(23a) Development of An Undergraduate Nanotechnology Certificate Program at Georgia Tech

This talk describes recent and ongoing initiatives in nanotechnology education at Georgia Tech, focusing primarily on the development of a Nanotechnology Certificate Program for undergraduates (supported by NSF-NUE). The talk will present an overview of this collaborative program, which is targeted at teaching the fundamentals of nanoscience and nanoengineering to senior-level undergraduates and graduates through a combination of traditional classroom learning and inquiry-based team learning. In doing so, we fuse together the roles of nanofabrication techniques, molecular assembly of nanomaterials, nanoscale characterization techniques, and fundamentals of nanophysics/nanochemistry towards the production of nanoscale devices. Our proposed program - with faculty participation from six disciplines - is based on a 15-credit curriculum of collaborative instruction, which includes a hands-on laboratory course, multidisciplinary lecture courses, an invited speaker program, and a 3-6 credit research project in any nanoscience/nanotechnology research group at GT. Students in these courses will have ample opportunities for collaborative learning and development of technical communication skills via conceptual design projects and live demonstrations of state-of-the-art ?top-down? fabrication of nanodevices. In the Nanosystems Laboratory course based on both collaborative learning and guided-inquiry instructional techniques, we are developing four Modules that allow students to synthesize nanomaterials, computationally design a process for their assembly into individually addressable devices, implement the nanodevice design experimentally, and analyze its properties and functionality. Concurrently, they will be exposed to talks and discussions involving invited speakers who are recognized experts in the economic, industrial, environmental, and other societal impacts of nanotechnology practice.