Electrical Engineering Department

Introduction

A primary goal of the electrical engineering curriculum is to provide technical content that is current and relevant to present and future engineering practice at a level commensurate with students' abilities and interests. Another goal is to foster growth in students' analytical faculties, design abilities, and problem-solving skills. The third major emphasis is to encourage students to prepare for a lifetime of continuous learning in a world of accelerating change.

In practice, the goals stated above have complementary effects. Compared to a purely theoretical approach, a curriculum that focuses on course content that includes analysis and design using current technologies is inherently more interesting to students, generates more enthusiasm, and leads students toward more individual learning. A curriculum that meets these goals has several characteristics. First, the curriculum has depth in the electrical engineering major, supporting sciences, math, and engineering science courses, and breadth in the humanities and arts. Second, the curriculum has mixtures of the particular and the general, theoretical, and experimental, along with strong components in design and integration. Third, the curriculum emphasizes oral and written communication skills by requiring students to present and document their ideas, innovations, and designs both individually and in teams.

Within electrical engineering, it is impossible to guarantee that any particular set of topics will retain its present importance. Given the dynamic nature of the field, it is important to provide a stable background in the fundamentals and continuously update the curriculum for new applications and emerging technologies.

The electrical engineering faculty members have demonstrated their ability to excel in teaching and to develop excellent undergraduate electrical engineering laboratories. New faculty members cover the areas of signal processing, optoelectronics, device characterization, computer systems, microelectronics, electromagnetics, and acousto-optics. The department believes that these areas are central to the most rapidly evolving electrical engineering.