|
Virginia Tech's College of Engineering is comprehensive. We are the home to a dozen departments with some 300 faculty, 5,500 undergraduate majors, and almost 2,000 graduate students. In 1984 we became the first public institution to require our entering engineering students to have desktop computers. Three years ago we changed our computer requirement from desktop to laptop, leading to many innovations in classroom instruction and team projects. The College of Engineering's freshman class of 2006 will be required to have Tablet PCs. Our students and faculty will be able to take advantage of the Tablet PC's many advanced teaching features such as the ability to receive a copy of the instructor's notes, including in-class electronic ink annotations. Having a laptop provides our students with continual access to notes, data, applications software and other information in class, group meetings, and in study sessions. Network plug-ins and wireless network access are currently available in many classrooms and study areas. Our Engineering Education research program was featured along with Purdue's in the ASEE Prism Summer 2006 edition. We are constantly exploring the frontiers of computer technology in education. You may have heard of Virginia Tech's Math Emporium or System X, one of the top 15 fastest supercomputers in the world, and the first such computer to run at speeds faster than 10 teraflops. Integrating concepts of green engineering into our curriculum started more than a dozen years ago when only a handful of engineering colleges in the country (public or private) included aspects of sustainable engineering in coursework. Virginia Tech student teams participate in many exciting design competitions - and we tend to do extremely well. For example, the Virginia Tech aerospace and ocean engineering students have won more aircraft, spacecraft and ship design awards than any other students in the country at the international group design competitions sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, major aerospace industries, and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. For the third year in a row, a team of Virginia Tech engineering students has won first place in the national Material Handling Student Design Competition for their design of an industrial facility. Sponsored by the College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education and Modern Materials Handling magazine, the competition challenges students to solve a case-study facility design problem in only five weeks. One secret to these successes is a unique facility that our design teams work in is known as the Ware Lab. We invite you to visit the Ware Lab to learn more about ongoing student design projects and our exciting approach to hands-on engineering. Instead of starting a bioengineering department, we've hit on a very powerful and innovative way to engage in the fields of bioengineering and biotechnology. Two years ago, we established a joint School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences with Wake Forest University, which has a premier medical facility. The school offers MS and Ph.D degrees. 2007 RoboCup Daily Blog from Dr. Dennis Hong and the RoMeLa Team Please consider joining us at Virginia Tech and writing in your own unique segment of our success story! Richard Benson, Dean of the College of Engineering |











