An alternative paradigm--taking a live undergraduate engineering program off-campus

Journal of Engineering Education, Jul 2001 by Peterson, William R

ABSTRACT

This paper chronicles the first four years of offering courses in a manufacturing engineering bachelor's degree program and the first group of students graduating from this program. The program was designed to meet the specific needs of manufacturers in the western Michigan area where it is offered. The program-a joint effort of Western Michigan University, Muskegon Community College, and local industry-was offered exclusively at one of the university's regional centers located on a community college campus. Some lessons learned are presented.

I. BACKGROUND

In September of 1996 Western Michigan University (WMU), in partnership with Muskegon Community College (MCC) and industry in the Muskegon, Michigan region, began offering a bachelor's degree in manufacturing engineering through on-site classes in Muskegon, Michigan. Muskegon is approximately 100 miles northwest of Kalamazoo, the site of the campus of WMU and where its other undergraduate engineering programs are offered. MCC offers arts and science associate degrees that are articulated with the state's four-year colleges and universities and a variety of vocational and technical degrees utilizing state-of-the-art laboratory facilities.

WMU's presence in Muskegon is the Muskegon Regional Center (MRC), a branch of WMU's Division of Continuing Education. The MRC has offered courses toward a bachelor's degree in industrial management, a BA/BS in General University Studies, several masters' degree programs (including engineering management and industrial engineering), and a teaching certificate program. These programs are primarily for part-time evening students. The MRC uses regular WMU faculty members, who commute from Kalamazoo, as well as local part-time instructors. Only one WMU faculty member (a tenured professor from the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (IME), teaching graduate IE/EM courses) was located in Muskegon prior to the introduction of the manufacturing engineering program. The MRC staff consists of the regional center director, her secretary, and, occasionally, part-time (student) office assistants. The MRC is housed in MCC's Higher Education Center, a 95,000 square foot facility constructed to support a consortium of three state universities offering degrees at this site.

The development of a WMU engineering degree for Muskegon was requested by a Muskegon area industry group, the World Class Manufacturing Council (WCMC). This group identified the need for additional engineers in the region. After a WMU study indicated that a bachelor's level engineering program in Muskegon was viable, a proposal to was developed to establish such a program. WMU established two basic requirements to be accomplished by any off-campus engineering program: (1) that curriculum be accreditable by EAC/ABET (in keeping with College of Engineering and Applied Science policy) and (2) that the off-campus program be self supporting (in keeping with WMU's policy for the Division of Continuing Education).

To ensure meeting local needs and expectations, a committee composed of representatives of local industry (taken from the WCMC), WMU, and MCC oversaw development of the curriculum for the new engineering program. MCC early on offered instructional use of its laboratory facilities to the program. The WCMC representatives were a group of 13 engineers, engineering managers, and manufacturing managers from local manufacturing companies. This committee developed an overall structure for the curriculum as well as defining specific skills and experiences that the courses in the curriculum should provide. Details for these skill and experiences can be found in references 1, 2, and 3.

The degree earned through this new program was designated "Bachelor of Science in Engineering (Manufacturing)." Selection of the BSE (Manufacturing)-(BSMfgE)-degree for the program simplified development of a location specific degree, as WMU did not then offer the BSMfgE. This degree differentiation should simplify the accreditation process both for the new degree and for existing degrees.

A sequence of courses was developed using existing MCC courses, existing WMU courses, and new WMU courses tailored to the needs of the new program and selected to allow the program to meet the EAC/ABET criteria for manufacturing engineering programs. Additionally, the degree was designed to be offered on a two plus two (2 2) basis with MCC teaching the lower division courses (60 semester hours) and WMU teaching the upper division courses (as well a three lower division engineering courses-one course per semester during the freshman year and one course in the sophomore year-70 credit hours). The resulting program contained 15 new courses-13 MFE (manufacturing engineering) courses and two ECE (electrical engineering) courses (tailored to the requirements of this program). Lists of these courses can be found in reference 4. The faculty of WMU's College of Engineering and Applied Science developed the course outlines, with input from industry. An example of such input was a survey of the industry members of the committee to select and rank topics in the quality field for the course in quality assurance.