A new Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) curriculum is in effect at the Ohio State University starting fall, 2002. This curriculum is composed of four parts:

1) General Education Core (required by the University of all undergraduates).

2) Engineering Core (required by the College of Engineering). This includes courses in English, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Statistics, Programming, Statics, and Stress Analysis.

3) Materials Science and Engineering Core (required by the MSE Department). It includes courses on Atomic Scale Structure, Microstructure and Characterization, Mechanical Behavior, Electrical Properties, Thermodynamics, Transport and Kinetics, Phase Diagrams, Phase Transformations, Modeling of Material Processes, Materials Selection, and Materials Performance).

4) MSE-Specialization in the senior year (required by the MSE Department). Novel features of the new curriculum include:

1) concentration in a specialized area of MSE in the senior year.

2) increased exposure to MSE courses in the second year.

3) increased industrial exposure.

4) redesigned laboratory courses.

The Intermediate Physics laboratory is a pivotal course of the undergraduate physics curriculum. Besides its intrinsic importance for introducing modern physics experiments, this laboratory also plays an important role in addressing the needs of the future applied scientist and engineer using contemporary equipment for data acquisition and control. This laboratory course has a mix of standard (usually not directly addressing materials science questions) and newer experiments. Among the newer experiments, we have developed a kit for measuring the transverse and longitudinal Young and Shear modulus of a homemade concrete block by analyzing their standing modes of vibrations. The technique is similar to that of the C-215 American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) Standard, but more appropriate for university educational setting, using ordinary student laboratory equipment and piezoelectric transducers. From these measurements, we also deduce Poisson's ratio. Students start measuring during the curing process of the concrete sample, something that it is not possible with the standard technique. However, our results have a precision comparable to that of the standard. Through the experiment, students learn about the properties of concrete. They make the samples following the C-192 ASTM standardized process, and review several concepts about waves such as wave equations, resonant modes of vibrations, dispersion relations, and standing modes.

The undergraduate experience in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) in Japan differs from that at U.S. institutions in several respects. While MSE programs at many U.S. universities exist as established departments, it is rare to find MSE departments in Japan. Therefore, materials science education in Japan is somewhat fractured as it is intermingled with other disciplines and spread across a variety of departments such as applied physics, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and bioengineering. Here, I will report on the challenges of materials science education in Japanese universities focusing on the Department of Applied Physics at Keio University as an example. The challenge is two-fold: 1) stimulating student interest in MSE before undergraduate students choose their home department/major at the conclusion of their first year and 2) providing a rigorous MSE curriculum that will prepare students for post-graduate education both domestically and abroad. For this purpose, we have adopted a U.S. teaching style comprising two 90-minute lectures per week (instead of the one customarily given in Japan), weekly homework assignments, discussion sessions with teaching assistants, and office hours. Although these are standard pedagogical practices in the U.S., they represent major changes in instruction and culture at Keio that have therefore been met with resistance from both some faculty members and students. I shall discuss how we have addressed these challenges and have stimulated student interest in MSE at Keio University.

Green's functions are powerful mathematical tools with strong pedagogical value providing not only solutions to difficult problems but also visualization for understanding phenomena. The majority of upper division engineering and materials science students receive very little exposure to Green's functions and the boundary element method. The Green's Functions Research and Education Enhancement Network (GREEN) Digital Library which the authors are developing will, therefore, play an important role in undergraduate and graduate education. The National Science Foundation has launched the National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) program to stimulate and sustain continual improvements in the quality of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. The NSDL Program is a major digital library initiative and the GREEN Digital Library is a collaboration of the Center for Theoretical and Computational Materials Science of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Kent State University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This paper describes the primary components of the GREEN Digital Library, an organized collection of educational materials integrating research, education, and application of Green's functions to serve undergraduate and graduate communities:

1. Problem Bank: A bank of available “real-world” problems, introduced by industrial participants.

2. Code Bank: Working code for solved Green's functions routines.

3. Archive: A list of citations to relevant literature, and published / unpublished works subject to copyright restrictions, with links elsewhere for additional information.

4. Teaching Bank: A collection of lecture / course notes from existing university courses, as well as providing a forum for discussion of approaches to teaching this material.

