The Integrated Teaching Laboratory: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Much has been written about the Integrated Teaching Laboratory (ITL). You have perhaps already read that it will be housed in a new 31,700-square-foot facility to be built just east (and connected by a second story walkway) of the Engineering Center. You have probably noted that 80 percent of this facility will be usable laboratory space for undergraduates - and that our undergraduates will use it to study engineering in an exciting new way.


This architect's model suggests one possible look for the
future ITL building. Inset: Jim Avery (left), ITL technical
director, Jackie Sullivan, project director, and Larry Carlson,
program director, coordinate the myriad efforts that are
leading toward the realization of this dream

From the freshman to the senior level, our students will work in a multidisciplinary learning environment that integrates engineering theory with practice; promotes creative, team-oriented, problem solving skills; and involves students in hands-on team projects.

The ITL involves not only a new facility with attendant instrumentation and computer networking capabilities, but basic curriculum redesign that faculty are working on right now. The whole initiative represents a new chapter in engineering education. "As far as we can tell, there is nothing else quite like it in the country," says Larry Carlson, mechanical engineering professor and the ITL's program director, "certainly nothing of this scope."

The ITL is being designed physically this academic year and curriculum development is proceeding concurrently. Construction will begin next summer, and students will be working in the new building in the 1996-94 academic year. This project will make the College a national leader in undergraduate engineering education.

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