Comments
Friends, followers and readers: Thanks for your comments. Here is a recent sampling.
Re: “Jacobs gift launches design institute,” Berkeley Engineer, fall 2013
As an ME alum, I’m delighted to hear that Berkeley is enthusiastically embracing hands-on engineering education. However, it’s hardly new. As Alice Agogino is well aware, we dedicated the hands-on Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1997, and I was fortunate to serve as co-director until I retired several years ago. The interdisciplinary aspects of the program have been a great success—particularly the first-year course, in which teams learn engineering design experientially to create projects to showcase at a design expo each semester. And having helped create the hands-on ITL laboratory, I am fortunate to have access to such wonderful high-tech tools as laser cutters, 3D printers, CNC machinery, etc., for my own design projects in my retirement. Keep up the good work!
—Lawrence E. Carlson, M.S.’68, D.Eng.’71 ME, via e-mail
Re: “Applying the right pressure,” Innovations, November 2013
Congratulations to the LifeWrap team, whose dedication to providing solutions to those who need help, without a primary profit motive, is most highly laudable. This device has the same favorable attributes as the iconic safety pin: tremendous application potential, cheap to manufacture and simple to use.
—Ernst Valfer, B.S.’50, M.S.’52, Ph.D.’65 IEOR, via Innovations
Re: “Jacobs gift launches design institute,” Berkeley Engineer, fall 2013
Your piece about Sara Beckman and new design courses sounds really great. I worked for the General Electric Company for 36 years, starting out in their Creative Engineering Program. We used Alex Osborn’s book, Your Creative Power, to get the creative juices flowing—you might want to check it out.
—Howard T. Vaum, M.S.’49 ME, via e-mail