College of Engineering Blog

Author: Kim Geiger

Michigan Tech ECE welcomes Fulbright Scholar Koami Hayibo

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Koami Hayibo, MS, a visiting Fulbright Scholar at Michigan Tech, from Energy Generation Academy in Lomé, Togo.

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan Technological University welcomes Fulbright Scholar Koami Hayibo, from Togo, West Africa, population approximately 7.6 million.

While at Michigan Tech, Hayibo will study electrical engineering with a specialization in power systems. “I plan to focus on the production of energy through renewable energy sources,” he says.  “Togo is a small country in Africa and is only able to produce about 30% of its consumption of electricity. I became interested in this area because I suffered from this lack of electricity when I was in high school. I had to study for my high school degree using old-fashioned kerosene lamps and candles and that’s still the case for a lot of children living in the countryside. That’s why I am doing my best to help bring electricity to remote areas. And I hope my time at Michigan Tech will give me with skills to address this issue in a more effective way.”

Hayibo specializes in solar energy. He earned a Master’s in Engineering and a Master’s in Science both at Université de Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. He came to Michigan Tech from Energy Generation Academy, based in Lomé, Maritime, Togo, where Hayibo serves as Technical Manager. Energy Generation is a pan-African organization that supports young Africans in addressing their generation’s most pressing challenges (in energy, agriculture, health) through entrepreneurship and technology. Its main guidelines are to provide basic electrification to every household in Africa, while empowering youth and offering them alternative employment perspectives, and also to provide a complete tracking of the innovative projects produced by African youth and ensuring  their success.

Michigan Tech has a record number of Fulbright Scholars on our campus this year, with a total of 17 students – 14 master’s and three PhD students, studying in 10 different programs.

The students are from Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Lesotho, Mauritius, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia & Montenegro, Togo, and Ukraine. Such diversity in backgrounds and academic interests brings a richness to Tech and makes our Graduate School like no other.

The mission of the Fulbright Program is to increase international understanding and respond to critical global issues. It is funded and overseen by the State Department, with 155 countries participating in the Program. Fulbrighters exemplify the power of international academic exchange to transform lives, bridge geographic and cultural boundaries and promote a more peaceful and prosperous world.

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Seismic Reflections: Siting the Gordie Howe Bridge

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The Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan is currently under construction and expected to be complete in 2024 at a cost of $5.7 billion.  The bridge is named in recognition of the legendary hockey player, a Canadian who led the Detroit Red Wings to four Stanley Cup victories.

The construction of any large infrastructure project requires a strong foundation, especially one with the longest main span of any cable-stayed bridge in North America—namely, the Gordie Howe International Bridge over the Detroit River. More than a decade before ground was broken, careful siting of the bridge began to take place. By 2006 the list of possible crossings had been narrowed down to just two options.

Historical records from the early 1900s indicated that solution mining for salt had taken place on both sides of the river close to where the bridge was to be built. On the Michigan side, collapsed salt cavities caused sink holes located on nearby Grosse Isle. It was imperative that any salt cavities in the bridge construction area be found and avoided.

Seismologists Roger Turpening and Carol Asiala at Michigan Technological University

Seismologists Roger Turpening and Carol Asiala at Michigan Technological University were tasked by American and Canadian bridge contractors to select the best seismic method for searching for any cavities in the two proposed crossings—referred to at the time as “Crossing B” and “Crossing C”—and to interpret all resulting seismic images.

“Given the task to image a small target deep in the Earth, a seismologist will quickly ask two important questions: How small is ‘small?’ and How deep is ‘deep’? That’s because these two parameters conflict in seismic imaging,“ Turpening says.

“Seismic waves—vibrations of the Earth—are attenuated severely as they propagate through the Earth,” he explains. “Imaging small targets requires the use of high-frequency, seismic energy. When seismic sources and receivers are confined to the Earth’s surface, which is the usual case, waves must propagate downward through the Earth, reflect off of the target, and return to the surface. Soil, sand, and gravel in the surface layer overwhelmingly cause the greatest harm to image resolution, and the ray paths must pass through this zone twice.”

Turpening was one of the early developers of a technique called vertical seismic profiling, or VSP. “Seismic receivers are placed inside a vertical hole near the target. With the seismic source placed on the surface some distance from the hole, it’s possible to explore a region around the hole with ray paths that need to pass through the surface layer only once,” he says. “If the target is very important, we can drill a second hole and place the seismic source in it. Now we have even higher resolution because all of the ray paths are in the rock formations with low attenuation.”

