The engineering program at Texas A&M University includes a freshman "Introduction to Engineering" sequence for the first two semesters of the freshman year. The Qatar campus of Texas A&M University has four majors offered and all majors take this two semester sequence. The overview course covers many subjects for the students and these typically are very broad in scope. Both courses include at least one or several projects.
Each year, freshmen student evaluations are critical of the perceived lack of applicability of the design project to petroleum engineering students. One possible reason for this perception could have been that during the first four years of program startup, there were no petroleum engineering professors involved in teaching this course. Nevertheless we noticed that the projects introduced important skills that petroleum engineers need. A review of the junior and senior curriculum and ABET outcomes confirm this.
In this paper, we discuss some of the projects offered in these freshman courses, and the skills it promotes. We also present the results of a survey that included almost all of the students at Qatar campus from all four engineering majors and compare the responses of the students in terms of the perceived benefits of these courses and the skills it promotes.
Proper design of projects for inclusion of necessary skills and tools for petroleum engineers is recommended to ensure students are equipped with appropriate competencies needed for upper division classes. Our results show that the skills promoted by projects currently being implemented are in line with the skills that petroleum engineering students need for their upper devision classes as well as their careers.
An independent 7-week module on imaging systems is being offered in spring 2002 to introduce freshmen engineering students to basic methods of problem solving, image analysis tools, and design. It offers several top-down, high-level methodologies for building solutions to interesting challenges, motivating the students to consider engineering as a problem solving discipline, rather than an assemblage of many low-level facts and skills. Preliminary assessment results will be given at the presentation of this paper. The module begins with the presentation of basic digital imaging methods and issues, using PC hardware and web cameras available in the department electronics lab. As student proficiency grows, they advance in teams to the High Tech Tools and Toys Laboratory, which supports five dedicated imaging stations. At each station, the students face a particular imaging problem, which they solve using a variety of hardware and software tools. Solutions are structured to make sure the students can be reasonably successful with their novice level of understanding. The 'Tools and Toys' include different cameras, frame grabbers and digital channels, and imaging software ranging from MATLAB to LabVIEW and Vision Foundry. Problem solving is emphasized, as is the engineer's choice of appropriate and varied tools. The advanced stations present problems in gauging, pattern recognition, coin counting, tracking, and acoustic imaging. Several also incorporate data interfaces, so that the system can change the environment based on image analysis. The software tools illustrate a range of user control and programming, including menu-driven systems, LabVIEW, MATLAB and C++.
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