Funded by a $1 million donation from Carl A. Morse '25S and designed by Noyes Architects (Guilford, CT) with faculty liaison by Peter J. Kindlmann, the Morse Electrical Engineering Teaching Center was dedicated in 1988. It consists of 5 labs, 2 auxiliary library/office areas, an auxiliary machine shop and an administrative and storage area. We were fortunate to be able to establish a full-time support position, initially held by Mr. Louis Berman until his retirement in November 1998. His successor, Mr. Edward Jackson, brings 25 years of engineering experience to his role.

    Evolving support led to major additional gifts from Robert Mann and Cadence Software to establish a VLSI CAD and Simulation Lab. The Morse Center not only supports the core courses in Electrical Engineering, but is increasingly the setting for wide-ranging senior and other special projects, from microcontroller-based gear shifts for bicycles, robotic sensors, hifi equipment, VLSI designs, sports training apparatus, implementations of neural networks, a 3-D laser projection system (one of the winners in the 1996 B.F. Goodrich Inventor's Contest), infra-red modem links and much else. The associated machine shop & fabrication resources are often critical such projects.

    One of the challenges in such a diversely utilized setting is keeping equipment standardized and up to date. In 1996 a major grant by Hewlett-Packard aided us greatly in this respect, allowing us to equip multiple lab stations with a core of HPDIM stations (HP Design and Instrumentation Modules), all interfaced to desk-top Pentium PCs networked to local shared resources (printers, plotters, workgroup servers) and to the full resources of Yale and the Internet. The result is an "open" information and work environment, where in many cases the students is no longer tied to the particular bench with that particular waveform generator. Work files reside on servers, constructively shared between students, teaching assistants and faculty.

    The philosophy of the laboratories is to avoid concentrating too heavily on simulated experience--in which students have no "feel" for the magnitudes of circuit parameters and real-world effects such as noise, power levels, and interconnection requirements. Instead we aim for an environment of judgment over simulation, the tackling of "real world problems" and the encouragement of individual and small-group student project efforts at hands-on work. We believe that broadly informed technical judgment is part of what sets Yale engineers apart, and what will allow them to become managers of technology and leaders in the future of engineering.