[sdiy] Pushing practical design

[Harry Bissell Jr]

--- Aaron Lanterman <lanterma at ece.gatech.edu> wrote:


> Not all of my colleagues feel as I do; some feel
> that this is the sort of 
> thing best left to the "technicians" coming out of
> DeVry. My thought is 
> that there's people coming out of DeVry with a
> better "real" understanding 
> of electronics than our students, since they do a
> lot more hands-on stuff 
> in lab and develop intuition, whereas we make our
> students mostly crank 
> through endless paper-and-pencil problem sets.

I'll kick all your colleague's @sses !!!

The BIGGEST problem with many engineers, especially
recent graduates... is that thye have no feel for the
nuts and bolts issues.

They NEED to know what kind of practical problems they
will encounter as they move from design to production.

And if they don't move designs into production it will
be no problem... because they will be out of work,
soon.

Maybe in the "acedemic" arena there is no motiviating
force to take things to a finished level. OTOH I don't
think you can provide employment for all your students
as teachers.

And those colleagues who can't deal with real world
issues better stay cloistered in the ivory tower. They
will not survive "out here"

Leveraging existing designs ~is~ how real world
production occurs. It is only at the start-up phase
(after pure research) that there will be no
precedents.
After that you have a knowledge base... not only of
what works... but what is successful in the
marketplace.

And... except for schools... the marketplace is life
and death. Tell them to get their heads out of the
sand and serve their students better !!!

I wish there had been a class like yours when I
started
college. Hell... I even wish electricity has been
discovered when I went to college :^P

H^) harry