The downside? “We can only make images of the region between the two holes. But if the target is extremely important in a limited area, we can use many boreholes and many images in the search. Given enough boreholes, a block of earth can be imaged with cross-well seismic reflection techniques.

A cross-well, seismic reflection image between test boreholes. The cavity is sharply seen because the shale stringers in the B-Salt (at the bottom of the image) are abruptly terminated. The cavity is approximately 375 ft. wide.

To site the Gordon Howie bridge, Turpening and Asiala chose a frequency band of 100Hz to 2 KHz—much higher than could be used with surface sources and surface receivers—for surveys on both sides of the river. This yielded high resolution seismic images, crucial for detecting cavities—and indeed they found one—on the Canadian side.

“The high-resolution imaging made it easy for us to spot missing shale stringers in the B-Salt layer in that image,” says Turpening. “This made the final selection of the bridge location simple. We found the cavity between boreholes X11-3 and X11-4, thus forcing the Canadians to chose Crossing B.  Obviously, the Michigan group had to, also, choose Crossing B.”

On the US side of the river geologist Jimmie Diehl, Michigan Tech professor emeritus, provided corroborating borehole gravity data.

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Yooper Lights: Blue Marble Security Enterprise mentors 7th graders on an eCYBERMISSION

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The Yooper Lights eCybermission team, L to R: Olivia Shank, Rebecca Lyons, Chloe Daniels, and Jenna Beaudoin

Students attending Lake Linden-Hubbell schools who live within one mile of their school are not eligible to take the school bus. Many walk to school, often in the dark, early morning hours. The same is true for students in another nearby school district, Calumet-Laurium-Keweenaw.

A small group of 7th grade students from Lake Linden-Hubbell High School in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—Jenna Beaudoin, Chloe Daniels, Rebecca Lyons, and Olivia Shank—decided to do something to help improve safety for students who walk to school. Each was highly motivated, for personal reasons.

“I have three younger siblings who walk to school, and they aren’t always aware of their surroundings,” said Daniels.

“My uncle was biking one night and didn’t have a helmet or a reflector and he got hit by a car. He had brain trauma and now has trouble remembering certain things,” said Beaudoin.

“I want to be able to walk safely by myself or with my dogs in the early morning or in the evening when it gets dark,” said Shank.

“We live in a really snowy area, and kids can get hit,” said Lyons.

Helping kids and others walk safely in the dark is their mission, but it was more than that—it is their eCYBERMISSION, a national science competition sponsored by the Army Educational Outreach Program. Nationwide, students in grades 6-9 work in small teams for over a year to develop a process or product that will benefit their community. Locally, the Lake Linden Middle School eCYBERMISSION team is advised by Michigan Tech Engineering Fundamentals instructor Gretchen Hein, and chemical engineering senior Ryan Knoll.

Because none of them knew anything about circuits, the team contacted Glen Archer, interim chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan Tech. Archer introduced the seventh graders to electrical engineering student John Robinault, outreach manager of Blue Marble Security.

Born out of the Michigan Tech Enterprise program, Blue Marble Security is a virtual company comprised undergraduate students focused on securing the future through thoughtful use of technology.

Twice a week, Beaudoin, Daniels, Lyons and Shank met with Robinault and computer science major Tyler Arthur in the Blue Marble Security lab, located in the EERC building on campus.

The girls modeled the casing of their LED reflector using Siemens NX software, created their circuit using National Instruments Multisim™ software, and modeled their circuitboard using Eagle PCB design software. They had never used the software or soldered. The Blue Marble students demonstrated how to model and solder, but the girls did the work.

Arthur was a brand new member of Blue Marble Security Enterprise when he began working with the girls. “It gave me an opportunity to teach some of the material that I was already familiar with, while also learning new things along the way,” he said. “We worked together to get familiar with CAD modeling, for instance.

In the process, Arthur learned a lot about working with younger students, something he hadn’t ever done. “The fact that the team members are all good friends made for an interesting group dynamic, because was easy for them to distract each other while working on the project.” Even so, the girls persevered. Throughout the fall, the team completed their research and designed their reflector. They took their preliminary design to their 7th grade science classes for feedback. Based on that, they updated the design, completed the circuit board and went back to the school for more feedback, this time visiting both 7th and 10th grade science classes, asking the students to compare their LED reflector to a plain reflector. After receiving more valuable feedback, the team modified their design.

