- Senior students actively participate in undergraduate research projects that are formulated on their own and sponsored by engineering faculty experts or funded by federal or state agencies.
- Students participate in instrument projects and high-altitude ballooning, and recently traveled to NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas to integrate their payload into one of NASA’s suborbital research platforms.
- Gannon University has received National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, which is used to award approximately 20 scholarships per year, each renewable for up to four years, through Gannon’s Scholars of Excellence in Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS) scholarship program.
- Gannon’s Solar Eclipse ballooning team is participating in NASA’s Total Solar Eclipse project. The team will launch a complete ballooning system in Kentucky on August 21, 2017 to send live video and images from near space to NASA.
- Students from underrepresented groups in engineering can easily find hands-on undergraduate research opportunities within the department.
You Will Learn
The electrical engineering program offers two technical options: electrical and electronic, and computer engineering. Both are designed to guide students to build technical competency, effective communication and leadership skills, and entrepreneurial spirit. The program integrates the liberal studies core and emphasizes holistic student development.
The department employs an innovative teaching approach, Modular Integrated Curriculum Environment (MICE). MICE treats each core subject within the curriculum as a modular unit that focuses on specific topics of knowledge. Each modular unit has a project that ties into a centralized learning platform, mini-Electric-Vehicle (miniEV), to function as part of the system without requiring students to have full knowledge of the system to see how their own modular design will work in a larger system. By doing so, students will have the opportunity to build system-level integration skills and be able to understand early in their careers how each subject learned is employed and utilized in a larger system. Within this learning environment, students at all levels are engaging in project-based learning.
You Will Experience
Our close partnership with Erie’s GE Transportation location provides students with opportunities for internships, co-ops and full-time jobs upon graduation, and allows for constant industry input into existing and new course offerings. Most electrical engineering students begin their internship following the completion of their sophomore or junior years.
You Will Achieve
Students have many choices of career paths. Such opportunities include, but are not limited to, the following:
- companies such as GE Transportation, Motorola, LORD Corp., Bechtel, Ahlmond Steel, Northrop Grumman, Allegheny Power, Eaton Corp., U.S. Steel and ATI Allegheny Ludlum
- high-tech, private sector industries such as automotive, transportation, communication technologies, energy, electric utilities, computer or software industries
- highly competitive graduate schools such as the University of Illinois and Purdue University
- military defense industries
You will Study
The electrical engineering curriculum is designed to foster students’ system integration, project management and entrepreneurial skills. Electrical engineering majors take various core and elective courses including:
ECE 217: Data Structure and Algorithm
This course involves an in-depth, programming-based study of data structures, algorithms and cooperating programming techniques used in real-time and embedded systems. Topics include static and dynamic structures, hashing, searching, signals and distributive and concurrent inter-process communication.
ECE 327 and ECE 328: Electric Drives and Laboratory
These courses are taken concurrently. The lecture course allows examination of all subsystems of an electric drive system. Its topics include electric machines, power-electronics-based converters, understanding mechanical system requirements, feedback controller design and interaction of drives with the utility grid. Students spend three hours per week in the lab for hands-on application of classroom theory.
ECE 357: Senior Design
This senior-level course includes discussion of design fundamentals, application of design principles to a design problem, determination of a complete problem definition or specification, and development of a conceptual design and a preliminary design with alternatives. Students establish a schedule and tentative test plan, discuss ethics and consider the impact on engineering decisions.
Liberal Studies Core
The Liberal Studies Core Curriculum is one reflection of Gannon University's commitment to
its Catholic identity. The Core's design offers students a defined, integrated, shared
experience as the foundation for their undergraduate program.
You Will Earn
Salaries in the field vary depending on the location and type of organization.
- Starting salary: $64,300
- Mid-career salary: $106,000
All salary information is compiled from data gathered from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov) and/or PayScale
(payscale.com).