Title:

IMPLEMENTING THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE 5XME WORKSHOP FOR TRANSFORMING MECHANICAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Speaker:

Dr. Galip Ulsoy

Affiliation:

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

When:

Wednesday, November 3, 2010 at 10:00:00 AM   Add to Calendar

Where:

MRDC Building, Room 4211

Host:

Dr. William Wepfer
william.wepfer@me.gatech.edu
404-894-3200

Abstract

Workshops, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, were held on transforming mechanical engineering education, during May 2007 and November 2009. These were motivated by the fact that the science-based engineering education taught at our engineering schools has become a commodity, available to students all over the world, including low-wage markets. Global companies employ such world-class engineering talent, often at 20% of the cost in the USA, and are moving manufacturing, design and even research activities to such locations. Thus, the challenge for engineering schools in the USA is how to educate a mechanical engineer that provides five times the value added when compared to the global competition, i.e., the 5xME. The first workshop provided some recommendations for transformative change to mechanical engineering education, and the second workshop focused on strategies for implementing those recommendations. Reports from both workshops, along with other workshop materials, are available at http://umich.edu/~ulsoy/5XME.htm. This seminar reports the major outcomes of the second workshop, on implementing the recommendations of the original 5xME workshop. Those include some sample curricula, as well as consensus on the need for: (a) a flexible curriculum, (b) a professional (or design) spine in the curriculum, (c) only one required course in each of the fundamentals of mechanical engineering, and (d) motivating engineering grand challenges throughout the curriculum.

Biography

A. Galip Ulsoy is the C.D. Mote, Jr. Distinguished University Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the William Clay Ford Professor of Manufacturing at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received the Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley (1979), the M.S. degree from Cornell University (1975), and the B.S. degree from Swarthmore College (1973). His research interests are in the dynamics and control of mechanical systems. He has received numerous awards, including the American Automatic Control Council's 1993 O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award, the 2003 Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award from the J. Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control, the 2008 Albert M. Sargent Progress Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), and the 2008 Rufus T. Oldenburger Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Fellow of ASME, SME and the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC).

Notes

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