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Auburn University First To Offer Wireless Degree

Posted by Hemos on Fri Aug 30, 2002 03:06 PM
from the making-the-packets-move-around dept.
Education
EyesWideOpen writes "Auburn University in Alabama will become the first school in the country to offer a four-year bachelor's degree in the study of wireless technology this fall. Since its inception three months ago an estimated 30 to 50 students have signed up for Auburn's wireless engineering program. 'All engineering students are expected to complete liberal arts and general engineering classes the first two years of school. They then can focus on wireless during their last two years of study by taking courses such as Wireless Design Lab, RF Devices and Circuits, and 3G and 4G Wireless.'"
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  • Wardriving Degree? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Komrade S. (604620) on Friday August 30 2002, @03:09PM (#4172635) Homepage
    I can't wait to get my Wardriving degree, with a chalk marking hieroglyphics major. Let's not even get into the possibilities of fly-by wireless haxoring exams. Ooo, watch out for that tree little Jimmy!

  • Evolution (Score:2, Funny)

    by clones (19801)
    By the time you graduate 3g will be deployed.

  • Electrical Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)

    by miratim (532741) <miratim.yahoo@com> on Friday August 30 2002, @03:10PM (#4172649) Homepage
    Wouldn't this kids be better off with a degree in EE, concentrating in wireless? That's like getting a degree in web services instead of Computer Science.

    • Re:Electrical Engineering (Score:4, Funny)

      by Chundra (189402) on Friday August 30 2002, @03:13PM (#4172675)
      Well it's like a degree in EE but with no strings attached. *cough*
        • It depends on your school. CS, CmpE, and EE are all equally tough where I went to school. Management and IE (aka Imaginary Engineers) got our drop outs. Now THAT's the kind of thing that inspires cynicism in the workforce long before you enter it. All the washouts and losers are going to be your boss!

          Of course, we didn't actually have an MIS degree. ...You know, not being an over-priced community college and all.

  • just a marketing stunt? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jukal (523582)
    ... or you really are stuck in the stone age, atleast here in Finland you have been able to study the subject in deep detail for years. Now, seriously, is this news there in US? This is not a flamebait, I am truly interested in this.
    • Nope you're right... we ARE that far behind in the wireless world. That's why this is such a huge first step.
      Of course, in Suomi you've had this for a while cuz you've had Nokia Oyj leading the way.

      Overe here in the States, standards are pretty much fragmented, and progress is coming in baby steps.
    • This is news because it is a special degree designed towards wireless rather than an EE degree with a concentration in wireless design. Besides it looks like more of a systems aproach than an EE aproach.
      • > I think you're a little confused

        I don't think I am. If you could understand finnish, you could read this [cs.tut.fi] and a number of others, the naming of the degree might be different, but what you study is exactly same. Once more, to me - it is astonishing, if a wireless degree is news in US.

          • > AND YOU ARE SO SMART MR

            Yes, very close, now, when you next time punch in the A, you might try moving your little finger just a little bit left and you might actually be able to turn Caps Lock off.

          • >Again, as others have pointed out, it's been possible for quite some time to study EE with a
            > concentration in wireless technologies, which is virtually the same thing

            Ok, point understood, finally :)

      • >. And what was the first thing Torvalds did? Move to the USA, where he knew he could get the job done better.

        <place tongue in cheek>

        There's an interview with Linus in Linux gazette issue 32, 1998 [linuxgazette.com] which you can use as a shocker, be warned, you might realize that your understanding of USA might be just a result of long-lasting brainwash ;))

        "I agree that Finland is a lot more "neutral" in many ways, and that had its advantages in Linux development" ........ "Moving to the US has meant a lot better weather " ....... "The idiocy of the US cryptography export rules were a problem even before I moved here" ....... " I don't think anybody really dislikes Finland, while a lot of people are nervous about or even actively dislike the US. So in some sense that could have been a downside, but I felt that most people trusted me more as a person than as a Finn, so I didn't feel it to be a major issue. "

        To be honest, I would not consider even the weather part as a plus ;))

  • Great :-) (Score:2, Funny)

    by xintegerx (557455)
    Now, juniors and seniors can bring Cell Phones to class and the professors don't have a say.

