Dr. Ron Henderson

rhenders@mtsu.edu

Dr. Victor Montemayor

Physics and Astronomy

Discipline specific equipment

WPS 212

New Technology

The request is new technology in the sense that we need an additional set of existing technology, but also has a "replacement of existing technology" component for the software upgrades.

We recently (2003) received TAF funding to expand the number of laboratory stations used in a pair of electronics courses taught in the department of Physics and Astronomy. This expansion was in response to our partnership with the Recording Industry (RI) department to offer a minor in Electro-Acoustics, targeted for RI majors. Due to the 2003 project, we can now accommodate 24 students per laboratory section, as compared to only 14 students prior to the expansion. Enrollment in the courses continues to grow and we are now averaging 18-20 students per semester. Two aspects of the 2003 project were not anticipated during the planning for this expansion. First, although a station for the laboratory instructor was added for instructional use to allow all the students to view demonstrations simultaneously, a set of test equipment was not purchased for this new station. Secondly, the appropriate site licenses for the primary software used in the laboratory was not expanded and updated to accommodate the added computer workstations. These two additions are necessary to make the expanded laboratory fully functional and allow it to bring our laboratory offering to the high degree of academic quality that we seek.