1. Introduction
Especially in the freshmen year, students in the departments of Electrical and Mechanical
Engineering Technology have not much idea about Engineering Technologies and what kinds of
professions they can pursue. Moreover, they do not know the scope of the various fields that
each of these disciplines contain and which fields they may be interested in. Of course students
will explore their entire selected major as they become junior and senior students and they will
find and concentrate on their favorite fields.
By introducing introduce the freshmen students to a broad knowledge of each venue of
both majors, students will develop an early interest and it will directly affect their motivations of
knowledge achievement, and tracking down of their careers. Obviously, it is not possible to
introduce all aspects of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Technology, but it is feasible
able to excerpt the basic and fundamental subjects which form the back bone of these disciplines,
such as circuits, electricity, electronics, power and control in Electrical Engineering
Technology; rigid bodies, kinematics, and fluid dynamics in Mechanical Engineering
Technology. All of these sub-topics can also be shown to be interconnected and working
together in a functional electrical or mechanical system.
Additionally, it is crucial to stress the importance of studying math by showing the use of
math skills currently used in Engineering Technology and how they are applied. If students can
appreciate why they learn math and how they apply the math skills to solve engineering-oriented
problems, it can increase their motivation and desire to study math while deepening their
mathematical comprehension.
As part of a newly designed Engineering Technology Curriculum at the Pennsylvania
State University, a common freshman year has been designed between EET and MET students1.
As part of this common year, two new courses were designed that give freshmen students a wide
but limited depth to each of these respective disciplines and achieves all of the educational
objectives mentioned above.
These two new courses, Introduction to Electrical Engineering Technology and
Introduction to Mechanical Engineering Technology, are taken simultaneously by both EET and
MET freshman in their first semester of study. The details of each of these courses are discussed
in greater detail below.