Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

Mario G. Beruvides

appreciation of the role thatmanagement will play in their long-term careers. Management studies that are not presented inan engineering context will only prolong this ignorance, (p.8).” 2Several approaches have been attempted and researched to incorporate practical applications,class participation, and active learning for engineering students. Significant educationalinstruction and research attempting, to address these issues have been done by courses designedto build engineering entrepreneurship. 3,4 The reasoning behind this is simple, “Engineeringstudents typically go through school completing assignments that are generated by academiciansand quite often this either cannot or does not reflect the commercial world.” 5 The desire toincorporate real

Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

Shunmugham R. Pandian

the case with universities offering predominantly undergraduate programsin engineering with a limited number of faculty. Robotics and mechatronics are amongthe frontier areas of electrical, mechanical, and computer engineering. Project-basedlearning experiences for undergraduate students in these disciplines can provide valuablereal-world problem solving experience, expose them to new or established courses thatstudents are not formally being taught, serve community outreach, and potentiallyproduce innovative technologies and products for entrepreneurship by graduates. Thispaper discusses the project-based learning experiences of the author's undergraduateengineering students at the University of Michigan-Flint, in the fields of robotics