I'm a materials man myself. Two hands go up. Within a few minutes, everyone is assigned a piece of the job-the rotating blades, the frame and base plate, or the electrical components. They schedule their next meeting. Over in the other group, they're hung up on whether to use plastic garbage bags for the windmill blades, and how to save money on the alternator and other parts.
Someone suggests a trip to the local landfill to look for parts.
This is a design class, not an unusual sight in an engineering school. But in this classroom, all the students are freshmen, young men and women who, in a more traditional program, might have to wait until their third or fourth year before getting a glimpse of real engineering design problems. All of this year's engineering freshmen were required to take the design course, known as ENES 100. The freshmen were divided into classes of about 30 students each that met twice a week. For Maryland, the program is one of the more dramatic outward signs of a new spirit of experimentation in engineering education.