Hope
The IEEE Hands on Practical Electronics (Hope) Program serves as an exciting introduction to the topic of electrical engineering for many students who traditionally would not have the opportunity to explore the field. Although Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) is a very popular major at UC Berkeley, many students in the major do not take a single EE class until their 3rd semester. Further, students who enter UC Berkeley as "engineering undeclared" have no way of gauging their interest in the EECS major without committing to a challenging EECS class and thus may choose to major in another area that they better understand. Thus for these freshmen EECS majors and engineering undeclared majors, this course provideds a thorough yet fun and low-pressure introduction to the field. By allowing students to learn by constructing a relevant circuit with every lesson, students will begin to gain an intuition for EE and be able to see tangible results of their newly acquired knowledge. Thus the class will provide a motivation to these freshmen EECS majors who spend their first year studying math and physics and encouragement to those considering adopting it from engineering undeclared. Equally important, this course will appeal to non EECS majors and humanities majors.
While many studying the humanities have an image of EE being a mysterious and complicated realm into which they would dare not venture, we provide them with the opportunity to banish these stereotypes and learn both how enjoyable and accessible the field really is. As the course does not rely upon complicated math and we work with the assumption that the students know nothing about electricity, humanities majors face no disadvantages. And because the course focuses on tangible circuits instead of more abstract textbook knowledge, it is easy to relate to and become excited by. Humanities majors have no other opportunity to learn about EE as even the introductory EE courses have numerous math and physics requirements. Humanities majors can emerge from the course as both informed consumers who are not intimidated by technology and able to understand the goals and trends of modern EE.
We are also extending on our efforts to bring this course to local high schools. Although last year we gave one lesson to a group of 30 high school students from Oakland, we now plan to offer high schools as many lessons as we give to Berkeley students. It is nearly impossible for a high school student in Berkeley or Oakland to have a sense of what EE really is before they apply to college. Physics class is the closest that these students come to learning about EE and then that is still very theoretical. We plan to use the same hands on, build a circuit with each lesson, approach to show high school students why they might be interested in electrical engineering and should consider it as a possible major. Further, we wish to dispel stereotypes that EE is too complex or theoretical for them to be able to succeed in. We will use the same lesson plans, exercises, and circuits that we employ in the regular course. Like humanities majors taking the course at Berkeley, high school students will not be at a disadvantage as we begin with an assumption that students know nothing about EE.
