An Innovative Inter-Departmental Laboratory Program

When a proposal was made to upgrade our two year operation to a four year departmentalized engineering school, certain academic areas were set up as a separate inter-departmental jurisdiction. One objective was to research better ways of designing and operating teaching laboratories¿considered as one single dynamic system. Academically this led to (1) "open" laboratory operation, (2) students planning "lab programs" ahead of the lab day, and (3) lab tutors associated with a group of students throughout a set of laboratories, and not tied to one field. Economically it led to a single serviced work space, with mobile, quick-connect equipment that normally lives in an adjacent unserviced area.