Transcript
Hello, this is Trish Plutz, I’m an advisor for the online Master of Science and Electrical Engineering program.
And this is our webinar regarding program
specializations. Welcome and thanks for attending. We also record this for
use in future, with future students, so that they can listen in and learn more about our program.
So I just wanted to go over the agenda, which we will do our introductions,
we’ll talk a bit about the online Masters in Electrical Engineering program, and give you a snapshot of what it looks like.
Choosing a
specialization and the elective courses that you’re allowed to select, and then we’ll go through some questions and answers from students
those who are in attendance today.
So as I mentioned, I’m your advisor, senior enrollment advisor, for the Master’s program.
You can go in and talk with us at the number listed here.
Usually, you will
receive a phone call when you put in an Information request from your advisor.
Please reach out to that individual or you can certainly call me. My name is Trish and my extension is 5, 1, 2, 2.
And I’d like to introduce our program director, Dr. Jeff Dill and ask Dr. Dill to
talk a bit about himself and his background.
Okay, first of all, thank you for attending the webinar welcome.
My name is Jeff Dill. I’ve been a faculty member at Ohio University since 1988. So I’m old.
I got my PhD from University of Southern California, and I’ve actually worked in the
industry for about 10 years before I became a professor.
Working on design and
analysis of communication systems, and signal processing for for tactical military
applications, um, I you know, you can you could read the resume and you know,
I don’t need to repeat what’s written on the paper. But I’ve been the director of the online MSEE program at Ohio University
for about five years now.
Next slide please.
Thank You Dr Dill
and I just wanted to go over our program snapshot. And the program is an advanced degree for professional engineers
looking to specialize in one of six
concentrations. We are regionally accredited
by the Higher Learning Commission and
consecutively ranked by US News and World Report,
a regional accreditation is the highest form of
Accreditation in the United States. The degree consists of 36 credits and can be finished within two years completely online.
Also, please note here that you can take one class at a time if you wish. Many engineers do choose to do that and that’s
totally
doable for you, and you would finish your program in four years.
There is no GRE required for qualified applicants and you should speak with your advisor about who are qualified
applicants to have that GRE waiver.
We do not have a thesis
required for the program and that’s part of the reason why we’re hosting this webinar today, is to talk about
why that is, and what you would do in lieu of a thesis. And the tuition is 708 per credit hour for in-state
residents in
out-of-state at
per credit hour, which is not a big leap, and it’s a
fine education that you’ll be receiving from
an upper tier, engineering in college for a very, very reasonable price.
We do have three start terms, spring, summer, and fall. And for deadlines and
application information,
again, you would work with your advisor.
(next slide)
Now I’m going to hand it back over to you, Dr. Dill, so you can go through the curriculum require and
specializations with us.
Okay so our MSEE degree online requires you to complete 12 courses or 36 credit hours.
There’s the curriculum, consists of two foundational courses that
everyone is required to take, and then we’ll go into the details of these in a few minutes, and then you choose seven
specialization courses, from one of the six tracks we have in the program. And in general master’s degree is a
specialized degree program.
Our on-campus students
specialized and do a thesis.
And instead of requiring a thesis for the online students.
We we eliminate the thesis requirements
but we add some extra credit hours. So that our on-campus students would take 30 credit hours of class
work and then six hours of thesis work,
so by doing that you don’t have to come to campus and
disrupt your life, to come to class, to campus, to do a thesis,
and we also,
in the online class
we have, you can choose up to three elective courses outside of your track. And those are chosen from the other
tracks in the program and that allows you to sort of tailor your your
curriculum to particular interests you have. More particular job requirements that you might have.
Next slide, please
So the tracks, the specialization tracks we have
Include what’s listed here. We have a track an autonomous unmanned vehicles, we
have track in communications in DSP. Now the track in computer engineering.
We have a general track, which you get a little bit of everything.
We have a track in electronic navigation
systems and we really, we really, have a lot of you know, world-class faculty and
curriculum in the particular area of electronic navigation systems.
We also have a track in my micro, and nano devices, and systems.
We’ll talk a little bit about each of these as we go along. Next slide, please.
Okay, so the foundation course is required for all tracks. You have to take an engineering writing class which is
very important most engineers hate writing along with me, but it is critical to your
career to be able to write and express yourself
effectively.
If you do great work and can’t communicate that, then the work won’t be
appreciated.
We also have a
course on
computational tools for engineers.
