Facilities & Equipment
The College of Engineering & Science has been on the roofs this year! The Chemistry Building is getting a new tile roof – did you know each piece has to be taken off one at a time to be replaced? The Engineering Building is sporting new solar panels funded by the State of Michigan and UDM. This project has two objectives: to demonstrate the seamless incorporation of photovoltaic solar energy into existing architecture and to inform and educate a wide ranging target audience about the technology. Students and faculty installed the solar arrays on the roof in the fall and an opening ceremony will be held late spring 2006. A display explaining solar photovoltaic principles and showing real-time electrical power production from the arrays will be located in the building lobby. When wired to the buildings and electrical grid this system will power about 40% of the building’s light.
Progress on Engineering & Science Facilities
Engaging the community of practice has long been a part of a UDM engineering education. Today, that tradition is growing as we increasingly emphasize intense industrial collaboration on student projects and applied research focused on the design and creation of new products, materials and processes. To support this focus, our facilities need significant renovation to provide students with:
- State-of-the-art instrumentation and computing systems; laboratories and project spaces that support continual movement and modification of full-scale industrial equipment and vehicles;
- A building environment that projects an image of advanced technology and innovation; and
- Teaching and learning spaces that support the use of teamwork and advanced instructional and communication technologies.
In recent years, the Engineering and Chemistry Buildings have undergone numerous renovations and updating. Classrooms and lecture halls have been remodeled to accommodate advanced instructional and communication technologies and allow flexible seating for team-oriented activities.
Major New Learning Centers:
- Ford Center for Computing: This facility includes two major labs to support courses in the distributed and parallel processing and networking areas. These labs are located on the third floor of the Engineering Building and will support both the computer science and computer engineering programs. Resources will include at least 45 new computers, routers, hubs and extensive software for communication and distributed computing.
- Denso Team Design Center: This center has five team workrooms, each with conference table, high-end PC with CATIA and other resources to support team design projects. Engineering and computer science students from their first year through graduate school will employ these rooms. Teams will be able to reserve a room for their regular use. One room will be equipped with a projection system for students to practice their presentations. This grant also supported the replacement of 14 UNIX workstations in the FACT Center.
- Organic Chemistry Lab: the renovations of the Organic Chemistry Lab were recently completed. This include additional lab benches, exhaust hoods and enhanced utility systems.
- Visteon Prototype Center: This Center will include extensive prototyping equipment to create mechanical and electrical systems. This includes a second 3-dimensional printer and Computer Numerical Control machines that allow students throughout their engineering curriculum to transform their ideas into real working systems (ie - students will build prototypes of their designs).
- Manufacturing Processes Lab: This lab will include process equipment for forming, welding, casting, injection molding and painting, as well as woodworking for prototype projects.
- Manufacturing Systems Lab: This lab will allow faculty to teach students the integration of machining, material handling, perception and controls into complete manufacturing systems.
With support from corporate partners and alumni, we have created new laboratories in both buildings as well. We have created Physics and Optics laboratories in the Chemistry Building and renovated the Analytical Chemistry laboratories as well. We have created project spaces that are flexible, allowing easy access for vehicles and machine movement in the Engineering Building. In addition, new and remodeled labs have been established for computer networks, parallel and distributed computing, autonomous vehicles, product design and prototype fabrication, manufacturing processes and systems, metrology and rapid prototyping.
Now that facilities, curriculum, teaching methods and faculty have reached high levels of excellence and effectiveness, we have now turned our attention to developing new programs that are even more responsive to the changing needs of Southeast Michigan and to attracting the best students, regardless of their financial situations.
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