Bethel Ac­quires New Ro­bots with LIFT Grant

MISHAWAKA – The Math­e­mat­ics En­gi­neer­ing and Com­puter Sci­ence de­part­ment has come into pos­ses­sion of two ro­bots. The ro­bots were bought us­ing money from a LIFT grant funded by the Lilly Foun­da­tion. Af­ter ap­ply­ing for the grant in Nov. 2020, Bethel was ap­proved for and awarded the grant in the spring of 2021. Most of the funds went to re­fur­bish­ing the en­gi­neer­ing lab, pur­chas­ing the ro­bots and pro­mot­ing the new com­puter sci­ence ma­jors.

What the ro­bots do is vari­able. The larger of the two ro­bots is a mod­u­lar sta­tion, and the de­part­ment plans to add more ma­chines over time. It can dis­pense dice and set them into a tray. Stu­dents will study the op­er­at­ing sys­tem that con­trols the ro­bot and learn to move it them­selves. 

The smaller ro­bot is a trainer ro­bot that al­lows stu­dents to ob­serve sev­eral pre­set ac­tions and processes to ex­am­ine what goes into mod­ern au­to­mated processes. It will also pro­vide the stu­dents with a chance to learn how to write their own pro­grams that the ro­bot can carry out. For the se­mes­ter of Spring 2022, it is be­ing used as part of the LEAN Man­u­fac­tur­ing class, and it is planned for the In­tro to En­gi­neer­ing class to make use of them in Fall 2022.

One of the most im­por­tant ben­e­fits of the LIFT grant, aside from the ac­qui­si­tion of the ro­bots, was the in­tro­duc­tion of the LEAN Man­u­fac­tur­ing class, de­vel­oped by Pro­fes­sor Sherri Campeau. LEAN man­u­fac­tur­ing is max­i­miz­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity and min­i­miz­ing waste. The topic is one guided by the­ory and prin­ci­ples of ef­fi­ciency.

“The VP of En­gi­neer­ing for Lip­pert ex­plained to me that the num­ber one need for young en­gi­neers is prob­lem-solv­ing skills and an un­der­stand­ing of LEAN Man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­niques,” said Campeau.

Though the Math­e­mat­ics En­gi­neer­ing and Com­puter Sci­ence De­part­ment has been around for 20 years, Bethel’s Com­puter Sci­ence de­gree was just added in 2019, with the first two ma­jors plan­ning to grad­u­ate in May of 2022. It has reached out to lo­cal high schools and in­tends to pro­vide train­ing courses on data for both cur­rent stu­dents and Bethel’s com­mu­nity. The de­part­ment also sees the po­ten­tial for hav­ing courses on lo­cal in­dus­try and giv­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tions.

Thanks to the de­vel­op­ment of the En­gi­neer­ing Man­age­ment de­gree in 2014, stu­dents have been able to fin­ish the four-year pro­gram and re­main at Bethel for all of it, rather than ma­tric­u­lat­ing to Notre Dame or Trine. This ben­e­fits not only the stu­dents, but also the South Bend and Elkhart ar­eas, as this de­gree leads to nu­mer­ous jobs in in­dus­try and keeps the grad­u­ates lo­cal.

“We have sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tions with in­dus­try and 90% of our stu­dents ob­tain sum­mer in­tern­ship,” said Campeau. “These are paid in­tern­ships and help stu­dents get paid for learn­ing about en­gi­neer­ing and build their re­sumes.”

This is part of what makes Bethel’s en­gi­neer­ing pro­gram so spe­cial. For ex­am­ple, rather than hav­ing to de­clare a fo­cus prior to their en­roll­ment, stu­dents can take their en­tire first year to ex­plore the op­tions open to them. As fresh­men, all en­gi­neer­ing tracks are vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal, so they do not have to com­mit be­fore they know what they are com­mit­ting to.