This is really a MATLAB course but we also use MATLAB as a context to sort of review a lot of the
advanced mathematics that some of you might be rusty on, like matrix algebra, and differential equations, and
probability, and
various things like that are built into the MATLAB course,
as a review of
undergraduate
Mathematical content. So
if any, every once in a while
we have a student who already has really extensive experience using MATLAB on their job,
and if so
you can get out of that class and replace it with another
elective if you provide evidence that you’re already in MATLAB expert. We do that on
occasion and a few students have actually done that.
And what you’ll find is through the curriculum over
half of the courses in our curriculum use MATLAB extensively in the
specialized work that they do.
Next slide, please. So
first you have a tract in autonomous unmanned vehicle and you can see
the list of courses that that are required for this track.
So if you’ve got an autonomous vehicle,
first it needs to know where it is and where it’s going. So you need some
navigation courses to do that and then it needs to know how it’s going to get there.
And so you need control systems
classes for that, and then, typically the vehicle is not
operating in isolation, its communicating with a base station or with other vehicles,
and so you need some complete communication engineering and
so we put all those together in the track for for autonomy.
Also, I forgot embedded systems is an important course because any autonomous
system is going to have multiple
embedded computer systems that operate different aspects of the vehicle.
And then, this includes ground vehicles as well, as air vehicles, in the curriculum
Alright next slide, please.
Our next track is communication and digital signal processing, so we talked about
wireless communication, as well as
network communication, and internet kinds of things, and also signal processing. Signal processing
is
used in a variety of applications.
I’ve done a lot of signal processing work in the in defense in the military systems,
things like military, or things like
medical imaging, you know
interpreting MRIs, and x-rays, and EKGs are all
required digital signal processing tools. A lot of a lot of our students come from
medical related technology field
for that kind of stuff. So there’s a lot of application for digital signal processing.
Information theory encoding deals with
data compression, and error correction, and being able to transmit this efficiently on noisy channels.
Next slide please.
Computer engineering
focuses on the design and implementation of computer systems,
from multiprocessor systems, down to
fabrication of ships at the device level.
So you take courses in micro and nano
device fabrication,
digital circuit design,
which would deal with FPGA, then you know VHDL language to design digital circuits.
Then we get into computer architecture and also networking.
So how do you network multiple computers together in an efficient way?
Nano electric devices gets into again chip level of
design of
new devices and sensors.
Next slide, please.
We have a general track that takes a little bit of
everything, if you’re not quite sure what you want to specialize in, or if you’re just looking to expand your
your background a little bit, our general track allows you to take
some courses from all of the different other tracks and
even tailor your program to a particular interest, or a particular job opportunity that you might have
Next slide, please.
Electronic Navigation
Systems again, this is a real specialty of Ohio University.
We have an Avionics Engineering Center on campus that’s been in existence
for over thirty years and they do some
state-of-the-art cutting-edge
research in
GPS and differential GPS and various kinds of
navigation systems, and so we have an extensive set of courses
in electronic navigation that very few universities can match.
And again , I should have said this earlier, but the content of all of our online courses
is identical to the core content of all of our on-campus courses. It’s the same material and the same requirements.
And the navigation in particular, we have several navigation classes that
that lead to real expertise in the area of electronic navigation, which is a growing field. And
not only commercial aviation, but
using for drones, it’s used in precise
agriculture,
it’s is used in military systems, obviously.
So there’s a growing demand for people with this kind of specialized knowledge.
Next slide, please.
But we also have a track in micro and nano devices and systems and this is all
at the level of chip fabrication and
fabricating devices at the micro and nano level
clean rooms and
this is all stuff
I don’t know very much about. But we have other faculty who are expert in this area, but it’s
how to fabricate chips and
interface them and make them do what you want them to do. So it gets into a lot of the device physics of how
transistors and tips work at the detail physical level
Next slide, please.
We also, again, each of the track
you take the required courses for the track, but in order to add breath or
expand your knowledge in a particular area of interest,
you can choose three elective courses from the other track than the program.
So you can sort of tailor your degree and your specialization to a particular job
requirement or just a particular person personal interest that you may have.
Next slide, please.
Okay, thank you Dr. Dill. Thank you for walking us through that.
I always learned something when I listen to you and your webinars. It’s
interesting to hear about all the specializations.
I know it resonates with the engineers who are listening in today and the ones that will be listening in the future.
It’s great to see how everything played out and how the electives can be worked into your program.
