With the help of a West Virginia Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (WVEPSCOR) grant, Bluefield State College has acquired a state-of-the-art printed circuit board and prototyping machine that will be used in the College's engineering technology curriculum.
"Recent advances in electronic circuit design and the need for a clean printed circuit (PC) board prototyping capabilities have led to the use of modern prototyping engraving machines that can produce double-sided PC boards from a computer-aided drawing (CAD) in just a few hours," noted Dr. Shekhar Pradhan, Professor and Department Head/Electrical Engineering Technology at BSC.
With the implementation of this project and integration of the PC board and prototyping in the electrical engineering technology curriculum at BSC this summer, the department has improved the laboratory component in CAD applications in electronics, linear circuit design, communication, electronics, digital circuits, systems and electronic design laboratory courses.
BSC has also offered a two-day faculty development for faculty members from 11 community and technical colleges. "The equipment purchased with the help of the WVEPSCOR grant not only improved the curricula at BSC, bit it also helped to improve curricula at other institutions," Pradhan added. Following the workshop, participating faculty can educate their students in electronic design practices, including projects that directly support industry, the BSC electrical engineering technology department head said. "This will help to satisfy the need in industry for a workforce that is trained in circuit design, using PC board and manufacturing," he stated.
"The potential benefits of this project are as widespread as is the development of electronic products, either for use in their own right, or for use as a component in a complex design,' Pradhan added. "We are grateful to WVEPSCOR for supporting this project."
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