    "Tomorrow" ON SLASHDOT:

    "Due to increasing interest, Auburn University will launch a first-in-the-country program next fall for a B.S. degree in

    NOISE POLLUTION MANAGEMENT"

    :/

    ~Int

  • Egad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Reality Master 101 (179095) <RealityMaster101NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday August 30 2002, @03:15PM (#4172697) Homepage Journal

    3G and 4G Wireless

    Oh, well, that's good. We all know that "3G" and "4G" are such important, well defined engineering terms.

    Coming soon to the CS department "Software engineering principles of version 2 and version 3 software.

      • Coming soon to the CS department "Software engineering principles of version 2 and version 3 software.
        Oh, that's easy. Version 2 will be bigger and slower than version 1, and version 3 will be bigger and slower than version 2.

        ...and don't forget, if they're proprietary products, Version 2 will be more expensive than Version 1, and Version 3 will be even more expensive and no longer compatible with version 1.

  • Why is this a separate degree? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LaserBeams (412546) on Friday August 30 2002, @03:16PM (#4172710)
    First of all, it shouldn't take four years to learn most of how any kind of networking works. On the computer/electronics side, both are basically the same, it's the transmission that's different.

    Now, why not combine wireless with wired networking as a major, and then get more people into that? While wireless is all "hip" and whatnot, you can't do everything wirelessly. Transmitting through thick rock and transmitting top secret data for example. However, if you're knowledgeable with both wired and wireless networks, you are of use to almost any company, even small ones who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford separate "in-house" and wireless network engineers.

    • Re:Why is this a separate degree? (Score:5, Funny)

      by kemster (532022) <kem327NO@SPAMmsn.com> on Friday August 30 2002, @03:24PM (#4172791) Homepage
      First of all, it shouldn't take four years to learn most of how any kind of networking works.

      Maybe you missed the fact that the students are at Auburn University...

    • First of all, it shouldn't take four years to learn most of how any kind of networking works.

      Yes, it does. And even more. I've worked for a telecom equipment maker for three years now, and the depth of this stuff can be mind numbing. It's a commonly uttered truism here that you need to be working for at least 1 1/2 years to be able to actually say you KNOW what you're doing, and it's not until you've been working with the same thing for around 5 years that you can be considered an expert. And that's living and breathing this stuff day in and day out, without English, arts, and all those other classes getting in your way.

      While wireless is all "hip" and whatnot, you can't do everything wirelessly. Transmitting through thick rock and transmitting top secret data for example.

      People shouldn't get into this because it's "hip". They should choose it for the same reason they choose ANY major: they should have a reasonable expectation that this is a line of work that they'll enjoy.

      And we're not trying to do EVERYthing wirelessly. Just communicating.

      However, if you're knowledgeable with both wired and wireless networks, you are of use to almost any company...

      Heck, I could've been a janitor, and those are of use to any company. But again, that's not the point. People should major in this because it's something they think they'll enjoy doing.

      • a commonly uttered truism here that you need to be working for at least 1 1/2 years to be able to actually say you KNOW what you're doing

        So you are saying it is easy stuff then? I did a full 2 years at a manufactureing plant. When I left the only thing I really knew was my narrow field of functional test enginerring. Sure I knew of the other types of tests and the process of making a computer. But I would never say I KNEW what I was doing.

        Like the rest of my dept I was just faking it and hopeing no one would really notice. :-)

        • Hmm.. make sure you post what it was you manufactured next time. ;)

          No, what I was saying was that you could confidently say that you were able to do the job yourself, which often entailed going in the middle of the night to work at a customer's site.

