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CES EduPack – Customer Report

Professor Abdelrahman Rabie, James Madison University

The College of Integrated Science and Technology (ISAT) at James Madison University applies CES EduPack to support an innovative interdisciplinary program that incorporates engineering, energy, biotech, environmental studies, information management, telecoms, and GIS. It is a significant challenge to introduce the necessary scientific concepts in a manner that is both rigorous and informative for students of such a broad curiculuum. The CES EduPack software helps by conveying with ease the concepts associated with materials selection, without the need for detailed analysis. Of course, students and teachers can, if they wish, also apply the software to in-depth analyses.

Dr Abdelrahman Rabie of ISAT comments: "I explained the derivation of material indices for compressed columns. We then went through excercises where students see the effects of changing parameters on the materials selected. For more complex cases, such as thermal stress, the students were given the indices and asked to explore the effects of changing the parameters on material selection. They loved the software with the structured exercises. They grasped the concepts I wanted to convey: what is the objective function, parameters and constraints, the relationship between materials properties and parameters, without going through detailed theoretical analysis."

In support of the course, each student is given a copy of the software to use on their own computer. Such access to innovative teaching tools, together with way in which the course was taught, has made the course a popular choice, with students enrolling from Industrial Arts and from the Chemistry department.