But as far as some questions, I’m going to throw this back to you, Dr. Dill. A
student is asking, for someone who had gotten their bachelor’s in electrical engineering in 2005,
how well can he or she adapt to the learning requirements of this online
MSEE
specialized in wireless communications and communications
digital signal processing?
I would say that we have a number of students who are doing exactly that.
We have a lot of students that they’ve got their bachelor’s degree in 2005 or earlier
and you might have to
spend some time reviewing some of your undergraduate courses like in signals and systems
with is one of the key courses for for a lot of our tracks, but, I
I would encourage you, that you know that it can be done and it is being done.
A lot of our other students, we also
accept students into the program that have stem degrees in other fields.
Like we’ve got students that have a math degree and they might need to,
you know,
study up on on some basic
principles before they start our program but we’ve got students with math degrees and physics degrees,
mechanical engineering degrees.
Just
for example, or computer science degrees and with the little work, they’re doing quite well in the program and
we have students, who are
got their bachelor’s degree as well before
2005 and they’re doing well in the program, as well.
All right, and I can add to that as well that we had a student
webinar recently that we can send out or usually send out with
preliminary information and it’s a
excellent webinar with our students who are currently in the program and they talk exactly about this.
What they needed to brush up on, how they do that, how the students help each other, and I know a lot of students utilize
the Khan Academy. And
most engineers are real familiar with the Khan Academy and of course to do some brush up work on
certain areas. When you hit a bump in the road, you can always go there, and kind of go through things again if
needed.
Okay, so then, another question was are there labs requiring physical attendance?
And this is true for all
specializations, we do not have any labs that would require you to come to campus. I think there is one,
circuitry course, where you may be sent
something out and you need to complete it and send it back in, but it’s a one-on-one course and it does not require
you to come to campus.
Yeah, I would add. Yes. You don’t need to come to campus for classes.
But several of the courses have what I would call simulation labs,
so you use
MATLAB or some other simulation tool to to build and simulate various kinds of systems
and in particular the digital
design of digital circuits class, there is a development kit and you.
It’s like, it’s cost less than 50 bucks,
but your own and you develop labs and make the hardware work at home,
and then submit the software through our blackboard system for a grade.
But you can do all the development work at home.
Okay, great. I do have a question about…
No, I’m sorry.
It was about elective courses.
But I believe that was asked before we got to the elective section.
If you do have additional questions about electives, just reach out to your advisor.
The one that I think we can address here is can electives also be selected from other
graduate engineering programs? And the answer to that is no.
This is an electrical engineering master’s program. So we don’t do cross curricular
courses as far as I know. You can correct me if I’m wrong?
What you said is, correct. However, we have some students who
either started a program at a different University, or they have some transfer credits,
that they’d like to transfer in from another university, and we can accommodate up to
three courses of transfer credit, provided they meet our
requirements and they’re their legitimate graduate level courses. And you got a good grade and you haven’t used them
to satisfy the requirements of another degree. So I’m
willing to
review any transfer courses you might have. I should also say, that a few years ago
we had a student in our program that was
really interested in power systems and wanted to take a couple of
graduate level courses in power systems and we didn’t have that as a specialization
but we were able to work out a way that he could take a couple of courses at a local university and
get graduate credit and then transfer those credits into our program.
So, you know, we’re willing to work with things like that, but we don’t have
graduate level courses and power systems that are in the online format.
That’s correct.
Yeah.
I know that that comes up from time to time and if there are elective courses that you’ve taken and have not
used them towards another degree we can work with a student and
go through the Graduate College in the
Electrical Engineering Department and see if those courses can be used towards your program.
And if you did want to do specialization something we didn’t offer such as power
you can take those at another school, and then
go ahead and finish your program with us. As I mentioned before the tuition at our school is extremely
reasonably priced so
you know a lot of schools are just north of a thousand dollars per credit hour, and we’re in the 700. So you
can see that it may be to your benefit to take most of your program with us and just take a few
specialization courses at another school.
So I do have on international… I’m sorry, go ahead.
No, I was just agreeing with you.
Okay, I
had a student asking about international requirements, and not able to provide all of the documentation required
to substantiate their undergraduate work in another country.
I want to just recommend that you work with your advisor, talk with us individually about that. And we can
detail to you what you do need to have in order to be acceptable in the program. That’s what we’re here for.
So just reach out to us and we can talk with you about that.
And then, I have and I think what they’re saying
communications and digital signal processing course,
can be taken as part of a curriculum?
