Addressing a National Need: New course and curriculum in smart additive manufacturing Kim Roth

Additive manufacturing (AM) is growing exponentially, with the market predicted to quadruple from the current $9 billion to $36 billion by 2024, and mechanical engineers with a deep understanding of AM technologies are in high demand.

“When I speak to industry leaders, they often comment on how early career engineers come to additive manufacturing from their respective disciplines and vantage points—material science or design optimization or process physics, said ME Associate Professor Chinedum Okwudire. “Industry is clamoring for graduates who have a 360-degree view of these technologies and know how to integrate them to deliver innovative solutions.”

Professor Okwudire has led the co-development of a new course, “Foundations in Smart Additive Manufacturing,” (ISD/MFG/ME 599), first offered in Winter 2020. It was overwhelmingly popular, earning extremely high evaluations of the quality of the course and the instruction. The Winter 2021 course quickly amassed a long wait list, with over a hundred students enrolling from 12 units across the University.

A 360-degree, hands-on curriculum

The curriculum for the course—housed in Integrative Systems + Design as part of its Manufacturing Master of Engineering degree program—includes five modules. The structure reflects the need for engineers to have both foundational knowledge and skills in multiple critical, interconnected aspects of AM:

Course image for the Hands-on Lab

The team-taught course emphasizes industry case studies, hands-on learning and practice. There are no exams; rather, assigned lab activities take center stage. Okwudire and colleagues selected lab equipment specifically to give students maximum exposure to AM, including manufacturing in plastics and in metals.

Safety, too, was an important consideration in equipment selection. “We want students to learn with equipment they can really get their hands on and use, not just watch instructors demonstrate,” Okwudire said.

The ME department and ISD worked together to establish and outfit the course lab, which currently is housed in G. G. Brown. ME provided the space, while ISD provided funding for equipment. Both share ongoing running costs.

When in-person instruction and lab access wasn’t always possible during the COVID-19 pandemic, the College of Engineering and ISD provided financial support to purchase desktop 3D printers for students to use at home.

“It worked like a charm in terms of how much the students were able to accomplish,” Okwudire noted. “They told us it was one of the greatest value-adds of the course.”

What began as a temporary strategy during the pandemic has become a permanent fixture as a complement to in-person labs. Having a 3D printer at home allows students to experiment more than would be possible in shared lab space on more advanced equipment.

Fostering a culture of collaboration and inclusion

The joint effort and common vision among ME and ISD, including ME department chair Ellen Arruda and ISD chair and ME Professor Diann Brei, was a logical choice when designing the course. The cross-disciplinary nature of AM requires multiple, diverse perspectives to address industry challenges and develop inventive solutions.

The decision to develop the new course—and a broader, deeper AM curriculum—was driven by strong demand from companies in several industries, including aerospace and automotive.

“We’ve received a lot of valuable input from industry that we’ve incorporated into the course,” Okwudire said. “Ongoing collaboration and support of the curriculum—sponsoring capstone design projects and allowing students access to advanced equipment, for example—will be integral to giving students learning experiences beyond what we can deliver at a university in a lab.”

The hybrid in-person and remote format of the course makes it accessible to a wide range of students—those on campus as well as international students and nontraditional students who work full-time and join the course as distance learners.

Diverse, inclusive student enrollment is important to Okwudire and to the other course faculty members as well as to the field. The proportion of women historically has been low in manufacturing, but that hasn’t been the case in the course. In Winter ’21, women made up 30% of the class.

“Manufacturing has often been viewed as male-centric domain of engineering,” Okwudire said. “To see this level of interest from women is very exciting and we hope it continues to grow.”

Sharing a larger vision

In addition to the new course, AM will be integrated into the ME core curriculum in the Department’s X50 design and manufacturing sequence (ME 250, 350 and 450) so that every undergraduate leaves the program with training in AM.

In addition, several new courses are under development to focus deeper in each of the five topic areas covered in the “foundations” course.

Together, the new courses will comprise a broad curriculum in smart additive manufacturing that will span the College of Engineering.

Hand in hand with the new courses and curriculum is a planned renovation of the Department’s manufacturing lab space, so that all ME manufacturing courses can have a significant hands-on component.

Meeting a national need

The need for advanced manufacturing talent is a national one, and Okwudire serves on a National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine educational committee, Strengthening the Talent for National Defense: Infusing Advanced Manufacturing in Engineering Education, toward that goal.

“The timing of what we’re doing is right given the strong needs in manufacturing to have engineers with hands-on skills and an understanding of AM beyond prototyping,” Okwudire said.

He credits the leadership, collaborative spirit and support from the College, the ISD and ME departments and industry for the new course’s strong start and bright future. “As we expand our AM curriculum and integrate it into the core curricula of mechanical engineering and other disciplines,” he said, “we’re helping address the nation’s need for students well-trained in both the theory and practice of AM.”