Nano-Scale Engineering Education for Undergraduates

We are planning to establish a novel "Nano-Scale Engineering Certificate Program" (NECP) for undergraduate engineering students at the University of Kentucky (UK). This will be the first time a certificate program offered in a comprehensive way to educate undergraduate engineering students on nanotechnology. We expect that the NECP will enhance not only the level of nano-scale education in the College of Engineering, but it will also foster a series of new wave of interdisciplinary research programs around the Campus. The students who enroll in the NECP will be required to take a total of six courses on nanotechnology and attend to two semester-long seminar courses. Four of the required six courses will be lecture courses addressing both theoretical and fabrication fundamentals as related to nanoscale processes. These courses will be offered by the Departments of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), and can be accepted as Technical Electives, which are required in all Engineering Departments. Other two courses will be hands-on laboratory courses, and will be in addition to the minimum required courses which are counted towards graduation. These courses will be offered by the Departments of Chemical and Material Engineering (CME) and ECE. These courses will be taught by five core faculty members, who are currently funded by nanotechnology related projects from various agencies, including NSF. The certificate program will be a natural catalysis to transfer the accumulated research knowledge to our undergraduate students in a timely manner. In addition, the students will be given the opportunity to participate in the research activities within the laboratories of five core faculty members as well as those who are carrying out the cutting-edge research in other departments at UK. Finally, they will be exposed to the novel ideas to be presented during the seminar courses. These seminars will be delivered by the UK faculty as well as by those invited from other institutions. We believe that we are at the dawn of the Nanotechnology and Nanoengineering revolution, and at this point our students will be best served with a Certificate Program in Nano-Scale Engineering, which should be dynamic and responsive to ever changing ideas and applications. Our ultimate objective in the NECP is to prepare our undergraduate engineering students so that they can actively participate in the nanotechnology revolution in both academia and industry. We expect that this project will have a broad impact to the future ofnano-scale engineering curriculum.