Interdisciplinary capstone design projects are a required part of many of the engineering programs across the US and have been proven to be highly impactful for preparing students for industry. The University of Arizona College of Engineering program places five to six students on a team sponsored predominantly by industry partners. Over the course of the academic year, students work to meet the requirements of the industry sponsor and ultimately present their results at a celebratory event called Design Day. The authors have been students, mentors, and now sponsors of projects through BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace). This paper describes our general philosophy to designing a great project that will challenge and grow the students on the team and give them a taste of what work at our company is like. The paper will give several example projects across the past years to showcase what went well and what can be improved, as well as summarizing general roadblocks students consistently experience for other mentors to be aware of.
The Wyant College of Optical Sciences (OSC) at The University of Arizona participates in a variety of outreach activities in all levels of the education system and the Tucson community at-large, reaching thousands of students each year. We have created immersive workshops including “D.I.Y. Optics” and “CSI: Optics – Optical Forensics”. For large audiences, we emphasize “pocket optics”, cost-effective giveaways such as pixel magnifiers, the Pepper’s ghost illusion, and Fresnel lenses. New resources and lesson plans are centralized on an online hub, which started as a UA/NASA Space Grant project in 2018 and now facilitates instructor training and acts as an on-demand resource for troubleshooting demos in the field. We share successes and lessons learned from our outreach events, culminating in 10th Annual Laser Fun Day in March 2020, the flagship student-led event supported by the Student Optics Chapter (SOCk) and Women in Optics (WiO).
This UA/NASA Space Grant project centralizes the outreach efforts for College of Optical Science students using a new online hub, developed to collect, organize, and disseminate educational activities. Optical Sciences plays a role in many of the innovative technologies transforming our society, making outreach of utmost importance to attract students to the emerging field. Outreach activities at the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences (OSC) help inspire these future innovators. This website provides on-demand training for students unfamiliar with leading demonstrations and inspiration for experienced instructors looking for something new. It emphasizes scientific literacy, effective scientific communication, and serves as a free and accessible resource for STEM classrooms.
The online hub offers students new to outreach an opportunity to familiarize themselves with resources before performing outreach. Although OSC offers a semester-long outreach course that provides face-to-face training, it has the burden of class time and tuition for students. The online hub is freely available, easily accessible, and self-directed by the user’s interests. Multimedia lesson plans provide instructions for effectively presenting to students and document materials required for each activity. Clear objectives are provided to guide the instruction and evaluate the students’ knowledge and interest in optics. Ongoing outreach events are utilized during the academic year to “beta-test” the website. While an online hub greatly enhances the many outreach activities already available to students within the College of Optical Sciences, an online resource has the added benefit of being an accessible resource to teachers, students, and communities around the world.
Using a room-temperature FLIR infrared camera, we have developed an entire outreach program that allows students of
all ages the chance to "see" their world from 8-12 microns. It is a world seldom seen by the same person that, ironically,
has 12 megapixels of visual "high-def" in his or her shirt pocket. It is Bill Wolfe's world, and in his recognition we are
honored to share some of it with you.
Planning for the undergraduate Optical Engineering program at the University of Arizona, which leads to the B.S. Degree in Optical Engineering, was begun in the mid 1980's - primarily in response to a cry from industry that there was a national shortage of individuals with formal training in optics at the baccalaureate level. The curriculum for the new degree was modeled after that of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester to some extent, but was given somewhat more of an electrical engineering flavor. In addition to the usual doses of mathematics, chemistry, physics and social sciences found in standard engineering programs, the University of Arizona program requires 22 units (semester credit hours) of electrical engineering, 30 units of optical engineering and 12 units of senior-level technical electives, for a total of 128 units. The program has grown at a moderate rate since it was given official status in 1989, and 72 students were enrolled as Optical Engineering majors during the spring semester 1995; the maximum enrolment of 100 will be likely be reached sometime before the year 2000. A total of 35 individuals have new received the B.S. Degree in Optical Engineering at the University of Arizona. The philosophy and curriculum of this program is described in some detail.
This paper describes some of our experiences in Tucson in support of optics education in the middle school. A workshop for middle school teachers and work with middle school classes has identified a number of approaches that may be effective for the integration of optics into the middle school science curriculum.
A kit of electro-optical components is described which, when assembled and aligned, allows one to transmit voice signals over a beam of light. The kits were developed for TOPTICS '92, an optics convention held in the city of Tucson to showcase local optical companies and education opportunities to the public-at-large. One aspect of the convention was to involve school children with the world of optics. These kits proved to be an excellent way to link educators and their students with parents, optics professionals, and even the local media. The kits consist of all the necessary electrical components to build a transmitter (using an LED) and a receiver (using a phototransistor). The circuits are assembled on an electronic breadboard which is part of the storage case for the parts themselves. Optically, the light beam is collimated and focused using inexpensive Fresnel lenses. Distances over which one's voice may be sent are variable, determined by one's ability in optical alignment. Students in the 5th grade were the first to use the kits, sending their voices about 200 feet. The educational success of these kits is described in this paper.
A two-week course in optics has been developed and taught as part of the APEX program at the University of Arizona. APEX, (Academic Preparation of EXcellence), is an early-outreach program for minority students in the middle schools of the greater Tucson area. APEX targets financially disadvantaged students who posses skills necessary to be successful in higher education beyond high school. The program promotes academic confidence and career awareness through school-year meetings, field trips, a speakers' bureau, and a summer day camp. The optics course described in this paper has been taught over the last four years to middle school students in the APEX summer camp. The optics course presented is a micro-version of the optics courses taught as part of the B.S. program i Optical Engineering at the University of Arizona. The APEX optics class contains a successful mixture of theory and hands-on demonstrations. Proof of this success is evident at the end of every summer session when, after two weeks and forty hours of optics, the students are eager to learn even more about the world of optics.
Throughout the 1980's the Infrared Group of the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona has participated in the national and international efforts to realize self-calibration of photodetectors in the infrared. The results have not been encouraging.
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