This project purchases laboratory equipment to realize a novel undergraduate Computer Engineering (CE) major curriculum. Traditional CE curricula are composed of disparate courses that poorly unify key themes and do not allow students to develop critical abilities. The Electrical and Computer Engineering department remedies these ills with a new CE curriculum. The centerpiece of the curriculum is the design of a richly complex digital system: a network of computers including, particularly, a computer with hardware and important system software built entirely by each student. This project spans the courses taken for the past 3 years of each undergraduate's studies. This curriculum allows a novel emphasis on fundamental engineering understanding, which cannot be developed in projects of shorter duration. Students develop an understanding of how design decisions play out over time, they employ sophisticated design techniques using standard simulation and synthesis tools, and they make complex software/hardware tradeoffs. This unified, longitudinal Integrated Computer Engineering Design (ICED) curriculum has been planned over several years. It has been broadly accepted by the university. ICED can be evaluated with surveys of CE students involved in either the original (current) curriculum or the new (ICED) curriculum, both before and after graduation, measuring ICED's impact and efficacy.
