Engineering college to get new residential program

MSU will open a residential program for students of all levels in the College of Engineering beginning next fall, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said Monday.

Simon, speaking at an economic conference in Ann Arbor, said the site for the residential program, Spartan Engineering — The Residential Experience, has not been determined, but the university plans for it to be close to the College of Engineering.

“We see this as a way of building a more hands-on, integrative curriculum in engineering that still meets all the traditional requirements of a degree that employers recognize,” Simon said. “At the same time, you have the advantages of residential experiences and the energy created by that.”

Currently, there’s a residential option for students sponsored by the College of Engineering in Bailey Hall. The program, Residential Option for Science and Engineering Students, or ROSES, is expected to merge into the new engineering residential program, said Thomas Wolff, associate dean for undergraduate studies in the College of Engineering.

Wolff said the ROSES program included a one-credit seminar course but no other curriculum. The new residential program will include more curriculum connected to the program, he said.

ROSES attracts about 20 percent of freshmen engineering students, Wolff said. The college hopes to attract more than 60 percent of those students with the new program.

Simon said the university hopes the chosen engineering residential hall will be close enough for students to feel comfortable working in laboratories in the Engineering Building at night and going back to the residence hall. Simon added the university was looking to place the college in a hall west of Farm Lane.

Satish Udpa, dean of the College of Engineering, said he expects the new program will allow graduating engineering students a leg up in the industry.

“When students graduate, they will get into the industry and get into entry-level jobs and do some routine engineering before they are picked up and promoted to more senior-level positions,” he said. “In this program, we are going to train our engineers to skip that first stage and be able to think broadly and integrate. In other words, we are moving them a notch up in the engineering world.”

Udpa also said in the current system, only fourth-year engineering students are required to complete a design project. Under the new program, students would be expected to work on such a project each year, allowing younger students to work with upperclassmen.

“Freshmen engineering courses are more work than a lot of courses on campus,” Wolff said. “If we just say, ‘You gotta work harder,’ we may lose them. The seniors can say ‘Suck it up. This is what we do.’ At the junior- and senior-level in the College of Engineering, we have a sort of de facto community that we call ‘Late night at the Engineering Building.’ This is a way of building on that community.”

The college will be seeking funding from sources inside and outside of the university, Udpa said.

“We want to offer the best possible education for our students. We look forward to producing these first-rate engineers,” he said.

Published on Monday, October 15, 2007