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Session 2277

Fifteen Years Experience In Delivering A Nuclear Engineering Technology Program To A Nuclear Utility Site

By Mitty C. Plummer, Jerome J Davis, Charles C. Bittle and Roman Stemprok

University of North Texas

I. Introduction. The University of North Texas, Department of Engineering Technology has delivered a Nuclear Engineering Technology program which leads to a Bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Engineering Technology to a nuclear power plant site 92 miles from the main campus, which is located in Denton, Texas. During this time it was possible to expand the program to include a Bachelor’s degree Electronics Engineering Technology , a Master’s Degree in Engineering Technology, and a Masters degree in Business Administration. The program is entirely supported by the utility and no state funds are involved in the program. The program has strong competition from non- accredited degree granting institutions. Methods of delivery vary with the course of instruction. For laboratory courses, the instructor will generally travel from campus to deliver the material at the site; for lecture only courses, videoconference is frequently used. Efforts are underway to import additional courses from other universities at the time of this writing.

II. Initial Justification for the Program. The Chernobyl accident of 1986, following on the heels of the Three Mile Island incident in the US prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider a requirement that all operators have a degree in a technical area. The utility industry wisely resisted this notion and the resultant compromise that was reached stated that the Senior Reactor Operators, the Shift Supervisor, or a new position called the Shift Technical Advisor, would have a technical degree and be present in the control room at all times. The power plant management chose to develop their own crew of educated operators by providing an easily accessible technical education delivered to the plant site.

III. Program Initiation. The utility company and its power plant management requested statements of interest from three Texas universities in 1990. The result was that their evaluation indicated that an engineering technology degree best suited their purposes. The program delivery had to be made onsite. The University of North Texas was selected to provide the program with the stipulation that the Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2004, American Society for Engineering Education

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Davis, J., & Stemprok, R., & Bittle, C., & Plummer, M. (2004, June), Fifteen Years Experience In Delivering A Nuclear Engineering Technology Program To A Nuclear Utility Site Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13631