This three-year collaboration between a predominately undergraduate women's college (Simmons College) and a NSF-supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR)) focuses on establishing a collaborative Simmons/Cornell research program that provides opportunities for students to work with faculty on timely research projects, have access to sophisticated instrumentation, and gain related work experience in industrial settings. To interest women in participating in materials-related research and to encourage them to consider further career exploration in this area, the secondary goal of the project focuses on augmenting women's undergraduate experience. In this regard, the project uses the PUI/MRSEC collaboration to enhance the undergraduate curriculum at Simmons and encourage new Ph.D.s in materials-related disciplines at Cornell to consider academic careers at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs).

To provide opportunities for students to work on research throughout their undergraduate careers, this program focuses on studying the degradation processes in organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). These materials are currently of great interest for display applications, and an understanding and control of the degradation processes could ultimately influence their use in various types of consumer products.

To widen science students' exposure to materials science, a new minor in materials was developed and materials science topics are being incorporated into physics and chemistry courses. To encourage students to consider graduate or industrial careers in materials science and to ease the transition into these large research environments, CCMR will place students in summer industrial jobs and REU positions. To provide students with further access to sophisticated instrumentation, a portion of the laboratory requirement for the new minor in materials will be co-taught during the summer by Simmons and Cornell collaborators at CCMR's Shared Experimental Facilities. Cornell's graduate students will participate in the program as mentors for Simmons undergraduates and will visit Simmons to better understand postgraduate teaching careers at PUIs.

The National Science Foundation-supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) on Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces at the University of Wisconsin – Madison has an extensive education and outreach effort. One theme of this effort is the development of instructional materials based on cutting-edge research in nanoscale science and engineering. The Nanoworld Cineplex contains movies and demonstrations that can be brought into classes, and the Nanotechnology Lab Manual contains numerous experiments that can be used for virtual or actual laboratories. Also available are kits, software, teaching modules and articles. A hands-on kit for nontechnical audiences, “Exploring the Nanoworld,” has been produced in collaboration with the Institute for Chemical Education.

In this paper, novel hands-on demonstrations and innovative laboratory experiments aimed at the college level will be highlighted. High-tech devices and materials such as light emitting diodes (LEDs), shape memory alloys, amorphous metal, and ferrofluids are discussed in the classroom and studied in the laboratory as illustrations of nanotechnology and its impact on energy, the environment and our quality of life. These examples illustrate interdisciplinary research that provides connections among materials science, chemistry, physics, engineering, and the life sciences. They also highlight the tools of nanotechnology, such as scanning probe microscopy, electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and chemical vapor deposition, which are associated with the preparation and characterization of nanostructured materials. Demonstrations of the incorporation of nanotechnology to teach fundamental materials science principles presented are summarized at http://www.mrsec.wisc.edu/edetc.

In efforts to serve more engineering students and to achieve accreditation objectives, we have redesigned our introductory materials course to be more engineering-oriented and relevant to other disciplines. The fundamental materials science concepts have been regrouped into five, 2-week sections that emphasize applications: Materials Basics; Mechanical Strength; Thermo-mechanical Treatments; Electrical Properties; and Economic, Environmental and Societal Issues. Although the topics that are covered are similar to those in most introductory materials science courses, the presentation of the topics has been re-arranged to create clearer links between materials science and materials engineering. We have also identified accreditation criteria within each section and have built in mechanisms for providing feedback for accreditation processes. In addition, learning objectives for each section ensure standardization among different sections and instructors. Results on students' performances are reported.

In an introductory materials science course for mechanical and industrial engineering sophomores, a term-long student team project is included as a graded activity. Successful completion of the project fulfills three course objectives where students learn 1) to compose professional reports in teams and demonstrate effective communication skills, 2) to apply introductory concepts of materials science well enough to follow technical articles on various topics, and 3) to locate resources to gather additional information related to a topic. To help students learn to research a topic, to write, to work in teams, and to speak publicly, the course includes guest lectures with various instructors with expertise in library research skills, technical writing, and communication studies. Course assessment indicates that sophomores find their projects interesting and they report learning a lot about the topics they selected. Interventions in the early stages of the curriculum allow the students to perform better during their senior year Capstone Design Project. The details of how the projects are managed will be described.

