Introducing Nanoengineering and Nanotechnology to the First Year Students Through an Interactive Seminar Course

Abstract

We report a first year seminar course on nanoengineering, which provides a unique opportunity to get exposed to the bottom-up approach and novel nanotechnology applications in an informal small class setting early in the undergraduate engineering education. Our objective is not only to introduce the fundamentals and applications of nanoengineering but also the issues related to ethics, environmental and societal impact of nanotechnology used in engineering. To make the course more interactive, laboratory tours for microfabrication facility, microscopy facility, and nanoscale laboratory at the University of Iowa are included, which inculcate the practical feel of the technology. The course also involves active student participation through weekly student presentations, highlighting topics of interest to this field, with the incentive of "nano is everywhere!" Final term papers submitted by the students involve a rigorous technology analysis through various perspectives. Furthermore, a student based peer review process is developed which helps them to improve technical writing skills, as well as address the ethical issues of academic honesty while reviewing and getting introduced to a new aspect of the area presented by their colleagues. Based on the chosen paper topics and student ratings, the student seemed motivated to learn about the novel area introduced to them through theoretical, computational and experimental aspects of the bottom-up approach.

A Nano-Visualization Software for Education and Research

“…Combining the advanced graphic visualization libraries of MATLAB with EHT has made the reported software a unique atomic, molecular and wavefunctions visualization tool. We envision that such an effort can not only serve as an enabling platform to motivate high-school students towards nanoscale science, engineering and technology, but can also be expanded to 8 undergraduate nano-curriculum development and research [41,42]. The software is available free of charge for research and educational purposes [43].…”

Impact of Nanotechnology Themed Learning Community (TLC) Program in Freshmen Engineering

“…It is a field of emerging technologies, multidisciplinary in nature, encompassing many engineering and science disciplines, including physics, biology, chemistry, and biomedical, electrical, mechanical, and materials engineering. [1][2][3][4][5] Given the diverse nature of the nanotechnology field, a class of multidisciplinary students combined into a nanotechnology course, shows great potentials of enhancing the integration of engineering/science knowledge and the learning experience of the students in the meaningful way. The goals of this new program are to design a multidisciplinary research-based curriculum for nanotechnology track that prepares students to enter the local, national, and global workforce and become leaders of research and development Page 24.698.2 in industry, businesses, and academia in the emerging era of nanotechnology.…”