9451387 Hannaford Engineering Education is undergoing a period of rapid change. American industry needs engineers who can design products which are competitive in quality and performance in an increasingly aggressive global market place. There is a sense that dividing Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial, and Computer engineers into separate compartments may produce only locally optimal designs. In education, the traditional emphasis on single-student analysis within an "Engineering Discipline" is giving way to interdisciplinary, design-team oriented education. With these global trends in mind, we propose a new laboratory-based course, "Design of Consumer Electronics," to address the need for interdisciplinary, design-team oriented education within the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. We request funding to develop this course, to disseminate the course content and format to other institutions, and to encourage and compile an expanding collection of curricular materials from among a diverse group of faculty at UW and other institutions.
