The ECET department serves as a home for four BS degree programs which include, Electronics Engineering Technology, Computer Engineering Technology, Automation and Control Engineering Technology and Information Technology. Each of these programs allow our graduates to enter the job market with specific skill sets, allowing them to launch their careers in well paid entry level job positions. The breadth of study in these degree programs allows our graduates to relatively quickly move into positions of responsibility in fields such as design, testing, manufacturing, system integration, maintenance, production support, customer support and business systems support.

Recent Submissions

  • A study of attitudes of faculty and administrators towards interprofessional education.

    Delnat, Catherine Christine
    Faculty and administrator’s attitudes are believed to be important in planning and implementing successful interprofessional education in the academic environment with the goal of increasing health sciences students’ competencies in interprofessional collaborative practice. The purpose of this study was to examine attitudes toward interprofessional education and identify attributes that may have an impact on those attitudes. A survey was distributed to all faculty and administrators in the health care sciences field at this institution. Using scales adopted from peer-reviewed literature, respondents were asked questions designed to rate their attitudes toward health care teams, interprofessional education, and interprofessional learning in the academic setting. Information about each respondent’s academic discipline, professional role, years worked in higher education, years of experience with interprofessional education, and gender were also collected. One open ended question was included. A 32% response rate from those surveyed (N = 42) indicated that discipline had a significant effect on attitudes towards health care teams, F(4, 35) = 4.10, p = .008, ω2 = .24, as well as on attitudes towards interprofessional education, F(4, 35) = 3.28, p = .022, ω2 = .17. On average, men scored lower (M = 3.96) than women (M = 4.30) in attitudes towards health care teams, t(38) = -2.20, p = .034, two-tailed, r = .36. The 95% confidence interval for the mean difference of -.34 was -.65 to .03. Respondents who reported no, or some experience in interprofessional education scored lower (M = 3.74) on attitudes towards interprofessional learning in the academic setting than those who reported being experienced (M = 4.24), t(37) = -3.15, p = .003, two-tailed, r = .46. The 95% confidence interval for the mean difference of -.51 was -.83 to -.18. The findings indicated a positive attitude of faculty and administration towards interprofessional education, especially with respect to the importance of understanding collaborative roles and developing communication skills needed for interprofessional endeavors. However, there appeared to be less confidence in the feasibility of providing interprofessional learning opportunities in the current academic setting. Discipline, gender, and experience in interprofessional education were all significant attributes to overall attitudinal responses towards interprofessional education. These findings may be useful in planning successful faculty development opportunities for interprofessional education.
  • Using Fuzzy Logic With Radio Frequency Identification To develop A Theoretical Model For Model For Monitoring Package Placement

    Sarikonda, Shruthi Reddy
    Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the United States face problems of supply chain management and inventory control. Warehouse management is one of the biggest problems faced by pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies maintain warehouses based on customer demands. Using several warehouse management systems in order to satisfy customized requirements of customers is an expensive process. Pharmaceutical companies seek for warehouse management solutions that support dynamic user defined configurations with variations in warehouse procedures including label printing, picking and sending the materials for processing and several others. Dealing with inventory control problems accounts for the largest cost component for the pharmaceutical industry. The challenge is to cut down these costs and simultaneously provide better management solutions. This thesis deals with the theoretical design of a fuzzy logic model interfaced with a radio frequency identification system that monitors drug placements in a pharmaceutical company’s warehouse. Fuzzy logic is the key interface that deals with the waste of pharmaceutical products while supplying to the customers.
  • Reported condom use in students enrolled in a personal health and wellness course.

