Control education crossing department boundaries

We discuss our experiences in the development of a network of cross-disciplinary laboratories for control systems education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Control systems are inherently multi-disciplinary and controls courses are typically offered by multiple Departments within a university. This has resulted in duplication of controls laboratories in many cases. At the University of Illinois we have eliminated such duplication by elevating control laboratory instruction from the Department level to the College level with the development of a network of laboratories that are shared by all Departments in the College of Engineering. We describe our laboratory network and how it services the various Departments. We also discuss the advantages, both financial and pedagogical, that such a development offers and argue that our laboratory concept can be duplicated elsewhere and can lead to a fundamental shift in the way control laboratory experience is provided to undergraduates