Minutes of the CTC Engineering Technology OAC:
On Monday October 26th at 4 pm, the OAC for Engineering Technology met in room 400N to discuss business brought before it. Present at the meeting were:
Dr Wally Lloyd, retired president of Cannon Instruments
Dr. Tom Jackson, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Penn State University
Mr. John Morgan, Senior Engineer, Videon Central
Doug Ripka, Engineering Technology Instructor, ex-officio
Not present at the meeting were:
Mr. Scott Neal, Engineer, Applied Research Lab due to a prior commitment
Mr. Gary Powers, Head of the Engineering Technology program, South Hills School of Business and Technology, due to a prior commitment
The following items were discussed:
Capital Equipment requests-
Duality Lathe to use with Tormach CNC mill- after discussion of alternatives, this item was approved, pending trying to find a local user who could confirm that the machine was easy to align to the mill bed.
PLC trainer- discussion centered around what Allen-Bradley, the maker of the PLC “brick”, has to offer for educational institutions, such as free simulation software. This would allow more students to use the software and develop programs, then move over to the trainer to actually load the program and see it run. Approval was given to purchase a PLC after investigation of what Allen-Bradley offers.
New/revised curriculum:
Four courses are affected- Electronics 1, Electronics 2, Robotics, and a new course, Mechatronics.
Electronics 1 and 2 will be renamed and have the competencies re-distributed. The new courses will be named Digital and Analog Electronics and Electronic Systems.
The Robotics course will share competencies with a new course called Mechatronics. The combined courses will cover the areas of CNC, autonomous robotics, Programmable logic, sensors, and robot programming.
All 4 courses were approved by the committee.
An update on the Physics AET class was given. There was a great deal of interest in this class, as well as possibilities for collaboration with other classes such as AP Compsci. Two questions that the committee had were how the Physics teacher felt about the collaboration, and when the nested course might be offered to AP Physics B students.
I promised to get answers for these questions.
Other business:
Expanding relationships with PSU/South Hills:
Discussion centered around field trip opportunities and entry level courses for Senior completers to take.
Tom offered to take me on a tour of the EE department facilities on Friday morning if that works for his schedule. He also mentioned that we could take students on a tour of the nanofabrication lab at Innovation Park as they have improved the tour in the last few years.
Tom also offered the names of a few people who could help us find courses that would be appropriate for students to take.
Sven Bilen would be the contact for Engineering Design, also for the freshman seminar courses, such as EE007.
Jean Pytel in the Dean’s office would also be a good contact.
Industry sponsorship of programs/partnering with industry- Mention was made of the generosity of Videon Central in sponsoring our VEX robots. Videon is also interested in teaming with our students in creating a robotics competition.
Tom also suggested I call Mark Wharton and HP/Tektronix to see if there is a way that old (3 to 5 yrs) equipment the university is replacing can be donated to us instead of being disposed of.
Strengthening community support of Engineering Technology- I talked a little bit about the results of the community survey to reduce costs and the negative comments regarding the CTC. The advisory committee suggested two avenues, the Horizon and the CDT, thinking that the Physics/AET class is a sure way to garner interest.
The meeting adjourned at 5:13 pm