At that point, they began testing their LED reflector—calling it the “Yooper Light”, and themselves, the Yooper Lights.

Outdoor testing was completed on a straight, flat road near their school, over a distance of 170 feet. Pedestrians (students grades 7-9), and drivers (students grades 10-12, plus college students and adults) were asked to report when they could see a person walking and wearing either the plain reflector or the Yooper light LED reflector.

Yooper Lights team tested their LED reflectors at night, with help from volunteers.

Due to weather conditions, only the college students and adults tested outside. The remaining tests were completed inside the school, in a dark hallway lit only by security lights. The Yooper Lights found that everyone could both see the LED reflector and the person wearing it over the entire testing distance.

They decided to conduct another, independent test to see just how far their LED reflector was visible. The maximum visibility was found to be 91.3 meters—over twice the previous testing distance.

Yooper Lights submitted their report to eCYBERMISSION, learning in March that they had made it to the virtual regional competition. Once again, Michigan Tech helped them out. The girls presented to judges at the Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning with help from Associate Director Jeff Toorangian.

In late April, Yooper Lights became the first place 7th grade team in Michigan—and a finalist in the North Central Region. In a word: Success! They were going to compete in Washington, DC at the national competition.

During the weeklong event in DC last June, the Yooper Lights team bonded with their eCYBERMISSION mentor, Michigan Tech alumna Sasha Teymorian, now a chemist in the US Army Research Laboratory. Teymorian graduated with her doctorate in Chemistry from Michigan Tech in 2015. Together they enjoyed a bevvy of cool activities, including one called “Houston, We Have a Problem,” that tasked the girls with engineering a solution to the Apollo 13 mission. They worked with radio-controlled cars and conducted ballistics on balloons, and even designed autonomous vehicles at the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

While in DC, Beaudoin, Daniels, Lyons and Shank also visited their Congressional representatives. They first met with Representative Jack Bergman, and then with Robert Curis, a staff member in Senator Debbie Stabenow’s office, sharing just how they used engineering to develop their LED light.

Finally, the Yooper lights presented their project to a team of eCybermission judges. “Although the team did not win the national competition, they gained a great deal from the experience,” said advisor Gretchen Hein.

What’s next for the team? Something they’re calling “Yooper Power”. Collaborating again with students from the Blue Marble Security Enterprise, as well as Michigan Tech student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), the girls, now in 8th grade, will develop outreach activity kits for fifth and sixth graders. Their new mission: introduce more young students to the field of electrical and computer engineering.

Yooper Lights team member Olivia Shank models the casing of the LED reflector using Siemens NX software.
Chloe Daniels and Rebecca Lyons learn how to solder, with help from electrical engineering major John Robinault, a member of the Blue Marble Security Enterprise at Michigan Tech.
The team created two sizes and colors of 3D printed cases to test with their LED reflectors.
The Yooper Lights team used the Design Thinking process to develop their Yooper Lights. Design Thinking training is offered on campus through the Pavlis Honors College.
With more help from volunteers, the Yooper Lights team also tested their LED reflectors in a long, dimly lit hallway at Lake Linden-Hubbell High School.

 

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Michigan Tech Students Bring Home the Material Advantage Excellence Award

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L to R: Michigan Tech seniors Emily Tom, Katie Kiser, Oliver Schihl, Brendan Treanore, and Josh Jay.

Michigan Tech students received a Material Advantage Chapter of Excellence Award at the recent Materials Science & Technology (MS&T) 2019 conference in Portland, Oregon. The award recognized the accomplishments of the Materials United (MU), Michigan Tech’s joint chapter of the American Foundry Society and Materials Advantage.

As a student professional society, Materials United was established on the Michigan Tech campus to promote among its members self-sought, increasing knowledge of metallurgy, materials science, engineering, and related fields. Materials United is advised by Dr. Walt Milligan, interim chair of the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Technology, and professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

The MS&T Chapter of Excellence Award reflects participation in events, member involvement, professional development, and more. Oliver Schihl, president of the Michigan Tech chapter of Material Advantage, accepted the award. Schil is a senior majoring in mechanical engineering technology.

In the photo, students featured from left to right are Emily Tom, Katie Kiser, Oliver Schihl, Brendan Treanore, and Josh Jay. Tom, Kiser, Treanore and Jay are all Michigan Tech seniors majoring in materials science and engineering. Each are members of  the Materials United E-board, and Material Advantage.