          It was common to work as sort of an "understudy" for about a year and a half, and that's what I meant.

    • They did say it included RF classes. RF hardware design can be interesting, in the Chinese sense of the word. Modeling fading and multipath over real terrain is something else you can't pick up in a day.

      Then you have all the issues of a high-noise environment. Phil Karn, for example, had to invent some algorithms to let TCP/IP run decently in a world where packet loss could happen without congestion. It's an interesting question -- do you hope the noise that obliterated your packet is temporary, or do you risk wasting bandwidth on futile retries? If you retry, how do you get good performance for both the congestion case and the corrupted-packet case?

      May not be a separate discipline worthy of its own degree, but there's more than one course worth of material to learn.

  • Wireless? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2002, @03:17PM (#4172715)
    Oh, great. That ranks up there with a degree in Communications.

  • A good intro class would be "Build your own wireless network card" Professor: "Ok all the course materials will be available online which you can access using the campus' wireless gateway." Student: "But how Can i get to them if I dont have a wireless network card?" Professor: ::evil grin::

  • Pontless... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by N3WBI3 (595976) on Friday August 30 2002, @03:21PM (#4172754) Homepage
    I hate 'special degrees' Wireless shoudl be a specialization in either Computers or Electrical or both. Im sorry wireless fall totally under EM theory, Computer Algorithms, and Electronics. There is nothing in it that an EE major (or Computer Engineering) would not/could not be exposed to in the course of their required courses + their elevtives. Its a gimik to increase admissions, no more no less.

    just like the $EthnicGroup Studies majors. They should be specializations in either history or political science. What were beginning to do is produce college graduated who are way too over specialized. I know of EE's who think they dont need E-Mag because they are going to do VLSI.

    Sorry for the rant its just my 2 cents.

    • Re:Pontless... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by i7dude (473077)
      "I know of EE's who think they dont need E-Mag because they are going to do VLSI."

      this is off topic, but what you said is so true...when i was getting my EE undergrad degree, the technology that we were using was so coarse that secondary EM and micorwave effects were neglegible. then i graduated and was thrown right into the wonderful world of sum-micron design at Ghz speeds...guess what, now EM and microwave theory is very relevant...most students would understand this if they were exposed to the technology that industry uses, rather than lagging behind and having to catch up on 5 years of innovation after graduating.

      specializing in a "wireless" degree is useless...if i was hiring...give me somebody with a strong background in EE and Physics over these cupcakes anyday.

      dude.

  • First wireless degree? Not... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dillon_rinker (17944) on Friday August 30 2002, @03:29PM (#4172829) Homepage
    So, what, there's never been a degree in radio engineering before?

    I'd go into the huge theory/practice techschool/university debate, but I've finally realized something:

    The truly curious and intelligent will get the theory no matter what, because they want to know and find out. The dull masses will not get the theory even when it's taught to them for four years straight. They're probably better served by a practical course of study (with lots of flashing lights).
  • I got to attend a preview of one of the classes. I was asked to leave over a debate about whether or not two cans held together with a shoestring is a wireless technology. Despite the dictionary's support of my view, it is not classically considered a wireless technology.

  • gimic degrees dont impress employers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by peter303 (12292) on Friday August 30 2002, @03:31PM (#4172849)
    I'd hire a plain vanilla degree with good grades and from a competative university any day. In three years the current fads will have changed and only the basics will matter.

  • Can I have a degree in GigE? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling (6534) on Friday August 30 2002, @03:33PM (#4172867) Homepage Journal
    Why is this a distince degree? It would seem to be self limiting, yes?

    "I'm sorry but the job opening is for advanced networking design, I'm afraid that only wireless won't cut it"

  • And this is news... Why? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Andy Dodd (701) <atd7 AT cornell DOT edu> on Friday August 30 2002, @03:35PM (#4172885) Homepage
    This isn't a first, in any way whatsoever.

