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Session 2651

Teaching Multidisciplinary Engineering Principles Through Environmental Topics

George Piper, Jennifer Waters, Terrence Dwan, Kiriakos Kiriakidis United States Naval Academy

1.0 Introduction Environmental topics such as pollution prevention, pollution remediation, natural resource utilization, as well as global and local weather studies provide excellent catalysts to teach a wide breadth of engineering principles. Since environmental issues are real and tangible to most students, engineering applications involving the environment tend to capture the students’ interest. Environmental topics also provide a great opportunity for discovery, learning, and meaningful application of learned mathematic, scientific and engineering and principles. For instance, having students explore ways to extract energy from natural resources exposes them to a variety of topics such as thermodynamics, power generation, energy transmission and storage. Through such topics as thermal pollution and weather monitoring, students are exposed to heat transfer, partial differential equations, sensor design, and signal processing. In virtually all environmental topics, students can experience the synthesis of concepts and methods of many different disciplines, which is truly the essence and purpose of engineering.

For the past three years, the Systems Engineering and the Ocean Engineering Departments at the U.S. Naval Academy have collaborated to offer an innovative course sequence in environmental engineering [1]. In this course sequence, a host of engineering principles are explored under the umbrella of environmental topics for non-environmental engineering students. The course sequence is a technical elective track that is offered to systems engineering majors during their senior year. The systems engineering curriculum at the U.S. Naval Academy is a four year, undergraduate, ABET accredited, program specializing in the interaction between mechanical, electrical, and computer systems. The curriculum focuses mainly on linear systems theory, feedback control, and mechatronics. Throughout the curriculum students learn how to model, analyze, and design various types of systems. Prior to the environmental engineering track, the systems engineering students have no formal exposure to environmental engineering. Therefore, environmental engineering track is intended to teach and/or reinforce engineering principles, and then apply them to a real system or problem through environmental topics.

The first course in the track is taught within the Systems Engineering Department. This course reinforces engineering principles taught in the Systems Engineering major [2]. The course concentrates on environmental hardware, sensors, data handling, and modeling. For the second course in the track, students choose from two more traditional environmental courses offered in the Ocean Engineering Department. One course centers on marine pollution, the other course centers on ocean resources. In the following sections each course in this environmental engineering track is discussed, emphasizing their multidisciplinary aspects.

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Dwan, T., & Kiriakidis, K., & Waters, J., & Piper, G. (2000, June), Teaching Multidisciplinary Engineering Principles Through Environmental Topics Paper presented at 2000 Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. 10.18260/1-2--8754