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About Us ABET ECE/COE 1885

Departmental Seminar

(0 credits)

Description: Seminars are designed to acquaint the student with aspects of engineering that are not normally encountered in classes and school activities and include a wide range of topics such as the significance of engineering as a profession, ethical problems in engineering, and skills required for a successful engineering career.

Prerequisites: None

Texts: None

Course Objective: The purpose of the seminar series is to address issues that are covered only indirectly in regular courses. These issues include career development, professionalism, and ethics, among others.

Topics Covered: Each term, seminars are arranged to cover the following themes:

  1. Options available in the undergraduate program (areas of concentration, minors, co-operative education, study abroad, faculty research interests and design opportunities)
  2. The role of the IEEE in the Engineering profession
  3. Career paths for engineers (speakers from industry)
  4. Technical areas of interest to students (speakers from industry and university)
  5. Ethical issues in engineering
  6. Role of teams in industrial practice

Class/Laboratory Schedule: Seminars are held every week. Each student is required to attend 6 seminars per term. Seminar topics are arranged on 4-week cycles: week 1 is for all students; week 2 is for sophomores; week 3 is for juniors; week 4 is for seniors. The cycle is repeated 3 times per term.

Professional Component Contributions: Seminars each term deal with a range of professional issues, such as how to succeed as a young engineer; the engineer’s responsibility to his/her employer, society, and him or her self; career development; continuing education; ethics.

Department Objectives: Industry speakers consistently emphasize the importance of written and oral communication skills (Outcomes c, d, f, g, h, i, j).

Seminar addresses the use of teams in industrial practice. Industry speakers often discuss the use of teams in their companies. (Outcome d).

Industry speakers often comment on the importance of non-technical courses and the need for knowledge outside specific technical disciplines (Outcomes c, g, h, i, j).

Information on international programs and how these programs can be fit into the undergraduate curriculum is presented in specific seminars. Students who have participated in these programs describe their experiences (Outcomes c, f, g, h, j).

Specific seminars are scheduled to introduce issues involving ethics (Outcomes f, h, j).

Prepared by: J.R. Boston

Date Prepared: February 14, 2005

 

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