Dean Mary Wells visits Chemical Engineering’s first-year Design Studio Symposium

Mary Wells, Dean of Engineering dropped by the IdeasClinic to engage with first-year chemical engineering students.

The students were immersed in hands-on experiential learning in their Design Studio Symposium which was facilitated by Professor Yverick Rangom. The Symposium is the empirical extension of course ChE 181 taught by Rangom and is an introduction to engineering measurement.

The course introduces students to concepts such as voltage, current, resistance and signal transmission.

In the Symposium, students were building and testing sensors. The activity combined technical knowledge, coding utilizing Python computer programming, a math module, and a practical component, creating an interactive electrical circuit that included an electronic board.

In the Design Studio students worked with an Arduino board, which is a mini-computer. The students built the circuit and then used Python to program data acquisition, such as measuring the output of the circuit. They also use a resistance temperature detector to sense the temperature of the room and that of an ice bath.

The Dean was on hand to share her knowledge and expertise as students waded into their first exercise in combining the theoretical with functional experience in the Design Studio.

The Department of Chemical Engineering Chair Professor Mario Ioannidis and Professor Sarah Meunier were also in attendance to provide guidance to the students and to share in this first-year chemical engineering milestone. The students were excited to participate in the Symposium and enjoyed interacting with the Dean and Chemical Engineering faculty!