News Release

CONTACT: Della Elliott, Public Information, (619) 644-7690, della.elliott@gcccd.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                          August 14, 2006

Robotics classes at Cuyamaca College engineered for fun and learning

First-time courses taught at campus’
new Invention Laboratory

EL CAJON – – The way Cuyamaca College instructor Duncan McGehee sees it, engineering isn’t just mind-bending computations – it’s also the magic of imagination and the sheer fun of invention.

Thus the underlying message of first-ever courses in robotics and microcontrollers to be taught at the new Invention Laboratory at Cuyamaca College, where the fall 2006 semester is set to begin Aug. 21 – also the first day of fall classes at Grossmont College. The newest classes at Grossmont College range from computer forensics to Digital Multimedia I, the first offering of the college’s multimedia and entertainment curriculum. Students in this class will learn the basics of scripting and storyboarding, sound and image capture, MIDI sequencing and computer music, Web art and simple animation.

There’s still time to sign up for fall classes at the East County community colleges, where applying and enrolling is as easy and convenient as going online to the colleges’ Web sites. Phone and in-person registration are also available for classes, which, at $26 per unit, represent the best bargain nationally in higher education. The last date to apply for fall admission is Aug. 25. The last date to enroll in semester-length classes is Sept. 1, but early registration is recommended since many classes fill up even before the semester begins.

In addition to the newest offerings from emerging technologies, the colleges also have available more than 2,000 general education classes to satisfy university transfer requirements. Also offered are numerous career technical classes in fields ranging from nursing at Grossmont College to ornamental horticulture at Cuyamaca College.

“Our colleges are able to respond to community and workforce needs with remarkable speed because of strong ties with local industry,” said Chancellor Omero Suarez. “From the numerous advisory groups providing cogent information on workforce training needs to the many faculty members who also hold jobs in their respective fields, Grossmont and Cuyamaca colleges remain cutting edge in their educational offerings.”

Case in point: Cuyamaca’s robotics and microcontrollers courses, a sequence of four eight-week classes taught on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. for Engineering 170 (Mechatronics: Introduction to Microcontrollers) and from 8 a.m. to 3:50 for Engineering 171 (Mechatronics: Introduction to Robotics). The last date to enroll in the first eight-week class is Aug. 25. The second set of eight-week classes is scheduled for spring ’07 and consists of intermediate-level courses in the same subjects.

According to the class schedule course descriptions, the classes are “intended for artists working on kinetic design, engineering students working on design projects, career engineers and anyone else who wants to build intelligent devices that can move, ‘think’, and communicate.” There is no prerequisite for the first course in the sequence, Engineering 170.

“The people I’m trying to reach include the engineering student who winds up using the stuff in their careers, the guys my age who never had a chance to learn about microcontrollers, plus the people who are just entering college who were always told to go into engineering because of their math abilities,” said McGehee, who received his undergraduate training in electrical engineering and holds a doctorate in applied ocean science, a joint degree program of UCSD and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“These classes are intended to be fun, while at the same time, provide something that is really valuable. Students go into engineering and from the start, they’re hit with chemistry, calculus, physics – the first year of engineering is typically not fun at all. These new courses at Cuyamaca aim to remind us all the reason why we were attracted to engineering in the first place: to design and to put the math and science into application.”

The classes are held on Saturdays to accommodate advanced high-school students showing an early interest in engineering.

As for what a microcontroller actually is, McGehee describes it as a device most likely created by mechanical and electrical engineers to automate a function, be it to heat up food in the microwave, to keep food cool in the refrigerator, or to turn on the television.

“Much of our world is done with automatic control, or auto devices,” he said. “Microcontrollers are the little computers that take input from the outside world and convert it into some kind of motion: to turn on the lights, to open the garage door. The difference between microcontrollers and computers is that the intent behind microcontrollers is to operate something without much human interaction.”

Robotics -- the second sequence of classes following microcontrollers – is what McGehee describes as the “building of mechanical creatures – little things that act like living organisms.” In the introductory classes, students build robots from kits manufactured by a company called Parallax, but in the intermediate classes, students will be building robots of their own design. A $10,000 National Science Foundation grant that is part of the $880,000 NSF grant awarded to Cuyamaca’s Computer and Information Science program covered the cost of the Parallax kits.

McGehee, a volunteer for Project Lead the Way, a national group for engineering instructors pushing to introduce engineering to high-school curricula, laments the number of U.S. students going into engineering is dwindling. The global economy in which countries like India are producing a growing share of engineers and U.S. firms are taking jobs offshore is a primary reason, but McGehee said America’s schools can also share some of the blame for not doing enough to entice more students into engineering.

“The number of high schools that offer engineering is still in the minority,” he said. “One of the things I do for Project Lead the Way is for two weeks every year, I teach an introductory digital electronics course to high school teachers so they can, in turn, teach their students.”

McGehee, who teaches introductory and intermediate-level engineering classes, was an oceanographer for a decade before being hired as an adjunct faculty member at Cuyamaca in 2001. Less than a year later, he was hired by the college to teach full-time.

The new robotics and microcontrollers classes reflect the college’s intent to get more students interested in engineering, even with its daunting reputation as one of the toughest majors.

The startup of Cuyamaca’s new Invention Laboratory is the genesis of the college’s long-range plan to develop a Center for Invention and Design on the campus, where, ultimately, classes could be offered in what McGehee calls rapid prototyping. He envisions students designing and developing actual prototypes of robotic devices, which have become a mainstay of the automotive industry where human work on the plant floor is increasingly relegated to overseeing mechanical workers.

Costly equipment such as 3-D printers carrying price tags in the area of $20,000 are a necessity so it’ll take time to develop the dream facility that the college has in mind, but a variety of funding sources will be tapped to equip the center. The current Invention Lab doubles as the chemistry lab during the week, but once the $25 million Cuyamaca College Science and Technology Mall currently under construction is completed in 2007, the chemistry and biology labs will be relocated and the engineering program will finally have a home of its own.

For a full listing of classes, class schedules are posted at both college Web sites and campus entrances. The schedule is needed for either telephone or on-line registration, once a student has applied for admission.

New students must first file an application online or in the colleges’ admissions and records offices. Driving and campus maps, in addition to the online application and the registration service, WebConnect, are available at www.grossmont.edu and www.cuyamaca.edu.

After applying with admissions, phone registration is also available by calling College Connection at (619) 668-4040 for either college.

Grossmont College is at 8800 Grossmont College Drive in El Cajon and the admissions office is in Building 100 near the main college entrance. Cuyamaca College is at 900 Rancho San Diego Parkway in Rancho San Diego. Cuyamaca’s admissions and records office is located in the Student Services One-Stop Center near the campus’ Fury Lane entrance.

Hours for both WebConnect and telephone registration are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, except on holidays.

For more information, call Grossmont College at (619) 644-7186, or Cuyamaca College at (619) 660-4275.

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