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TopMadison Engineering Curriculum
The Madison Engineering program was established to instruct, train, and guide engineering versatilists. The curriculum combines a campus-wide, liberal arts general educational core with courses in mathematics, science, science, engineering specific design, science, and management, systems analysis, and sustainability (Nagel, Gipson, & Ogundipe, 2014). Individual skills taught developmentally through the curriculum beginning in the first year. Courses are blended with engineering science fundamentals and engineering design theory concepts, which are ultimately utilized in various projects. With this backdrop, the program also equips students with opportunities outside of the traditional academic environment inclusive of industrial facility tours, community service, and study aboard programs. The program ultimately aims to engage students and to aid in their development of knowledge, skills and values.
Description of Course: ENGR 314 Materials and Mechanics
The following case study is focused on the project that is in the ENGR 314: Materials & Mechanics course. Materials & Mechanics is a four credit hour lecture/laboratory required course within the Madison Engineering curriculum. ENGR 314 is most often taken in the third year and was created to provide students with a working foundation to explore the governing principles of materials science and the mechanics of materials. Typical class size is 25 students per section, with two sections running per semester.
Depicted in Table 1 are the pedagogical methods within the course and the four major topic areas are listed as follows:
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Materials Science
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Mechanics
The multidisciplinary nature of the Materials & Mechanics course provides students with traditional content from materials science and mechanics of materials. The Mechanics portion allows students to advance their knowledge about loads on physical structures while gaining hands-on testing and analysis experience. The Materials portion guides the students through investigations of scale, composition, and quantity. Product development is also discussed within the Materials portion through materials selection process based on designing from desired characteristics to developing subsystems that facilitate desired results. The course also includes a semester-long team design project that requires students to integrate knowledge of mechanics of materials with materials science in response to a short design brief representative of a real-world scenario.