Now in its 17th year, the annual MS&T conference and exhibition hosts over 3,200 attendees, more than 2,000 presentations, a robust plenary speaker lineup, society-based special events, and a collaboration among four leading materials science societies.

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Dr. Edmond O. Schweitzer III: An Inventor Who Helps Keep the Lights On—in 164 Countries Around the World

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Michigan Technological University, at night.

Michigan Tech welcomes to campus today inventor Edmond O. Schweitzer III, recognized as a pioneer in digital protection. 

“Why shouldn’t we invent, and wake up every day wanting to go to work to find a better way to do something for other people?” says global innovator and inventor Dr. Edmond O Schweitzer, III, Chair, President and CEO of Schweitzer Electronics.

Dr. Schweitzer was recently inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for inventing the first-ever digital protective relay. Digital protective relays detect electrical faults that cause power outages.

The first protective relays relied on coils and were electromagnetic. Schweitzer’s microprocessor-based digital protective relay is multifunctional, protecting power systems, recording data and detecting faults in lines more effectively. “His first revolutionary ‘relays’ came on the market in the 1980s,” said Bruce Mork, electrical engineering professor at Michigan Tech. “The design has led to reduced costs, flexible operation options and increased reliability. The product lines have been enhanced with many patents and with the utilization of today’s smart grid technologies.”

Schweitzer Electronics Laboratories, Inc. (SEL) based in Pullman, Washington is a longtime partner of Michigan Tech—supporting the Power System Protection Lab at Michigan Tech since 1993, and hiring at least 40 Michigan Tech ECE graduates over the years, plus a dozen more students thus far in 2019.

Inventing runs in Schweitzer’s family, and while on campus he will present a lecture on Creativity and Innovation at 4:15 pm in EERC 103. Wednesday’s lecture is open to the public. All are welcome to attend. Schweitzer will also join a roundtable of power companies to discuss Cybersecurity.

Todd Brassard, VP Operations of Calumet Electronics, arranged Dr. Schweitzer’s visit to Michigan Tech. Calumet Electronics Corporation is a key supplier-partner of printed circuit boards (PCBs) to SEL. The company, based in Calumet, Michigan, is an American manufacturer, supplying PCBs for applications demanding zero failures, zero downtime, and requires a lifetime of performance. Celebrating 50 years, Calumet is a critical supplier to mission critical industries including power grid management, , medical device, aerospace, industrial controls, and defense. Calumet is one of the few PCB manufactures who have made a commitment to American manufacturing.

At Michigan Tech, “SEL has supported us for years, incrementally donating lab equipment since 1993 when I started the protection course and lab here on campus,” adds Mork. “I became aware of their new technology and product lines while working as a substation design engineer in Kansas City in the mid-1980s. As a PhD student at North Dakota State University, I facilitated getting it into the labs there, and again at Michigan Tech after I arrived in 1992. I first met Ed when he presented a paper at the American Power Conference in 1993—it’s a paper I still use today when introducing microprocessor-based protection to my students.”

 

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Michigan Tech Students Earn First place in ASM International Undergraduate Design Competition

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L to R: Advisor Dr. Walt Milligan; student Kyle Hrubecky; William Mahoney, Chief Executive Officer of ASM International; student Erin VanDusen; and advisor Dr. Paul Sanders. Not pictured: students Lucas Itchue and Jacob Thompson.

A team of Michigan Technological University students won first place in ASM International’s 2019 Undergraduate Design Competition. Their capstone senior design project, “Cobalt reduction in Tribaloy T-400,” was sponsored by Winsert, Inc. of Marinette, Wisconsin.

Team members Lucas Itchue, Kyle Hrubecky, Jacob Thompson, and Erin VanDusen—all MSE majors at Michigan Tech—were recognized at a student awards banquet on Monday, September 30 during the Materials Science and Technology (MS&T) Conference in Portland, Oregon.

Winsert currently uses an alloy similar to Tribaloy T-400, a cobalt based alloy, in the production of internal combustion engine valve seats. Cobalt is an expensive element with a rapidly fluctuating price, due to political instability in the primary supplier country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tribaloy T-400 contains approximately 60 wt. percent cobalt, contributing significantly to its price. The student team investigated the replacement of cobalt with other transition elements such as iron, nickel, and aluminum using thermodynamic modeling.

