Students

Students are the heart of any academic program. Students in programs offered by the Department of Electrical, Computer, Software, and Systems Engineering (ECSSE) come from diverse backgrounds and circumstances, and leave with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives to embark on successful careers as electrical engineers, computer engineers, software engineers, and systems engineers in the aerospace industry and others. They do this by their work in teams on hands-on projects over the course of their program’s curriculum and by their participation in a variety of student activities and student life.

With their first EGR 101, Introduction to Engineering, class, students in the department’s programs begin working together in teams to develop functioning systems such as hand-sized robots and remote-controlled airplanes. As they progress through their degree curriculum they work with those same individuals, students from other years, and students from other degree programs on a variety of hands-on projects, culminating in the capstone design experience of their senior design classes.

But ECSSE students also participate fully in campus life through their involvement in numerous student activities, from the Alpha Phi Omega service organization to WIKD, the campus radio station. And, of course, ECSSE students form the core of the local Student Branch of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers as well as making up a substantial fraction of the Robotics Club. Teams from those organizations compete and place highly in regional and national competitions such as the IEEE SoutheastCon Hardware Competition (table-top robots) and the five AUVSI (Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International) competitions (fixed wing unmanned aircraft, rotary wing unmanned aircraft, unmanned ground vehicle, unmanned surface water vehicle, and unmanned underwater vehicle) and the IEEE Computer Society’s Programming Marathon competition.