Offering of Web-Enabled, Instructor-Taught Online Courses based on ONR-Funded Graduate Power Curriculum
Abstract
SUMMARY Offering of Web-Enabled, Instructor-Taught Online Courses based on based on ONR-Funded Graduate Power Curriculum As a brief background, with the help ONR Grant No. N00014-06-1-0381 “Center for Undergraduate Curricular Reform: A Critical National Security Concern,” a forward-looking curriculum in electric energy systems has been designed and is being disseminated. The objective of this effort is to graduate a large number of students in this field with a first-rate education, which is critical in national security applications such as in the Navy’s all-electric ships. As a result of this project, a large and a vibrant learning community has been created. It is estimated that nearly one-half of all the universities nationwide have adopted this curriculum in various combinations and the student interest in this field has skyrocketed. In addition, it should be noted that these are enduring transformations since these universities have invested into hardware laboratories that are a part of the curriculum we are promoting. This is an ongoing effort and the final goal of this ONR-funded project was to proactively affect the curriculum in at least 175 schools nationwide. Now that this undergraduate curriculum has been adopted in many universities, more students graduating with this background are likely to pursue graduate education if a forward-looking graduate curriculum that builds on these undergraduate courses being offered. Therefore an appropriate graduate curriculum is needed if we are to motivate our undergraduates to pursue graduate education and PhD research. Many instructors are asking for such a graduate curriculum that is carefully designed and builds on the undergraduate courses developed and being disseminated under the prior ONR funding. With the help of the ONR Grant No. N00014-11-1-0653 "Center for Developing and Disseminating a Graduate/Undergraduate Curriculum in Electric Energy Systems,” we are developing 13 graduate-level courses, with the following objectives: Develop a forward-looking curriculum, and the educational materials for it, for the first-year graduate program in Electric Energy Systems that is based on undergraduate curriculum designed and being disseminated with the help of the prior ONR-funding. Objective of this Proposal In spite of the free-of-charge availability, there are issues limiting wider utilization of this content: - Lack of appropriate faculty in many ECE departments to teach them, and - Lack of a critical number of students at many colleges/universities Therefore, our proposed solution is to teach these courses online through web-based instructors and based on these courses offer an affordable master’s degree to professional engineers. Students registered at any university should also be able to take these courses in order to supplement their courses at their respective universities. It is proposed that we develop 6 additional courses and a very-low cost software simulation platform and a hardware controller to support these courses. This will have the following benefits: 1. Educated workforce to meet increasing demands in power-related fields in the Navy and elsewhere 2. Make a large selection of courses available to students nationwide 3. Keep certain power-related courses, critical to national infrastructure, from disappearing, and 4. Keep evolving these courses; otherwise their content will get stale. This proposed 4-year effort will capture and archive the blend of expertise from senior faculty and practicing engineers with long years of experience in these fields, for the benefit of newer faculty. There is no doubt that such an effort is needed if we are to capitalize on the promise of renewable energy and power electronics applied to power systems and drives and to meet the manpower requirements of DOD and the defense-oriented companies for national defense.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 12, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141512391
Entities
People
- Ned Mohan
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Regents of the University of Minnesota
- United States Navy