Art of Engineering

ENGI E1102: Design Fundamentals Using Advanced Computer Technologies or Gateway Lab, informally renamed The Joy of Engineering by Professor David Vallancourt is an introductory engineering course. Engineering students are required to take Gateway Lab one semester of their first year, and University Writing the other semester.

The previous course was developed by Jack McGourty. The course can be divided into two parts: the community service project and the Maya/MATLAB tutorials. Many engineers feel that this class would be better served if the community service projects were more explicitly engineering-focused or if a larger percentage of the course material was focused on Maya or MATLAB and not on MacGourty trying to justify the course.

However, beginning in the 2011-2012 school year, when David Vallancourt began teaching this class, major improvements were made. Maya was completely eliminated from the curriculum, and the dreaded community service projects were replaced by engineering design projects led by professors in each of the SEAS departments.