For an engineering department to thrive, it must continually adapt to the ever-changing nature of the field. Fortunately, Madison Engineering faculty and students can now take advantage of newly refurbished work-spaces.

 “Engineering started at JMU in 2008 and the prospect was to reimagine what engineering education could look like in the twenty-first century,” Kurt Paterson, head of the engineering department, said. “The faculty spent a good deal of time of rethinking what a modern engineer should have in terms of content. But I think more importantly, what a modern student should have in terms of the learning experience.”

Faculty eventually concluded that an engineering department should stress the importance of design and project-based curricula. “That program has been wildly successful,” Paterson said. “We’re a national model of how engineering could be done.”  Read More

Opportunities to tackle real and complex engineering challenges results in project ready engineering graduates. The Madison Engineering (MADE) program is always grateful for industrial and community partnerships that support such engaging project endeavors for students; it makes a real difference.

Brittany Harwell (Engineering, ’14, see photo), Development Engineer at K2M, collaborated with company leadership and JMU Engineering faculty to offer two engineering capstone project opportunities starting Fall 2017. With support and guidance from K2M engineers, Dr. Callie Miller, and Dr. Jacquelyn Nagel, these two capstone teams will advance surgical technologies for the treatment of complex spinal disorders. Jack Dominick, Nathaniel Lewis, Kerry McCullagh, Thomas Milkowski, and Jason Renalds (Engineering, ’19) seek to improve the design of instruments used by surgeons during complex procedures. Troy Ries, Alex Gellios, Faldo Jatmoko, and Cameron Robinson (Engineering, ’19) plan to explore and demonstrate methods in which robotics can be used to perform surgical tasks.

Industry mentored projects provide meaningful results for the partner and students. Alumni and employers are essential to the development of these impactful interactions. To explore how we might develop Madison Engineering student project partnerships with your company, please contact Kurt Paterson, Engineering Department Head. 

Several MADE capstone project teams prepare to represent JMU at internationally recognized design competitions that challenge students to solve pressing challenges for our world. Participation in these events provides motivation for the students and exposure for the Madison Engineering program. If you are interested in supporting the success of these student competition teams please consider using this JMU site for donations (in the Special Instructions box, denote your gift is for “Engineering Student Projects”).

WERC Environmental Design Competition — Dr. Brad Striebig and Dr. Justin Henriques

Kaitlyn Barger, Brittany Rieckmann, and Anne-Hunter Stephens (Engineering, ’18), under the guidance of Dr. Bradley Striebig, designed and demonstrated a solar distillation process to treat water contaminated by acid rock drainage from abandoned mines at the annual 2017 WERC Environmental Design Contest [https://iee.nmsu.edu/] at New Mexico State University. This team, joined by current MADE juniors Arie Bradley, Christine Gatto, Jared Givan, Brianna Palazzola, and David Sydnor (Engineering, ’19), will build upon prior successes as they design and prototype a process for the removal of sulfates from mine impacted waters for presentation at the 2018 competition.

Shell Eco-Marathon — Dr. Rob Prins and Dr. Robert Nagel

In 2016, a team of twelve engineering students led the development of a highly fuel-efficient gasoline engine powered vehicle for entry in the 2018 Shell Eco-Marathon competition. Advised by Dr. Robert Nagel and Dr. Robert Prins, the inaugural team seeks to make JMU’s entry into the competition a regular occurrence. Maxwell Adams, Jack Boone, Bryan Browne, Brian Calvert, Mark Castro, Matthew Dove, Mitchell Gerdau, Joseph Grabowski, Andrew Huddleston, Jacob Nelson, Daniel Rauch, and Joseph Winn (Engineering, ’18) have designed and constructed the first competition vehicle. Michael Bruce, Farris Jarrar, Mark Livingston, Federico Meershon, and Gregory Schmidt (Engineering, ’19) will redesign the vehicle body to enhance its aerodynamic performance in the 2019 competition.

National Collegiate Wind Competition – Dr. Keith Holland, Dr. Jonathan Miles (ISAT), Dr. CK Lee (Management)

Rapid growth in the wind energy sector prompted the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) to establish the biannual National Collegiate Wind Competition to develop future industry leaders. JMU was selected as one of twelve teams nationwide to participate in the 2018 competition. Ten engineering students – Nicholas Colonna, Raphael Bellon de Chassy, Nethaniah Gardner, Robert Gerber, Sabrina Hammell, Matthew Kerner, Alex Mironenko, Maui Ong-Ante, Austin Pelto, and Seemran Patel (Engineering, ’19, see photo) – are designing and developing a small, fully-functional wind turbine for technical evaluation and testing at the competition. Guided by Dr. Keith Holland, the engineering team is also collaborating with 20 Business, Integrated Science and Technology, and Industrial Design, students to prepare a business plan, market analysis, and resource study for presentation at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) conference in May 2018. 

We recently completed an employment analysis of Madison Engineering alumni. Of our nearly 350 alumni to date, we have an emergent picture of post-graduation life for alumni in our program and it is amazing. Our alumni have 213 job titles, and have been hired at 248 companies to date. The table below depicts the distribution of our alumni based on the primary sector of their employer. Our alum who have gone to graduate school have pursued more than 20 different fields of study. This evidence underscores a core Madison Engineering value proposition: “one program, countless possibilities.” I can’t imagine a better framework for a modern engineering education.

Table 1. Madison Engineering alumni employment by industry sector (n=272)

Please save the date to join us for our 5th annual Madison Engineering xChange on Saturday April 21. 

After starting the day with a keynote address and project pitches by our seniors, all 450 of our engineering students will have their major projects out on display. First-year students with their musical instrument projects, sophomores with their human powered vehicles, juniors and seniors with their capstone work. 

The xChange is free and open to the public, and as we head to Madison Engineering’s 10th birthday, it would be fantastic to share the day with our alumni. We will send a registration link in January, until then add it to your spring calendar!