    Florence, Candace
    When used consistently and correctly, condoms can prevent against the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) and unplanned pregnancies. Condoms are a significant prevention method viable for all populations. This study was conducted using students at a Midwestern University who were enrolled in a personal health and wellness course and examined their reported use of condoms. This study involved voluntary participation of 275 personal health and wellness students. Results indicated that approximately 40% of the participants who reported being sexually active stated they did not use a condom during their last act of sex. The most common response for lack of condom use was “Trust in partners’ monogamy.” Females reported experiencing STD’s and unplanned pregnancies at a higher rate than the male population.
  • Thermal Protection of an Inductive Proximity Sensor Utilizing Low-Density Ceramic Composition Tile

    Anger, Kim
    This thesis presents the results of a unique method for protecting inductive proximity (IP) sensors from extreme thermal exposure. The method presented in this study employs a barrier of ceramic tile material developed for the space shuttle program. While it may be intuitive that the ceramic tile material will provide adequate protection for extreme temperatures, what is not clear is the adaptability of this material to commercial use in a steel mill environment.One of the potential problems associated with using any thermal barrier is a partial or complete attenuation of the magnetic field generated by the sensor. To effectively utilize the shielding material in an application such as this it is necessary to understand the effect of the ceramic material on the magnetic field generated by the proximity sensor.In order to test the effectiveness of the ceramic tile to provide the level of thermal protection required and to discover if the tile will allow adequate magnetic field penetration for sensor detection, a series of two separate tests will be run. The first test will verify that the thermal shielding properties maintain the cool side temperature within the operational threshold of the sensor; the second test will establish the maximum sensing distance with the ceramic tile interposed between the sensor and the detectable object. This study determines if it is possible to consistently detect piping of 4” nominal diameter carbon steel pipe at a minimum specified distance from the shielding assembly.
  • Online Pump Efficiency

    Wilkerson, Bruce
    Knowing the efficiency of a pumping unit has important operational and financial benefits to those who operate the unit. Historically efficiency is collected on a periodic basis through on-site collection of the necessary parameters. Unit efficiency can be calculated on a real time basis by combining telemetered data with fluid properties in a Real Time Transient Model (RTTM). This method however needs to be validated in order to ensure it is equivalent to field efficiency testing. The RTTM was expanded to be able to calculate unit efficiency utilizing telemetered data and modeled fluid properties. Three crude oil and two refined products units were configured in the model to perform the calculations. Data from each of the units was stored in a relational database for later analysis. Date and time, efficiency ratio (current efficiency/manufacturer’s efficiency), flow rate and viscosity were stored once every fifteen minute. Field efficiency test data was retrieved and then compared to the telemetered data. A deviation of one percent or less was considered acceptable. Where the two methods did not correlate within the required one percent, the data was analyzed to determine the root cause. Errors in the model’s algorithms and potential errors in field data collection account for all departures. This research supports the use of the RTTM to calculate unit efficiency.
  • Examining Effects of Virtual Machine Settings on Voice Over Internet Protocol in a Private Cloud Environment

    Liao, Yuan
    The virtualization of computing resources, as represented by the sustained growth of cloud computing, continues to thrive. Information Technology departments are building their private clouds due to the perception of significant cost savings by managing all physical computing resources from a single point and assigning them to applications or services as needed while remaining in control of their systems and information. As part of this trend, real time communication applications including IP telephony can be integrated with other software applications into one platform and deployed in private clouds to reduce capital expenditure and lower overall costs of daily based maintenance and real estate required for computer hardware. As a critical component of private clouds, however, virtualization may adversely affect a real time communication application running in virtual machines as the layer of virtualization on the physical server adds system overhead and contributes to capacity lose. While real time communication services require a certain level of system performance and availability to address communication latency and overhead bottleneck, it is essential to investigate potential performance implications of private clouds on IP telephony applications. The purpose of this study was to investigate how to apply cost benefits of private clouds to Voice over Internet Protocol applications without compromise on communication performance. Through the experimental study, the statistical technique ANCOVA was used to examine the effects of virtual machine settings on voice quality when network condition remained the same. Linear Regression analysis was used to test whether the voice quality can be predicted from virtual computing resources and network bandwidth in private clouds. The results of this research provided a better understanding of the effects of virtual machine settings on voice quality of Voice over Internet Protocol applications in private clouds from the prospect of technology management.