Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at West Virginia University

Electrical engineers design, develop, test, and oversee the manufacture and maintenance of equipment that uses electricity, including subsystems for power generation and transmission, sensors, electronics, instrumentation, controls, communications and signal processing. The Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering program is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, https://www.abet.org.

In the first two years of electrical engineering, coursework is limited to those subjects that are essential as preparatory courses for more technical courses in the third and fourth years. Fundamental courses in electrical engineering are introduced in the second year.  In the third and fourth years, the curriculum provides advanced instruction through required courses and electives.  These electives are included in the curriculum to allow the student to acquire additional depth in the student's selected field of electrical engineering.  

Program Educational Objectives

The Program Educational Objectives (PEO) of the Electrical Engineering (EE) program at West Virginia University is to produce graduates who will apply their knowledge and skills to achieve success in their careers in industry, research, government service or graduate study. It is expected that in the first five years after graduation our graduates will achieve success and proficiency in their profession, be recognized as leaders, and contribute to the well-being of society.  

Concentration Areas

Students can choose from six concentration areas that are listed below. 

1. Power Systems: The cost and reliability of electricity plays a critical role in the quality of life and price of all manufactured goods.  Advances in power electronics devices and computers are improving the efficiency of electromechanical devices.  Electric deregulation in many states is offering retail customers an opportunity to select their electricity supplier and reduce cost.  Improvements in technologies such as fuel cells, micro-turbines, wind turbines and photovoltaic systems offer new choices for power generation.  Siting of distributed generation sources near the loads and operating power system under deregulation offer new challenges for power engineers.
2. Control Systems: Control theory is fundamental to any system that is required to behave in a desired manner.  Such systems include all engineering systems such as mechanical, chemical, electrical and computer systems as well as many other dynamical systems such as economic markets.  Control theory therefore has a broad range of applications.  This track interests those students who wish to apply technology to control dynamical systems. Signals from sensors, usually processed by a computer, are necessary for proper control of a system.  
3. Electronics: Electronics spans a number of large technical specialties within LCSEE including electronic device design and fabrication, analog electronic circuit design and applications, and optical device design and applications.  A solid understanding of device operation and their limitations is key to good electronic design, be it the design of individual devices or the design of complex electronic systems.  Several programming tools will be introduced to the students during their training in this area to support the development of this understanding.  Students will model devices using pSpice and layout electronic circuits using VLSI design rules.  
4. Communications and Signal Processing: Communications and signal processing are interrelated fields that play an important role in today's information driven economy.  Signal processing involves the use of programmable computer architectures to operate on physical-world signals. Signal processors are found within modern control systems, biomedical applications, and communication devices.  Communications is the conveyance of information from one location to another. The capacity of a communications system is limited by the random noise in the channel.  The communication channel may be a fiber optic cable, a local or wide area computer network, or the radio frequency spectrum. 
5. Bioengineering and Biometrics: Bioengineering is the multidisciplinary application of engineering to medicine and biology, including such areas as biomedical signal and image processing, medical informatics, and biomedical instrumentation.  Bioengineering work can include the development of new technologies for use in medicine and biology or the use of engineering techniques to study issues in biology and medicine.  Biometrics is a specific area of bioengineering in which biological signatures (fingerprint, voice, face, DNA) is used for identification or authentication in criminal justice, e-commerce, and medical applications.  Specific LCSEE projects in these areas include signal processing for prediction of sudden cardiac death in an animal model of heart failure, development of algorithms for arrhythmia detection in implanted medical devices, telemedicine for rural health care delivery in West Virginia, analysis of temporal fingerprint images for determination of vitality, CMOS fingerprint sensor design and modeling, neural net fingerprint matching, and 3-D craniofacial reconstruction.  At the undergraduate level, these projects impact courses and create opportunities for senior design projects and undergraduate research experiences.
6. Computers: Computers have become an important part of the technology used by engineers and a very important part of many technological systems and products.  Electrical engineering students will gain a basic understanding of how to use computers and microprocessors and be able to develop, program, and use systems with embedded microcomputers. 
    

Student Outcomes

Upon graduation, all Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering students will have:

1. An ability to identify, formulate, and solve complex engineering problems by applying principles of engineering, science, and mathematics.
2. An ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors
3. An ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.
4. An ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.
5. An ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives.
6. An ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions.
7. An ability to acquire and apply new knowledge as needed, using appropriate learning strategies.