Associate in pre-engineering to be offered
The Board of Trustees approved the Associate of Pre-Engineering degree (APE) to be offered at USU’s three regional campuses effective spring 2010. APE was approved during December’s meeting.
USU’s College of Engineering has been involved in the process from the beginning, and College of Engineering Dean Scott Hinton said Associate Dean Wynn Walker led in creating the degree.
Hinton said creation of APE didn’t cause the university any additional costs. The regional campuses will use faculty for the APE acquired by House Bill 185, which, according to a Faculty Senate document, allotted $5 million in 2007 to regional campuses for new buildings, programs and faculty. Hinton said the use of online technologies will also help keep costs down.
“The hope is that new students that join the program will eventually cover any costs that we have,” Hinton said. “Right now with budget cuts, we don’t really have money to throw at it.”
APE is made up of the same prerequisite courses – the fundamentals such as math, physics and chemistry – that a student would take in the first two years as a USU engineering major.
According to Board of Trustees documents, the new degree is aimed at two specific groups: those who would like to continue on to get a bachelor’s degree in engineering and those already working in the field.
Hinton said many people will benefit from APE. For example, Hinton said if a student in Uintah Basin wants to study engineering, he or she can do so at the regional campus and leave the basin with an associate degree instead of just credits. He said the associate degree will help students feel like they accomplished something when they leave the regional campuses.
Once students earn their APE, Hinton said they can come to USU or another university to finish their engineering degree.
Students who earn the APE will find it beneficial in their search for jobs, Hinton said. He also said that with the economic climate as it is and with as many companies that still have to lay off employees, the regional campuses have a chance to help start new careers for these people.
Each regional campus has engineering faculty and a lot of classes for APE to be taught in with a faculty member in a classroom. However, Hinton said they will also use technology to teach the courses.
“Technology allows us to do some wonderful things,” he said.
Some APE classes might originate in Logan and be broadcast to other campuses, Hinton said, or they might originate in one of the regional campuses and be broadcast to the others. Administration will decide whether to have faculty-taught classes or online classes depending on factors such as class sizes and the different faculty of the various campuses.
“If we have a small class – one student in Uintah Basin, three in Brigham, etc. – it probably doesn’t make sense to teach a course in each area,” Hinton said. “With a course online with live video, it becomes viable.”
Hinton said the most important aspect of APE is that it allows USU to fulfill its land grant mission “by reaching out to rural areas and giving kids in those areas an opportunity to study engineering.”
According to the Board of Trustees document, APE was approved by the dean of the College of Engineering, the Educational Policies Committee and by the Faculty Senate before it was put before the Board of Trustees. The Board of Regents still needs to approve the program.
– rac.ch@aggiemial.usu.edu