    Many universities have EE programs that require a concentration. What's a common concentration in such programs? You guessed it, wireless. Even Cornell, which admittedly is not a "strong" school in wireless despite a top-notch EE program since the main physical-layer wireless guy was hired away by Illinois, has a pretty good wireless concentration. (Due to the fact that most of the domain of "wireless" can be covered quite well by the DSP, Information Theory, and the radar people in Space & Plasma Physics, all of which are fields where Cornell is top-notch) All in all, you'll get a much broader exposure to signal theory and RF in general than you would in a "Wireless" degree.

    Whatever this program is, I'm sure it pales in comparison to the EE programs at Georgia Tech and the University of Illinios (They have two of the top wireless programs in the country - It's all under the EE umbrella.) I believe GaTech has an antenna testing range and numerous other facilities that rival that of most corporations in the field.

    If you want to do wireless, go to Georgia Tech or the University of Illinios. I hear Ohio State is pretty good too, as are UCSD and probably Caltech. If you want to go to a wannabe program that won't get you a broad exposure that'll leave you with backup if wireless dries up, go to Auburn.
    • If you want to concentrate very specifically on a field in depth (i.e. wireless), that's what graduate school is for.

      I regret concentrating too much on RF as an undergrad, despite having taken a few courses outside of RF in DSP and information theory.
    • I work for a wireless division of a large network equipment maker and almost all of the guys that do the advanced theory stuff and actually push the design of the next generation products are Phd's in particle or quantum physics, but the engineers who actually design the products are mostly MS and Phd in EE. We are in Ohio, so OSU is where most of our interns come from, and we have worked closely with GeTech for antenna testing and verification, as you said their facilities are better than most corporations.

  • Specialized degrees and market forces (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Infonaut (96956) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Friday August 30 2002, @03:37PM (#4172900) Homepage Journal
    Universities operate in a marketplace. They recognize that students are free to choose from any number of competitors. So they attempt, however slowly and clumsily, to offer degrees that fit the needs and in some cases the demands, of students.

    I'm not a real proponent of specialized degrees, but the world is becoming a very specialized place. I'd also argue it's also getting tougher and tougher to make a living as a generalist, whether coming from a technical or liberal arts background.

    Maybe we ought to take notice of why Auburn offered this degree, and the forces behind it, instead of just running up the, "Back in my day, we all got EE degrees and boy were we thankful!" flag.

    Just my two cents. Feel free to tell me why I'm wrong. After all, I was an International Relations major, so what the fsck do I know about technical degrees?

  • The Task [ogi.edu] is to implement a program that acts as a player in a multi-player robot game. Contributed programs will play against each other in a tournament.

    Sounds a lot like IBM's Robocode [ibm.com] for teaching Java.

  • Alabamer (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordNimon (85072) on Friday August 30 2002, @03:41PM (#4172930)
    "It's really neat that you can communicate just through the air," Trueblood said in an interview over his cell phone. "Without wires you aren't limited to one specific area. Wherever I go, people can call me. There are a lot of advantages to that."

    With such insightful commentary from Auburn's engineering students, it's no wonder that Alabama is such a hotbed of intellectualism.

    • Re:Alabamer (Score:2, Interesting)

      by monkeymanbob (454179)
      Maybe I'm biased since I have degrees in math & physics from a prominent Alabama university [uah.edu] specializing in cutting-edge materials science and optics and am currently working on third generation spacecraft... oh, did I mention while living in "Alabamer" and hailing from "Tennduhsee"? And you critics of "Alabamer" are from where exactly? Perhaps that state where even New Yorkers won't live, New Jersey? Or that bastion of good government, Taxachusettes? What exactly have *you* done to advance the human race lately besides post ill-conceived comments to slashdot and burn your karma getting your ever-witty observations modded up to "funny"? Special bonus: +2 to your self-assumed intelligent self if you can actually figure out the source of my nick.

