Electronic packaging and reliability education for the 21st century: the University of Maryland CALCE EPRC Program

In the 1980's, University of Maryland faculty began teaching courses on electronic packaging and wrote the first book on this topic. As a result of two subsequent /spl epsi/ grants under the U.S. Government Technology Re-investment Program, the Computer-Aided Life-Cycle Engineering (CALCE) Electronic Packaging Research Center (EPRC), an academic center of the University of Maryland, today provides a cross-disciplinary undergraduate and graduate curriculum on Electronic Packaging and Reliability (EPAR). Offered through the Mechanical Engineering Department, students from all engineering disciplines including Electrical Engineering, Materials Science and Reliability Engineering enroll in the program. The success of the EPAR graduate program is evidenced by the respect it has gained from the electronics industry. All graduates of this program have been keenly sought after, and have enjoyed excellent job opportunities. In the era of dwindling enrollments in many graduate engineering programs, the EPAR program has seen a consistent growth. The instructional methodologies employed in this curriculum development effort are described and can serve as models for other multi-disciplinary programs.