Connecting Industry and Higher Education
By Lisa R. Baldi
Elizabeth Wiggins-Lopez wears many hats. She is the founder and coordinator of the Berks Learning Factory, a Lecturer in Engineering Technology at Penn State Berks, faculty adviser for the Penn State Berks Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, and leader of her daughters’ Girl Scout troops. Her passion is helping others through education.
In the fall of 2010, after benchmarking the Learning Factory at Penn State University Park, Wiggins-Lopez founded the Berks Learning Factory, an academic center that integrates industry-sponsored design projects into both first-year and senior engineering design courses. In her role, she works with companies to identify projects and integrate these projects into the classroom for experiential learning purposes and as a method of community engagement.
Local industry benefits from fresh, new solutions for real-world design challenges generated by students and by building relationships with students who may serve as future interns andemployees. Meanwhile, students benefit by gaining applied experience, which is essential in training future engineers to undertake design challenges with real-world constraints.
“I think it’s beneficial for the students to interact with companies, even as early as the freshmen level,” states Wiggins-Lopez. “It’s the motivating factor for doing all this.”
For the first-year engineering students, one company presents a design challenge for which there are a multitude of solutions. The participating classes are broken into teams, and each team presents a prototyped solution to the company. In 2014, both first-year engineering design projects incorporated the use of 3-D printed prototypes.
In the senior engineering design courses, companies compete to have the students work on their projects. They submit a request for proposal with the project description. Several senior design projects are completed each semester in both the college’s Electro-Mechanical Engineering Technology and Mechanical Engineering Technology programs. Wiggins-Lopez works collaboratively with Terry Speicher, Assistant Professor of Engineering, in selecting and defining senior capstone projects.
“I’m a big advocate for industry-inspired, client-driven projects,” Wiggins-Lopez explains.
Not only do students gain real-world experience through these projects but some have been offered positions with the companies they have worked with or met through the Berks Learning Factory. The companies that have participated are listed below.
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
American Crane and Equipment
Corporation
Armstrong World Industries, Inc.
Brentwood Industries, Inc.
Canadian Solar, Inc.
Carpenter Technology Corporation
Celentano Energy Services
Creston Electronics
Custom Processing Services
East Penn Manufacturing Co., Inc.
Ecoult Energy Storage Solutions
EMerge Alliance
Medico International, Inc.
Nextek Power Systems, Inc.
Off-Grid Technologies, LLC
ONExia, Inc.
Parker Hannifin
Reading Alloys, Inc.
Reading Bakery Systems
Reading Health System
Reading Truck Body
RER Energy Group
Sunbloc Systems
TE Connectivity, Ltd.
Teleflex, Inc.
Through the Berks Learning Factory, Wiggins-Lopez has been instrumental in connecting local industry with the college’s microgrid project, another example of collaboration between industry and higher education. In this project, the college built a “microgrid,” or power generation, usage, and storage unit. The 24-volt DC Flexzone© ceiling system was installed in the Engineering Automation Lab of the Gaige Technology and Business Innovation Building. The microgrid serves as an infrastructure for additional student projects.
Wiggins-Lopez explains that her role is to serve as a project manager and to find industry collaborators to support the projects through donations of funding or equipment. Currently, she and Dr. Dale Litwhiler, Associate Professor of Engineering, are exploring creating microgrids within intermodal containers, which could be used as emergency shelter or another form of occupied space.
She believes that the Berks Learning Factory is successful due to the collaborative team efforts put forth by the faculty, staff, and alumni of Penn State Berks.
When she’s not working with the Berks Learning Factory or classroom instruction, Wiggins-Lopez devotes much of her time to encouraging young women to pursue careers in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. She is the founding faculty member and adviser to the Berks Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), a student academic club. She has taken the group to collegiate competitions at the annual SWE national conferences in Houston, Chicago, and Boston. Some Penn State Berks engineering students have secured internships and co-ops from the career fairs at these conferences.
In addition, she coordinates outreach events with Tricia Clark, Instructor in Information Systems and Technology, aimed at encouraging young girls to pursue STEM subjects: the Careers with Math Options Conference for seventh-grade girls and the STEM Conference for eleventh-grade students.
Wiggins-Lopez states that her initiative for STEM-related outreach for young women is successful due to collaborations with fellow female faculty members at Penn State Berks.