Sidebar: U. starts three Gateway projects

While the country will not see the results of the Gateway Coalition for several years, Associate Engineering Dean John Keenan said this week that the University has begun work on three projects and is now soliciting proposals from faculty members for the Coalition's second year. This spring, Keenan said the Engineering School will introduce a new course, Systems 140 to help students understand the connections between math, computer science and engineering. "Historically, we've not been giving engineering to those who want it," Keenan said, adding that the result is that students leave engineering before they have had any experience in it. Keenan added that the faculty approved the new course last week and that Systems Department Chairperson John Lepore heads the committee developing the new class. "[The course will] show the student what engineering is about and to introduce the students to modeling, analyzing and solving large scale systems," Lepore said this week. He added that the course will integrate the required math and physics classes to demonstrate that they are necessary "building blocks." Keenan said Electrical Engineering Professor Jorge Santiago-Aviles is leading another effort that will increase the number of Latino students in the Engineering School. "We're trying to introduce [freshmen] very early into computer culture," Santiago-Aviles said yesterday, "to show them the power of utilizing the computer to do simulations and experiments that might be very difficult to do using [instruments]." "I'm trying to get as many minorities on the bandwagon as possible," Santiago-Aviles added. He said he was also getting ready to export the simulation course to another Coalition member, Florida International University, which Santiago-Aviles said is 60 percent Hispanic. Keenan said Bioengineering Professor Mitchell Litt is "developing some high-tech biological science courses for Engineering students."