Distance learning goes nuclear

Publish date	2008-06-09
Available Articles	Full articles without membership

To help meet a growing demand for nuclear engineers, a group of universities has teamed up to sponsor online courses and swap information about the students taking them.

The Big 12 Nuclear Engineering Consortium will start the online education effort this spring using an information sharing system called ExpanSIS, which has been developed by Kansas State University.

The secure, web-based system allows universities to jointly track information about course schedules, grades, student billing, and textbooks.

Students can pay at their home institutions for the nuclear engineering courses, which were developed by Kansas State, Texas A&M University at College Station, and the Universities of Missouri at Columbia and Texas at Austin.

ExpanSIS is already used by some of the Big 12 universities in a separate effort, the Great Plains Interactive Distance Educational Alliance, which offers graduate courses online in non-engineering fields.

Universities are working to expand education in nuclear engineering in response to a revival of interest in nuclear power as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

One aim of the initiative is to make it easier for students to transfer credits between the participating institutions.

Disasters such as Three Mile Island in 1979, when the core of a nuclear power station in Pennsylvania partially melted, had a hugely negative effect on the industry. Graduate numbers plummeted fmro their heyday in the late 1950s – ‘the nuclear age’.

However, there has been a recovery in interest in nuclear education – Kentucky State University has reported a threefold increase in enrolments in nuclear engineering programmes since 2002. With many of the original wave of engineers from the heady early days of the industry due to retire, the need for new blood is greater than ever.

In response to the increasing employer demand for employees with some nuclear training, Big 12 offers students access to a wider range of nuclear engineering courses than ever. The courses are delivered via the internet by the Big 12 universities that have nuclear engineering programmes.

Other universities have used distance learning to teach nuclear engineering, but the new effort is probably the largest such programme, said John Gutteridge, director of university programmes in nuclear energy at the US Department of Energy.

He added: “It’s encouraging that the online nuclear courses have drawn immediate student interest. The industry is clamouring for engineers who speak nuclear.”

Mo Hosni, head of the mechanical and nuclear engineering at Kentucky State, said: “Students across the Big 12 will have access to exceptional courses. Topics range from introductory nuclear concepts to utilization of nuclear technologies, and foundations of nuclear engineering to radiation protection and shielding."

Graduating students can use their skills in a variety of fields. For example, they can establish electrical energy systems such as advanced nuclear reactors, needed by the US and developing nations, for economic security and growth; designing nuclear propulsion systems and radiation detectors for deep space missions is another option.

Alternatively, they can design radiation techniques to diagnose and combat cancer; contribute to national security through the stewardship of nuclear weapons and establishment of engineering safeguards for nuclear systems – not your everyday jobs.

Programmes currently being offered by the consortium include Concepts in Nuclear and Radiation Engineering; Utilization of Nuclear Technologies in Society; and Elements of Nuclear Engineering Radiation Protection and Shielding.

Keywords: online education, nuclear, engineering.

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