Resumen de Innovations in freshman mechanical engineering curriculum at New Jersey institute of technology
Kwabena A. Narh, Herli Surjanhata
This paper describes the Mechanical Engineering contents of a new inter-disciplinary, project-based freshman engineering curriculum at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The course,which was run as a pilot when this paper was written, is called Fundamentals of Engineering and hasnow been approved for the freshman engineering curriculum. The two case-study projects, whichconstitute the Mechanical Engineering component of the course curriculum, are the Lawn Sprinklerand 3.5-inch Floppy Disk Drive. In this course, the freshman engineering student is introduced tomany aspects of engineering as an entire unit working together, with particular emphasis on theconcept of teamwork in engineering research projects. Students are introduced to many computer-aided design tools available at NJIT which can be used not only to build models of the product to bemanufactured but also for diagnostic analysis in order to solve potential manufacturing problems.The student is also introduced to the concept of communication among team members and theconcept of technical report writing and oral presentation. The grading and course evaluationschemes are also discussed. A few samples of students' graphic communications are reproduced
