Challenges of delivering undergraduate engineering programs to place-bound members of the technical work force

Engineering educators today are challenged on many fronts. Engineering educators face the need to develop ways to extend engineering education, especially degree programs, to working technical professional people who, because of work and family responsibilities, are place-bound. In large urban areas, this challenge has regularly been met by evening and weekend programs. As industry decentralizes, night classes in urban areas become less attractive. Many segments of industry, however, see a major need for education here, and call upon the universities to develop new ways of meeting their educational requirements. The people who are technically employed recognize that in order to maintain their vitality they must continue to learn. The combination of these factors is one of the most significant challenges educators face and this paper describes how this challenge is being met through the use of fiber optics-based distance learning schemes