By Brian Leibowitz
Many students in Columbia's School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) came to Columbia with the intention of studying engineering in an academically advanced environment. Columbia's top notch facilities as well as its outstanding ongoing research projects could make it an ideal engineering school. The only problem is that most students in SEAS do not have access to most of these facilities and cannot get involved in any project work. I have even heard juniors complaining that it is difficult to do any applied engineering work until their senior year. This is an unfortunate situation that cannot be allowed to continue. In order to provide the best possible engineering education and to be competitive as a top engineering school, SEAS must provide more opportunities for its students to get involved in "hands on" engineering work. Obviously a first year student cannot expect to become a core member of the high energy plasma physics research team, which may soon break the world record for plasma fusion power output; there must be prerequisites for such positions. However, there are more realistic alternatives.
Design classes could be added to the engineering core for first and second year students. Such classes, which have existed at schools such as MIT for decades, provide students with an introduction to the engineering process and can be an invaluable learning experience. Introducing applied engineering classes for underclassmen can also help solve the paradoxical demand that engineering students choose their majors before gaining any tangible experience in them. I find myself in a third predicament, which can also be alleviated by such a change. Many engineering students come from advanced high school programs with a fair amount of project experience. When these students come to Columbia, they must take two years of mostly pure sciences, mathematics, and humanities. Suddenly a student who is used to being involved in projects must take a two year hiatus when he/she could be further developing his/her engineering skills. Of course, there are some complications; SEAS cannot simply add more required classes or completely change its academic program at the drop of a hat. However, there is currently discussion about modifying the structure of the Core Curriculum for students enrolled in SEAS, and this issue must be kept in mind throughout the process. There are also other practical solutions that could be implemented simultaneously. One that I particularly support is to provide motivated students with supervised access to some engineering facilities for their own independent projects. I don't mean that labs with expensive or delicate equipment should be opened for students to tinker and press all the funny looking red buttons. However, we do need more ways for motivated students to take advantage of SEAS's outstanding facilities. Fortunately, the University has made some recent progress in this respect by opening the new Gateway Lab to all SEAS undergraduates. Access to the powerful Silicon Graphics workstations at the Gateway Lab has already had a major impact on many SEAS undergraduates and will undoubtedly continue to revolutionize our education as it becomes even more utilized in the future. But this should only be the beginning.
As a partial solution to this problem I have recently started an unofficial extracurricular organization that is loosely tied to the SEAS '94 student government. The organization's purpose is to coordinate students with similar project interests, to develop worthwhile project ideas, and to approach faculty members requesting assistance in accessing laboratory facilities. Anyone interested in joining is welcomed to contact me for more information. Any faculty members interested in helping us or simply giving some input are certainly invited to do so. This program can become an invaluable educational resource for all engineering students at Columbia, but it cannot exist without the support of the University.
From pg. 5 of The Moment, 7 Dec. 1994