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Session 2632

INTRODUCTION TO ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING: A NEW FRESHMAN COURSE AT UPR-MAYAGUEZ

José G. Colom-Ustáriz, Rafael Medina, Rafael Rodrígez Solís

University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez

I. Introduction

A course introducing electrical engineering to freshman students has been created at University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez (UPRM). The course consists of one-hour lecture followed by a two hours lab experience once a week. The students are introduced to five areas of specialization through discussion of basic concepts in class and real life applications in the laboratory. The laboratory experiments are focused in five specialization areas: Power, DSP and Communications, Control Systems, Electronics and Applied Electromagnetics.

The laboratories are carefully designed so that freshman students have an understanding of the different applications in electrical engineering early in their college career. In addition to the familiarization with basic laboratory equipment (multimeters, oscilloscopes, signal generators, etc.) during their freshman year, the students will be introduced to other important software tools such as Matlab, Excel, Power Point, and Cool Edit. The students will also attend seminars on effectives oral and poster presentations as part of the requirements of the course.

In this work, the course is briefly discussed, including the laboratory experiments. It is expected that with this experience, the students will choose their concentration area before their junior year, and will help coordinate future courses in the ECE Department. The laboratory experiments are performed in the facilities of the High-Tech Tools and Toys Laboratory, created with the support of NSF CenSSIS.

II. EE Department Background

The University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, the third largest campus of the state-owned university system of Puerto Rico, homes the daily activities of about 765 faculty and almost 15,000 students. According to the American Society for Engineering Education's (ASEE) 2000 edition of Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges UPRM ranks 14 th in the U.S. in terms of undergraduate engineering enrollment, 18th in awarded engineering degrees and 3rd in engineering degrees awarded to women. It is also the largest Hispanic engineering schools in the country, and has been fully accredited by the Middle State Association of Schools and Colleges since 1946.

The student population of the ECE department consists of about 1500 fulltime undergraduates (11% of the campus´ total), 60% of which major in Electrical Engineering and 40% in Computer

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

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Rodriguez-Solis, R., & Medina, R., & Colom, J. (2003, June), Introduction To Electrical Engineering: A New Freshman Course At Upr Mayaguez Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--11456