A new undergraduate course in engineering disasters has been devloped at Stony Brook University. It is offered in the Spring semester, for 3 credits. The bulletin description reads:
ESG 201- H: Learning from Disasters
The role of the engineer is to respond to a
need by building or creating something along
a certain set of guidelines (or specifications)
which performs a given function. Just as
importantly, that device, plan or creation
should perform its function without fail.
Everything, however, does eventually fail
and, in some cases, fails with catastrophic
results. Through discussion and analysis
of engineering disasters from from nuclear
meltdowns to lost spacecraft to stock market
crashes, this course will focus on how modern
engineers learn from their mistakes in order
to create designs that decrease the chance and
severity of failure.
We are planning on ofering the course in an online version, possibly in 2011. More will be posted here in that case.
Thank you — I will take a look.
Do you have an email list that you send out updates to your blog that I can subscribe to?. If not, I will check back often to checkout the updates.
Hi,
No email lists at the moment — as of now I only have time to update sporadically. I think it will pick up a bit in the fall.
Thanks for your interest!