Structure

EG-UY 1004 meets three times per week during lecture, lab, and recitation, and students complete a semester-long design project outside of class time. Each section is supported by an engineering professor, writing professor, and a team of undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs). Information regarding each section’s schedule and teaching team can be found on the course website.

Lecture

The EG-UY 1004 lecture series introduces first-year students to professional skills and the | Tandon Areas of Excellence. Guest speakers from Tandon academic departments and industry meet with students to share their experience and perspectives on their respective fields. The goal of each lecture is to provide students with knowledge of opportunities available to engineers while at Tandon and beyond. The lecture schedule can be found on the syllabus

Lab

The EG-UY 1004 laboratory experiments introduce first-year students to fundamental engineering skills and concepts related to various engineering disciplines. The lab is a peer-led environment co-facilitated by undergraduate TAs; each week following the lab, students present their work in recitation and prepare a lab report for evaluation for their technical communication skills. Information about each lab performed can be found from the main page of the lab manual.

Recitation

Students will present their laboratory results during the weekly recitation. These recitations are also opportunities for students to receive feedback on their progress throughout the semester through 1-on-1 consultations with writing faculty and technical presentations evaluated by engineering faculty and undergraduate TAs. Each week, the faculty will also share short lectures related to the engineering design process and technical writing. Recitation resources can be found from the main page of the lab manual.

Semester-Long Design Project

There is a semester-long design project that runs in parallel with the other activities in the course. The projects will be described at your first recitation. It's early in the term, and you won't know much of the technical detail required to complete the project, so it's best to choose a project that you find interesting. You'll get the tools needed to successfully complete the project as the term progresses. Typical projects are robots that overcome challenges, automatic routing using digital logic, and building construction. There is enough variety in the projects that everybody will find something interesting. At a later class, you will be asked to choose a project you find interesting, frequently with a second choice. Based on the preferences of the class, you'll then be formed into project teams. These teams have no relation to the lab teams discussed earlier. You will work with the same project partners for the remainder of the semester. The project will involve technical work, plus the skills needed to manage a project successfully, including setting and managing to meet a schedule and setting and maintaining a cost. You will be giving several milestone presentations during the semester, where you will report your technical progress, and also how you are doing on cost and schedule issues. A session during the last week of classes is reserved for your final project presentation. This presentation serves two purposes. First, it is the final "milestone" presentation describing how you ended up. Second, it is a marketing presentation explaining why a customer should want to buy your product instead of your competition's. Again, this is an important skill to learn. If a technical professional can't persuade a customer to buy their product they will go out of business, even if they have a superior technical solution.

Refer to the syllabus for project due dates.