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Learning By Doing Iris Miller lost her right-hand fingers in a burn accident, but she was determined to remain active. So Miller gave students in the Engineering Design and Communications course a challenge. "She wanted help in developing a practical prosthesis that she could use for doing things like playing tennis or going cross-country skiing, and she couldn't get the attention she needed from the medical community," said James Edward Colgate, one of the instructors in the course, which is a major part of Engineering First's curriculum. "She ended up working with us — even with all sorts of caveats, such as 'These are freshmen, and this may or may not work.' "We did this project with a tennis racket prosthesis, which flat-out worked. It was a great experience for all involved." Kristin Thomas, now a junior majoring in biomedical engineering, was one of the participants in the Iris Miller project. "She [Miller] was so happy that we actually came up with something," said Thomas. "Not everybody had a lot of faith in us, but I think she did the whole time — even though we were just lowly freshmen. And it worked. She got to play tennis again." Over the last four years, freshmen in Engineering Design and Communications, which is offered in 10-week segments, have successfully tackled hundreds of such challenges. "Students get extremely motivated by the knowledge that someone has a real problem — and it doesn't matter what it is," said Colgate. The "customers" for these free student engineering skills are usually local people and organizations with actual needs but often without the resources to hire an engineering firm. Sometimes, the payoffs can be almost immediate. One course instructor posed this problem to his freshmen: If they were stranded in the desert with a broken leg and a cellular telephone with no reception, what would they do? They responded by designing an antenna to boost reception in remote locations. The idea was so good that it may be patented. "We think [the instructor] and Northwestern will own the patent, and the students will get royalties if anyone chooses to manufacture it," said Prith Banerjee, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and chair of the department, to the New York Times, which ran a story on this and similar courses. "Anytime you get a chance to design something for somebody, then test it and get positive feedback," said chemical engineering junior Michael Zilinskas, it teaches you more than "some kind of theoretical project that doesn't necessarily put you in contact with a real, human client." The late Jerome Cohen, former dean of the engineering school, saw these and other examples as testimony of the success of the Engineering First curriculum, adopted this year after a three-year transition. "Engineering First gets [students] looking at things from an engineering point of view right from the start," Cohen said. "It gives them the right perspective. That gives them a competitive advantage. I know companies that are just dying to hire our students because they're so good." — P.F. |