  • Wireless 101 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Animats (122034) on Friday August 30 2002, @03:51PM (#4172995) Homepage
    Wireless 101
    • Week one - selecting a cell phone
    • Week two - picking a payment plan
    • Week three - making calls
    • Week four - receiving calls.
    • Week five - using the phone directory
    • Week six - sending text messages
    • Week seven - roaming
    • Week eight - additional phone features
    • Week nine - final exam
    • Wireless 102
      • Week one - Unlocking a GSM phone for any network.
      • Week two - Copying a Sim card
      • Week three - Unlocking more data channels for increased speed
      • Week four - metered bandwidth and ways around it
      • week five - connecting with IR or Bluetooth under linux
      • week six - using customer support to avoid charges (churn!)
      • week seven - buying phones off ebay
      • week eight - downloading unlicensed ringtones
      • week nine - cyber sex with 1 thumb typing.

  • I am assuming from reading the article (*gasp*, yes I read it) and the comments that this is basically a EE degree with a high degree of specialization.

    My Computer Engineering degree from Auburn is similar. Where at most schools, Computer Engineering is a EE with a specialization in Computer Science, at Auburn it is essentially a CS degree with a EE minor. I had to take the basic engineering courses, the bulk of the CS major courses, and the EE courses in digital electronics and computers. I thought (and still think) this combination is cool, but I found out later (when looking at graduate school) that it is kind of screwy. Basically, my credits didn't qualify me for admission to masters programs in CSE/EE in most schools without taking a few more undergraduate classes in analog electronics/powers/etc.

    People taking the wireless major may have the same problem, but you can probably take most of the wireless classes as tech electives in a EE program and have the same result with a "standard" engineering degree.

    As to why they did it, they wanted the money...

  • This continuing trend to greater specialization is killing our ability to innovate. Different specialists can never communicate well enough to replace a multi-disciplined individual. Teamwork can only go so far. There is no substitute for knowing it all.
    • Some people aren't smart enough or motivated enough to know it all, or to figure it out. For those people, there are specialized degrees. For those who are, there are multiple degrees.

      And finally, for those of us who are seriously lazy, there are two year degrees.

  • The University of Texas at Dallas Offers Similar (Score:4, Informative)

    by EvlG (24576) on Friday August 30 2002, @04:13PM (#4173148)
    For those interested, The University of Texas at Dallas offers a similar degree program called Telecommunications Engineering. Its scope is a bit broader than just wireless.

    Check out UTD's page about the program [utdallas.edu] for more information.
  • ...is the tightness of focus. There's a LOT more to RF than just digital wireless networking devices, cellphones, etc.

    I would hope that the college will include solid background material in RF circuit basics (oscillators, modulation techniques for both digital and analog, power amps, basic antenna theory and practice, receivers and demodulation, etc.) as well as the material on networking.

    Failing that, I would hope that they at least encourage the kids to get their ham radio tickets, and to be experimenters. That'll at least get them some hands-on.

    (Yes, I'm biased, I admit it. Don't ask about my plate voltage). ;-)

  • Havn't we had 'radio engenering' for like decades?
  • this is kind of hokey. It's more like a trade than a degree.
    3G? You mean cellular services? So they are offering a degree in cellular?

    Degree has ceased to mean what it used to mean in America.

    • Re:Long live Telsa! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ch-chuck (9622)
      No - TeSLa patented a device to transmit ENERGY - he wanted to light light bulbs w/o wires using coupled resonant RF tank coils (Take that, Edison!). Marconi was the 1st to make and install useful wireless telegraphs and built a big business, altho he infringed on Tesla's patent in doing so. The patent office didn't catch the prior art and it was overturned by the Supreme court in the 1940's.

      SEE the actual Tesla patent here [widomaker.com] and note that it says ENERGY, not INFORMATION.

    • The reality is a college degree is practically a necessity. You'd have a very difficult time getting a job with no real work experience unless you did go to college. In college you also work at internships which gains job experience. :)

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