The introductory materials science and engineering course offered at the college/university level is, for many instructors, very difficult to design and to teach. This presentation discusses challenges for the course, as well as several problematic issues to include: course content, course organization, and course mechanics. The results of two surveys of engineering faculty are presented and discussed; these provide perspectives and lead to suggestions on how to manage these troublesome areas, and improve the quality of and student satisfaction in this course. Also discussed are commercially available software packages, and, in addition, a hybrid electronic-paper introductory materials textbook.

In a general chemistry course, while the hands-on experience of the laboratory is important, the goals of the laboratory are not fulfilled until the calculations and analysis are complete. Quite often students are capable of following laboratory instructions and generating excellent data, only to fail in the data analysis, which rarely occurs in the confines of the laboratory or the presence of the instructor. All too often, students are unable to learn important information from the interpretation of experimental results and draw correct conclusions because they make calculational errors, which are most often discovered by the instructor in the grading process. There is an opportunity for distance learning to help bridge the gap between collection of data and its correct analysis. At the United States Naval Academy (USNA), we have developed a Web-based system where the students input their data and calculational results into a web form with immediate feedback. The students are then allowed to correct their errors and resubmit. This system has been in successful use for 5 years. A description of a typical experiment will be discussed along with an assessment of student and faculty satisfaction with the program.

We present the structure of a new course which is designed to expose junior and senior level undergraduates in non-engineering fields to materials. Washington State University has a “General Education” requirement, which requires students to take a variety of courses including the area of sciences, humanities, and technology. We have developed this course to satisfy the requirement for technology for upper division students. The results of the enrollment over the past 3 years are presented: each semester more majors are taking the course, suggesting it is reaching an multidisciplinary audience. Comments from the students and plans for the future are discussed.

The paper describes an ongoing project at the University of Siegen to develop multimedia teaching/learning software for materials characterization techniques in an effort to improve the quality of teaching and learning and to increase interest in scientific and engineering subjects in younger students. We have developed a modular web-based teaching platform that uses multimedia tools to provide access to and information about state-of-the-art analytical techniques, visualize complex physical concepts, and use interactive and animated modules to improve student learning.

An instructional laboratory in two-dimensional diffraction is discussed. The experiment is appropriate for undergraduate students in materials science, solid-state physics (as was the case with our group), modern physics, or optics. The experiment is performed using visible light from a laser incident on a 2D lattice of gold dots deposited with electron beam lithography on a glass substrate. The pattern is microscopic with a lattice constant on the same order of magnitude as the wavelength of light used. Students observe the diffraction pattern, and then quantitatively determine the positions of maxima. These data are used by the students to reconstruct the (real space) microscopic lattice. The students can simulate the experiment with software that computes reciprocal lattice and diffraction patterns for an arbitrary 2D lattice.

The materials chemistry behind the production of a cymbal provides an opportunity for exploration of a number of materials topics, which could well resonate with students.

Since its establishment in 1997, the undergraduate program at the University of Maryland has successfully established laboratories where new findings are introduced and used to teach the basic concepts and basic experimental methods in Materials Science and Engineering. This presents the challenge of changing the materials, keeping in mind that the students are being introduced for the first time to many of the concepts. In the junior laboratory of materials, we have successfully changed three laboratories (optical microscopy, rectifying components and X-ray) and a demonstration (TEM) in order to introduce nanomaterials and biomaterials. These laboratories show that currently used techniques can aid in studying the new developments in materials and that most, if not all, the basic concepts can be applied in studying them. They also help the students look at the effects of the structure – processing – properties relationship that is basic to Materials Science and Engineering. We relate all laboratories to experiments and studies currently happening in materials science, even if we have not had the opportunity or the facilities to change it. The laboratory has been approved by ABET 2000.

In this paper, the example of the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Curriculum that exists as a scientific direction in the undergraduate programme of the Chemical Engineering School, in the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), in Greece, is presented. The course content includes several tools, such as theoretical lessons, laboratory modules - nondestructive testing (NDT) and instrumental techniques - semi industrial scale devices, fieldworks and a dissertation thesis. The presented curriculum can be regarded as an innovative educational model for chemical engineering students that choose to become involved in the field of MSE.