to Analog Electronics                  0.80                                         0.20

EE13: Circuit Theory                                        0.75

EE14: Microprocessor Arch. and Appl.          0.70                                         0.30

EE18: Electromagnetic Fields and Waves    0.15

EE26: Digital Logic Systems                          0.60                                         0.40

EE107: Communications Systems I               0.70                                         0.15

EE126: Computer Engineering                       0.60                                         0.40

EE128: System Software Components          0.80                                         0.20

EE97, EE98: Design Project                                                                            1.00

                                                                            5.1                                            2.65

The contents of the required work sum to 9.0 courses in engineering science and 4.45 courses in design. The remaining 0.5 courses in engineering science and 0.3 courses in engineering design, the equivalent of 0.8 courses, are acquired in the 3 elective concentration courses and the 2 free electives.

Advisors, using an advising sheet that provides for the tallying of engineering content and design content, monitor student work to insure that the ABET requirements are met.

4.   Laboratory Experience

The curriculum places a strong emphasis on the laboratory experience.  In addition to the laboratory work associated with the introductory courses, the required engineering science courses ES3 and ES4 and six of the nine required concentration courses have a laboratory. Many of the Department electives also have a laboratory.

5.   Computer Use

The introductory courses EN1 and EN2 introduce all engineering students to the basic ideas of computers. The required concentration course EE 14, "Microprocessor Architecture and Applications", covers assembly language programming. Computer engineers must take the software intensive courses

COMP 11: Introduction to Computer Science

COMP15: Data Structures

EE26: Logic Systems Design

EEl28: Operating Systems

EE26 is also hardware intensive. Students learn the CAD tools for digital system design using FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). Additionally, the computer is used for modeling and analysis in the required engineering science courses ES3 and ES4 as well as the required concentration courses in analog electronics and communications. A number of the Department electives also make heavy use of the computer. These include EEl03, EEl04, EEl23, EEl24, EEl25, and EEl33.

Q.  HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL STUDIES

The Engineering College is associated with an exceptional Liberal Arts College.  Thus our Engineering students have access to a wide variety of courses in the Humanities and Social Studies.

Depth and breadth in these areas are satisfied by requiring each student in the program to take a minimum of five courses, with at least one from each group. Each student is required to choose an intellectual cluster and take at least three related courses around the cluster. Further, one must have as a prerequisite another course offered by the University or must be at the advanced level. It is the responsibility of each faculty member, using the tally sheet for the degree, to insure that his or her advisee has met this requirement.  However, before graduation each student's record is reviewed for compliance by the office of the Dean of Engineering.

Pro-Practice

In each course the instructor discusses ethical, social, safety, environmental. and economic considerations appropriate to the material. As examples: In the electronics courses, the safety issues associated with power devices and the economic savings that arise from assigning resistors the same value are mentioned. In the circuits courses the economic effects of power factor and the safety issues of grounding are covered. Instruction goes beyond this however, with technical trends identified and case histories of both technologies and companies recounted.

In addition to prompting the IEEE student branch to sponsor a speaker on ethics or social considerations at least once during the academic year, each year the Department arranges for someone trained in these areas to give a lecture to our juniors during a class period of a required course. We do this again in the senior year.

Individual faculty members also exert a "role model" influence by maintaining a sense of integrity in their interactions with students in class, at social events, and in their capacity as faculty advisers.

B. The Department has active student branches of the professional societies IEEE, IEEE-EMBS, ISHM and SWE, as well as chapters of the honor societies Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu. Faculty members take active roles in advising these societies and such service is considered in determining merit raises.

Students arrange the society activities while the faculty advisor provides continuity and oversees expenditures, certifies reports, and provides general counsel and direction. Important society functions such as elections, meetings or social events are announced in class. Every effort is made to prevent a quiz or exam from interfering with an important society event.

Student branches of the professional societies receive financial support from industry and from the University. The Department provides secretarial support and aids in fund raising activities.

C. Student organizations, particularly the IEEE and IEEE-EMBS, invite speakers from industry to discuss a wide range of topics, both technical and non technical, and sponsor field trips.

Students are invited to attend all IEEE Boston Section meetings and the New England Chapter ISHM meetings. Further, the Department encourages students to acquire industrial experience during summer periods by advertising employment opportunities when they become available. It has had particular success with the IRUP program sponsored by GTE.