The Michigan Tech undergraduate team’s micrograph of Tribaloy T-400. “Using compositions from literature, we cast this alloy at Michigan Tech. We then examined the microstructure to see if it matched that in literature. That way we knew our casting process was valid and acceptable,” said student Erin VanDusen. “All the casting and imaging was done at Michigan Tech.”

“Michigan Tech was allowed one entry in the competition,” says Michigan Tech MSE Department Chair Stephen Kampe. “The ‘LoCo’ team project was selected by MSE’s External Advisory Board following final student presentations last April. All of our senior design projects use advanced simulation and modeling tools, experimental calibration, and statistical-based analyses of the results,” he explains. “This project utilized CALPHAD (Pandat) with machine learning (Bayesian Optimization) to identify new and promising alloy substitutions. These are very advanced techniques that are rarely introduced at the undergraduate level in most other MSE programs.”

MSE Professor Walt Milligan, Interim Chair of the Department of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Technology, and Paul Sanders, Patrick Horvath Endowed Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, served as team co-advisors.

This isn’t the first time, we’ve won!
According to Kampe, an MSE student team from Michigan Tech team won first place in the ASM International Undergraduate Design Competition last year, too, for their aluminum brake rotor project. Phil Staublin, Josh Dorn, Mark Ilenich, and Aaron Cook developed a new, castable, lightweight high temperature aluminum alloy for project sponsor Ford. “Developmental aluminum rotors have passed every test at Ford Motor Company—all except the extreme ‘Auto Motor and Sport’ test, which subjects the rotors to temperatures above 500 degrees Celsius,” said advisor Paul Sanders. “The team introduced thermally-stable intermetallic phases with high volume fractions that enabled the alloy to provide modest strength for short times at extreme temperatures.” Dr. Tom Wood, Michigan Tech MSE research engineer, also advised the team.

“Michigan Tech’s entry has placed in the top three all but once over the past 8 years at the ASM International Undergraduate Design Competition,” adds Kampe.

“We’re very proud of the world-class senior design projects our students experience,”said Janet Callahan, Dean of the College of Engineering at Michigan Tech. “Where else do teams win first place two years in a row, for alloy design, in an era where it isn’t about randomly mixing elements, but rather, about predictive modeling based on known materials parameters? These projects⁠—they’re centered on fundamentally interesting questions, coupled with faculty and industry expertise. No wonder we’re still the go-to place for materials engineers!”

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William Predebon Inducted into the Pan American Academy of Engineering

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William Predebon is the JS Endowed Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics at Michigan Technological University. “I am honored to be inducted into the Pan American Academy of Engineering and humbled to be included with other leaders from the Americas and Mexico,” he says.

William Predebon, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics at Michigan Technological University, traveled to Washington, D.C. last week to be inducted into the Pan American Academy of Engineering.

The Pan American Academy of Engineering was started in 2000 in Panama City, the first of its kind. It brings together engineers from across the continent of North America, South America and Mexico—a total of 18 countries. The Pan American Federation of Engineering Societies and the National Federations North America, South America, Mexico established the Academy to publicly honor the exceptional engineers, who, prestige of their profession, have contributed decisively to the progress of their country and continent.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1965 and his master’s and doctorate from Iowa State University in 1968 and 1970, respectively. He joined Michigan Tech’s ME-EM department in 1975. He was associate chair from 1993-1997. He has been chair of the department since 1997, and has transformed the program.

Under his watch, the ME-EM department has made great strides in conducting interdisciplinary research, growing the doctoral program, expanding research funding, and updating the curriculum and laboratories.

“The world is changing, and we need to respond to its challenges and opportunities,” says Predebon. “Most recently, we have witnessed the rise of big data as the fourth industrial revolution gets underway, leading to the digital mechanical engineering space. To produce leaders during this change, our Department is rapidly evolving our educational methods and our methods of research. We are leading the effort to infuse into our undergraduate and graduate curriculum the knowledge and critical skills to use big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence in the solution of engineering design problems.”

Predebon has been involved with the Pan American Academy of Engineering for just about two years—attending meetings, giving talks, and advising on mechanical engineering education and research—and will continue to do so in the future. “I am honored to be inducted into the Pan American Academy of Engineering and humbled to be included with other leaders from the Americas and Mexico,” he says.

 

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Mechanical Engineering Among the Best in the Nation

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Undergraduate students at work near the Wave Tank in Michigan Tech’s Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics

The Mechanical Engineering program at Michigan Tech has once again been ranked among the finest in the country. Michigan Tech’s ME program is 34th in the 2020 U.S. News and World Report rankings of the “Best Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Programs Among All Doctoral Granting Universities.”