It says NEC or and then it
may be
engineering lingo that I’m not familiar with it’s C
percentage – percentage B percentage – percentage B. Does that make sense to you?
Professor Dill?
If they’re asking about programming languages?
It’s always good to know C and C++
and a few of the courses
use those programming languages, but the courses that I teach, we always use MATLAB.
For most of the programming and like in the digital signal processing course in particular,
0we write programs in MATLAB.
All right.
Good enough. Thank you.
And then another question.
Can you recommend what courses or topics to preview prior to enrolling in the masters, if I got my bachelor’s in
2005 to be better prepared? And I will sent it out to you
the minimum course requirements and the prerequisite courses you can go through and see
that we recommend that you take and have under your belt. And they’re typically, if you have a Bachelor’s degree from an
Electrical Engineering Undergrad Program, you’re well prepared for our program.
Right. Yeah, you’re well prepared
but if you need, if it’s been a while, and
you need to review, the two courses that I always recommend that become really
important at the graduate level –
First one is, a course in signals and systems or some school called linear systems.
But that probably happened in your junior year and it’s a very difficult course, the first time you see it.
But it gets easier once you deal with it more and more and that becomes important at the graduate level.
So that’s worth reviewing.
And the second course, would just be matrix algebra or linear algebra.
They go by different names.
But it’s how to represent systems using matrix math and how to do matrix operations.
Which is inherently what MATLAB is good at.
So those those are the main things I would review from your undergraduate curriculum.
0:26:33.760,0:26:36.089Okay, then we have one last question.
And then, I just want to recommend that any other
questions you may have or that you come up with in the next day or so,
please go ahead and reach out to your advisor. Reach out to me, and I’d be happy to go over
anything that you need to know or find the answer for you.
That’s what we are here for to advise you and help you determine if our program will be a good fit for you.
But the last question was,
Do we accept undergraduate students with degrees in electrical engineering technology?
And the answer is most of the time and what we would need to do is take a look at your
transcripts in your resume and see what courses you had, the grades you have,
so
the answer is most of the time, yes, we can. Yes most of the time.
Yes, and I look for students with an electrical engineering technology degree.
I look at the curriculum and I find that there’s a lot of variation, some technology programs have a lot of math, and
some of them don’t have as much math as I would like, but if you’ve had
several, two or three semesters of calculus, and
some matrix algebra and you know,
if there’s sufficient math in the program then you’ll do fine.
But there’s not really a standard and so some programs have a lot more math than others.
Okay, and then the one question that just popped up that we can answer is, is an applicant given
credit for Professional Engineers license? And the answer is no to that question. I’m sorry.
And the other one.
I would say that I do look at that
as far as admission, I mean there’s no course credit, but it’s having that license that
enhances your,
First of all,
the GRE is always waived if you have a PE license and in it enhances your application as far as being admitted.
That’s an important thing and it outweighs low grades and a lot of other things.
And I also look at job experience when I’m when I’m evaluating applications
so those a
lot of times, you might not have the greatest grades as an undergrad, but
the things you do after you graduate more than make up for that.
Yeah, I’ve seen you approve people from all, like you had mentioned, from a lot of different backgrounds, stem backgrounds, and other
mechanical, and industrial engineering
disciplines and the work experience weighs very heavily,
military experiences while outside. Learned along
working with a professor Dill over the years that you know, there’s a real wide
array of students who are eligible for our program.
So all of that is considered when you’re being accepted into the program, but as far as like
canceling out any of the courses you would need to take in order to achieve your degree, it would be no but for admission
it would be yes. Yes, definitely.
Right.
Yeah, and then one other question was, how difficult would the program be for a software engineer?
If you, say,
so you’ve got a degree, a bachelor’s degree in computer science
and if you take in the math that I see in most computer science
programs, you would do well. You might have to do some review on
basic things like system, you know,
linear systems or signals and systems, which I talked about earlier,
so you would have to do some some catching up, but you can do that on your own on particular topics.
But we have people with computer science degrees in the program that are doing well.
Very good, very good. Well, yes, and we have one participant that said to thank Dr.
Dill for his time today and thank you indeed.
It’s been really helpful for you to go through the different specializations
and learn a little bit more about what you’d be doing in each of those and exactly, you know,
how the program’s laid out. It’s going to be very helpful for us and students going forward.
So I thank you all for joining us today. And thank you. Dr. Dill.
We appreciate your time and your expertise and we’ll be signing off.
Ok, thank you as well and thanks again to all the people that attended.
All right, thank you goodbye.