Jack Adams, ChairDept. of EE

Merrimack College

Presented to the 2008 Annual AIDC MeetingOctober 15, 2008

Merrimack College was founded in 1947 in North Andover, Massachusetts, by the Order of St. Augustine O.S.A.

The Augustinians, at the invitation of Richard Cushing, then Archbishop of Boston, established the College as a direct response to the needs and aspirations of local G.I.'s returning home from World War II.

Since its inception, the now 220-acre Merrimack College has graduated nearly 22,000 students and has grown to nearly 40 buildings including the 130,000 square foot Sakowich Center, the Mendel Science, Engineering and Technology Center, and the Rogers Center for the Arts.

Merrimack College is a selective, independent, four-year Catholic college offering liberal arts, business, and also science and engineering programs within a residential campus setting.

Approximately 2,000 students, mostly FT, almost all undergraduate. The students hail from 26 states and 14 countries

More than 30 major areas of study

13-to-1 student-teacher ratio

Strong cooperative education program for all majors, study abroad, internships and career services programs.

Approximately eighty percent of students reside on campus

In terms of its academic focus, Merrimack College emphasizes both liberal arts and the professions. There are three divisions:

Liberal Arts The Girard School of Business Science and Engineering

Just five years ago, half the majors were in liberal arts: today, each division has roughly a third of the entering freshmen

Unique: the only EE program in an undergraduate, Catholic college in the United States.

8 full time and adjunct faculty

Approximately 100 EE students, including FT, PT, and EE minors.

Only accredited PT program in New England

To prepare students to become outstanding electrical engineers within a challenging and inspiring learning environment while actively contributing to the broader Merrimack and professional communities.

EE Professors have on average over 10 years experience in industry

Merrimack EE is unique in that over half of its professors have Master’s degrees rather than PhDs. While this doesn’t happen in a research University, professors with industry experience are highly valuable in “graduating outstanding electrical engineers”.

EE Department accredited by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET).

ABETs approach is modeled on ISO 9000

ABET requires demonstration of “continuous program improvement”. Achieved through establishment of goals, assessment, and actions to bring about improvement.

Major review every 6 years.

Meeting ABET requirements for Continuous Program Improvement

Keeping curriculum “fresh”, and also meeting ABET “depth” requirement

Core teaching requirements make offering new electives a challenge

It has turned out that adding RFID to our curriculum has been a major help in addressing these challenges – will discuss further shortly

Small faculty and teaching-oriented environment, allows for flexibility in trying out new courses.

Small faculty also makes 100% buy-in for curricular changes feasible, a plus from ABET’s perspective.

1961 EE Alum Retired CEO of Intermec, and a pioneer in the

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) arena. Passionate about bringing RFID to Merrimack. Mike is still active: board of directors of

TagSys, a French company that recently landed the Beijing Library, with 40 million titles, as a client.

Opportunity for speakers, and lab donations from, as well as partnerships with many RFID companies.

1961 EE Alum

Lifetime RF engineer (Draper Labs) with RFID expertise

Like Mike O, passionate about RFID, and bringing it to Merrimack.

Decided to “get feet wet” by offering seminar series, held fall 2004

Topics included:◦RFID: Past, Present and Future (Sanjay

Sarma MIT) ◦Supply Chain Logistics (Rohit Verma VP of

Savi technologies)

As measured by attendance and enthusiasm, highly successful

Building on experience of seminar series by offering short course in conjunction with Boston Section of IEEE, in Spring 2006

Similar topics, speakers as the seminar series

Approximately 60 attendees, with about half from local industry

Lead instructor: Charlie Kochakian

Visits from industry experts throughout the semester

Lab component – mostly demos for starters

Final “project” a reading/research project

RFID Basics

Manufacturing considerations

Standards

Role in supply chain – how to make money with RFID

Various Inlays

Silicon chip

antenna

Symbol’s MC9000-G RFID handheld

Dimensions:10.75 in. L x 4.7 in. W x 7.7 in. H Weight:35.4 oz./1 kg (includes battery, scanner and radio)

Keyboard:53-key

Symbol’s XR400 Fixed Reader

Dimensions:8.75 in. L x 11.75 in. W x 2.0 in. H Weight:4.85 lbs.Base Material: Die-cast aluminum

Intermec’s IA33A Circularly Polarized AntennaDimensions:10.2 x 10.2 x 1.5 inWeight: 20 oz

Scott Cobb is SVP Federal & Healthcare Systems – Shipcom Wireless.

Scott brought a business perspective to the class. “People don’t buy technology – they buy solutions”.

This type of message and presentation MUCH appreciated by the students.

Carried out in conjunction with curricular review

Although data indicated “passing” grades for all outcomes, three ABET outcomes had arguably scanty data◦ 3 (d) an ability to function on multi-disciplinary

teams◦ 3 (f) an understanding of professional and ethical

responsibility◦ 3 (h) the broad education necessary to understand

the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context (*)

Coursework in RFID offers the opportunity to directly assess the concerns raised during the Outcomes assessment

◦ RFID is somewhat famous for ethical concerns (real or imagined) due to potential privacy invasion

◦ RFID is highly multidisciplinary

◦ Global aspects include EPCGlobal and the global supply chain among others

2-credit course taken at the end of the junior year by all EE majors

Highly unique prereqs: E&M+Electronics (Junior EE), OR CS major with junior standing, OR business major with junior standing. Encourages multidisciplinary teams.

Requires three sets of learning outcomes, one for each major

Assuming enough business and CS students (likely), we can have ALL EE students working in a multi-disciplinary team

Course in RFID offers opportunity to directly address a number of ABET requirements

RFID is an exploding technology, and coursework can help students land a position – have already seen this.

Offers direct, valuable experience in multidisciplinary teamwork.

RFID lab, with significant donations from industry, is benefit for students.

Exposure during the course to industry experts with real-world technical and business experience is very positive.

Thanks to AIDC for choosing Merrimack to host this year’s conference.

Thanks to you for making the effort to join us

Thanks to IEEE Boston for helping get the word out about this event

Thanks to Mike Ohanien and Charlie Kochakian for their hard work

Thanks to our partners in industry

We thank Tagsys, Shipcom Wireless, Symbol Technologies, Zebra, Fluke, Metrologic, Identec, and Lairdtech among others for their generous donations of equipment. Ours may well be the best equipped undergrad lab in the US.

Many of the companies have also provided expertise in the form of technical support as well as speakers for our lecture series and courses