Fourth in a five-part series looking at various academic departments on campus.
While many Boston University professors work on improving communication between their students, researchers in the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department are learning how to improve communication among their robots.
The robot project is one of many research projects department Director James Langell said have practical applications in today’s world, and that bring money and prestige to the College of Engineering.
Aerospace and mechanical engineering is not a very broad field, having only about 60 programs nationwide, department chair John Baillieul said. The department at BU is small but growing, currently housing 23 faculty members and about 350 students, he said.
“We don’t want to get too large,” Langell said. “We want to maintain a core of students who we can work with. We’re not a factory.”
Over the past decade, BU has created many new state-of-the-art engineering facilities on campus.
“Now we have wind tunnels and jet engines,” Langell said. “Ten years ago, we just didn’t have that kind of stuff.”
ENG senior Francis Szalay said he loves having a lot of great professors and professional equipment at his disposal in the department.
“It’s a small department,” he said, “but you get a lot of bang for your buck.”
All students participate in a senior design course, in which small groups utilize all the skills they have learned during their undergraduate studies. One senior recently created a design to replace obsolete gyroscopes in Black Hawk helicopters with fiber optics, Baillieul said.
“[In the design course,] we sometimes try to work with outside customers so that our work will be more useful,” he said.
“Four years ago I wouldn’t have known how to do any of this stuff,” said Szalay, who is currently designing his own project. “But now I look at this big amazing project that I have created.”
Student clubs also add to the experience. As president of the BU chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Szalay said the club is one of many groups that help the experience of students studying engineering.
“It’s an opportunity for students both to get together outside of class and to see what happens in the industry after graduation,” he said.
Participation in activities outside of class varies from year to year with student interest. Baillieul said.
“A few years ago we had a hugely successful rocket team,” he said. “One of the kids had a passion for building rockets. It was 15 feet high, they built the motor and the controls and then they got to launch it.”
But ENG sophomore Lolita Tam, secretary of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, said students are often so busy with schoolwork that they do not have time for many extracurricular activities.
“Even though the organization is small at the student level, it is great for making contacts with employers and scholarship opportunities,” she said.
Though ENG students’ schedules are pretty much filled with requirements, they must take a range of humanities courses “in an attempt to keep students balanced out,” Tam said.
Enthusiastic students are what professor James Sullivan said makes the department such a great place to teach.
Sullivan said he teaches incoming freshman in Introduction to Engineering, as well as graduating seniors in the senior design course, so he gets to see them “coming and going.”
“[The final project] prepares them to make the transition into the workforce, and contribute to society,” he said.
Though his primary responsibility is to teach, Sullivan said he also researches space weather problems.
ENG sophomore Matt Bennett said working on student research allows participants to see the applications of what they are learning in class. He said he is considering taking part in a program in which the university pays for students to do research.
“It is important for students to utilize all the resources they have here,” Bennett said. “The department is small enough so that you can get to know your professors, but large enough that you have to make the effort.”
The department also encourages collaboration among students, Bennett said, because it simulates working conditions in the real world.
“In one of our projects, we design a trebuchet, buy the materials and then have another group construct it,” Bennett said. “They also encourage us to work together on homework.”