William Predebon, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics (ME-EM) called the rankings a “major milestone” for the undergraduate ME program and a testament to the quality of the faculty and staff in ME-EM. “This ranking puts the Michigan Tech ME undergraduate program among the top doctoral granting ME programs in the nation. This ranking is recognition by our peers of the efforts of the faculty and staff to continually update our ME curriculum to reflect the future needs of our students. It is a team effort of faculty, staff and the support of the administration.”

U.S. News and World Report annually publishes rankings of the major undergraduate engineering degree programs in doctoral granting universities. The methodology used by U. S. News to make the list of top

programs, is that a department must receive seven or more top 15 nominations in a particular discipline. The nominations are from the department chairs of the respective engineering disciplines who are asked for nominations of up to 15 of the best engineering programs in their respective disciplines.

The U.S. News rankings are available here.

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Dean Kamen Visit Featured in Daily Mining Gazette

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During his day-long visit to Michigan Tech last week to recruit engineering and computing students, inventor and innovator Dean Kamen also met younger students on FIRST Robotics teams from 18 middle and high schools across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Photo by Matt Monte, monte.net.

HOUGHTON — Dean Kamen is looking for his next engineers. Having already hired Michigan Technological University students, he knew where to look.

“I love their kids,” he said. “They’re smart, they’re focused, they’re mature, they’re earnest. And we want more.”

Kamen, president of DEKA Research and Development, visited Tech Thursday. He spoke to engineering students and met Upper Peninsula students participating in the FIRST Robotics program, which he co-founded.

“They’ve been great to us at FIRST, they’ve supported FIRST teams for a long time,” said Kamen, whose 440 patents include the Segway. “Now we can return the favor and start hiring some of their graduates and it’ll be a win-win. We want the kids, they want careers.”

Read the full article by reporter Garrett Neese in the Daily Mining Gazette.

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Undergraduate Engineering at Michigan Tech Climbs Higher in US News & World Report 2020 Rankings

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Dean Janet Callahan stands in front of the summer gardens on campus at Michigan Tech
Janet Callahan, Dean of the College of Engineering, Michigan Technological University

Michigan Technological University has moved up in the latest US News & World Report ranking for Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs. Michigan Tech is now ranked 66th among 206 undergraduate engineering programs at colleges or universities that offer doctoral degrees in engineering. Michigan Tech’s ranking was 75th in the same rankings last year.

Janet Callahan, Dean of the College of Engineering at Michigan Tech, said that while she is pleased to see the rankings increase during her first year as dean, she is not surprised. “The faculty at Michigan Tech are incredible. The rise reflects the growing reputation of Michigan Technological University’s strong engineering programs,” she says. “We’re different from most other universities because of our central focus on engineering and technology. What this means for students is that if they love solving high-tech problems—they belong here!”

The US News rankings of undergraduate engineering programs accredited by ABET, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, are based solely on the judgments of deans and senior faculty at peer institutions. Additional details on the methodology may be found here, which states:

US News surveyed engineering school deans and faculty members in spring 2019 and asked them to rate each program they were familiar with on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished) for these rankings. Two peer assessment surveys were sent to each ABET-accredited engineering program.

US News has separate rankings for 206 undergraduate engineering programs at colleges or universities that offer doctoral degrees in engineering and for 210 engineering programs at colleges where the terminal degree in engineering is a bachelor’s or master’s. Two separate surveys and respondent groups were used, which means that deans and senior faculty only rated engineering programs within their institution’s ranking category.

Research at the graduate level often influences the undergraduate curriculum, and engineering schools with doctoral programs in engineering tend to have the widest possible range of undergraduate engineering courses and program offerings. 

In spring and early summer 2019, of those surveyed in the group where the terminal degree in engineering is a bachelor’s or master’s, 51.7% returned ratings; 71.6% did so for the doctoral group. This compares to a response rate of 33% in the engineering bachelor’s or master’s survey in 2018 and 58% for the doctoral survey in 2018.

US News used the two most recent years’ responses to calculate weighted average scores of programs in both categories. For example, a program that received 55% of its total ratings in 2019 and the remaining 45% in 2018 would have 55% of its overall score determined by its 2019 survey results and 45% by its 2018 survey results.

Learn more at mtu.edu/engineering.

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