Facilities
In addition to the technical resources provided to all Shippensburg University students, there are a number of labs filled with equipment that are only available to students in our department. The university budgets for replacing our machines every three years. This means our systems are always up-to-date. The following provides an overview of our current departmental resources.
Unveiling of the Milton and Doreen Morgan Engineering Laboratory
A state-of-the-art lab space where students in the Civil and Mechanical Engineering programs gain hands-on experience as engineers. Equipment in the lab provides students a way to both build and test their designs.
The Morgan’s investment in Shippensburg University students provides for an engineering scholarship endowment, an engineering research endowment, equipment and instrumentation for the engineering laboratory, and investment dollars which will provide seed funds for student projects.
Our programs require significantly different computing resources than the rest of campus. The University has worked to meet those needs. First, since the expertise required to manage those systems is different from the needs of the rest of campus, we have technical support that manages only our systems. That gives us a resource that our students can use to make their personal computers use the advanced tools we require. Second, of our programs, our department utilizes a separate infrastructure from the rest of the campus. We have our own suite of servers and an isolated network. This provides a flexible and robust environment where our students can develop their skills. That infrastructure provides significant computing and storage facilities and support for connecting to all of our resources from off campus.
Civil and Mechanical Computer Lab
The Civil and Mechanical Computer lab provides computers that have some of the best processors and graphics cards on campus, as well as the largest monitors. Along with specialized input devices for working with 3D models, these machines provide students with the ability to easily design models for their course projects. These models may come alive later using one of our 3D printers or in the Milton and Doreen Morgan Engineering Labratory.
Fabrication Lab
Our fabrication lab houses the various tools used by our Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering programs. This is where we house the department's board fabrication equipment, electronics testing stations, 3D scanning and printing station, network simulation equipment, and more.
With ten design and test stations, we have everything we need so that students can design, manufacture and test their own printed circuit boards.
General Computing Classroom
Our general use computing classroom is styled as a traditional hand-on computer lab when high performance isn't needed. This classroom is typically used for classes such as Microcomputer Basics, Overview of Computer Science and the lab portion of Computer Science I.
High Performance Computing Lab
Our high performance computing lab is home to computers that have both power processors and a dedicated graphics card. This is typically used for classes which require both such as Graphics, Video Game Programming, and Reconfigurable Computing and is kept open when no class requires it.
Living Learning Lab
In one of the new dorms, student housing has established a living & learning area for students enrolled in our programs. This area has a 24 hour study lab reserved solely for the use of the residents of the CS&E Living & Learning Community with machines that match the configuration of the machines in our class rooms and labs.
Software Engineering Lab
Our Software Engineering lab is a reconfigurable room design to support team programming and agile development. This is typically used for classes such as Design Patterns, Software Metrics and Extreme Programming. This lab is also used for the robotics classes due to the flexibility provided by the room's reconfigurable design. This lab is also the most popular room for the meetings of student groups such as the Programming Team and the Video Game Development Club.
Tutoring and Study Open Lab
Our tutoring & study lab provides students in our programs a place where they can access machines with the same configuration as our other computing labs in order to work on their coursework. This includes the ability to work on projects that would normally require computers found in the High Performance or Civil and Mechanical Computing Labs. In addition to a study area, this area is also the meeting location for the Women in Computer Science & Engineering (WiFi) club.
Additional Resources
Many of the courses in our program require special software and/or hardware that your typical student doesn't have. To help facilitate the learning of the latest technologies, the department provides memberships to academic partner programs such as Microsoft's Dreamspark and the VMware Academic Alliance.