The Rensselaer Learning Continuum

Pre-College

Undergraduate

Professional-Ed

Grad & Research

Lifelong Learning

Commercialization

Alan Borck '47 and Virginia Borck Control Engineering Studio

Intel-based (Dell) personal computers are being used in the Alan Borck '47 and Virginia Borck Control Engineering Studio (JEC 4304). The control studio combines lectures, simulation and experiments in a single classroom. The facility seats 40 students and includes 21 computer workstations (including the instructor's console). The students face the front of the studio during lecture and discussion periods and swivel in their chairs to perform simulations and conduct experiments on the countertops behind them. During the problem solving periods, the instructor and teaching assistants move around the room answering questions and generating discussion.

23 Dell computers

Thus far, the studio has been used to teach courses in at least 4 departments: chemical engineering, ECSE, MEAEM and biomedical engineering.

An interactive learning experience ("Order out of Disorder: Controlling Chemical Processes") to introduce high school girls to opportunities in engineering and science (for Rensselaer's "Design Your Future" day) was developed and presented in the control studio. A chemical process control experiment was used to illustrate the importance of chemical process automation.

Papers discussing the development of the Rensselaer control engineering studio were presented at the 1999 American Control Conference and the 1999 Conference on Decision and Control; another will be presented at 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In addition, a paper on how the studio is used in chemical process control education will soon appear in the IEEE Control Systems Magazine.

B. Wayne Bequette
Joe H. Chow
James C. Li
Jonathan Newell