Using Amateur Radio to Enhance Engineering Education @ IMS2016

On Tuesday May 24th I moderated the panel "Using Amateur Radio to Enhance Engineering Education" at the 2016 International Microwave Symposium, hosted by the IEEE.  My panelists were all university professors who have integrated amateur radio into their engineering courses.  As discussed in my article "Amateur Radio in Education" (IEEE Microwaves, April 2016) the panel discussion centered around the value of hands-on understanding that amateur radio brings to engineering students.

Each school has its own implementation of amateur radio into their curricula.  UC Davis uses amateur radio for projects that need transmission i.e. to control drones.  Tribhuvan University uses amateur radio as a tool to teach RF principles, and for humanitarian purposes during earthquakes.  Carnegie Mellon University (both the Pittsburgh and Silicon Valley campuses) have active repeaters and host Field Day sites.  Cal Poly SLO also has a repeater, but they also use amateur radio so much in their courses that freshmen EE undergraduates are required to get Technician licenses - and I'm told that in the coming school year they'll begin requiring graduate students to get their General Class licenses.  I've named this policy the "Derickson Doctrine".

Presentations from each of my panelists are available for download:

Dr. Dennis Derickson AC0P, Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo (download)
Dr. Bob Iannucci W6EI, Carnegie Mellon University - Silicon Valley (download)
Dr. Xiaoguang Liu AI6DW, University of California - Davis (download)
Dr. Sanjeeb Panday 9N1SP, Tribhuvan University - Kathmandu Nepal (download)

Note: This panel was reported by ARRL news release thanks to Ward Silver's help.