| Harold And Inge Marcus Department Of Industrial And Manufacturing Engineering |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT HAROLD AND INGE MARCUS DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING | |
| pennsylvania state university | |
| university and college departments | |
| pennsylvania state university industrial engineering | |
| industrial engineering | |
| 1908 establishments | |
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The Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering is the name of the Pennsylvania State University 's Industrial Engineering department and, having been founded in 1908, is the oldest such department in the world. The department's graduate school is currently ranked third in the country according to U.S. News , and its undergraduate program is ranked fourth.1 The department is currently headed by Dr. Richard J. Koubek2 and is based in the Leonhard Building, a $12 million building containing the acclaimed FAME manufacturing lab. HISTORY Penn State at the turn of the 20th century was known for its engineering curriculum, but industrial engineering was only beginning to emerge as an academic discipline. Noted efficiency expert Frederick Taylor recommended that university president James A. Beaver hire Hugo Diemer, a professor from the University Of Kansas , in the hopes that Diemer would create an industrial engineering curriculum at Penn State. A two year option was ready by 1908, and a four year baccalaureate degree program emerged the following year, the first of its kind in the world. At the time, courses consisted of modern industrial engineering fundamentals such as Time And Motion Study , plant layout optimization and Engineering Economics in addition to business-like courses on Advertising and Sales . The new department also took over the instruction of manual shop skills, including Carpentry and Metalworking .3 At the time, the department did not have its own building, and for many years was housed in Hammond building. In the 1980s, Penn State board members began to look to develop the area of campus on the west side of Atherton Street and in 1987, initial plans to construct a new engineering building were in place. The Penn State Board of Trustees funded the project in 1995 amid concerns of damaging the asthetics of the previously undeveloped west campus. Some trustees disapproved of the building design, but the board ultimately released $5 million from its fund dedicated to expanding west campus.4 In 1998, the project received additional funding from the State of Pennsylvania.5 The building opened in 2000 and was named for William E. Leonhard, a 1936 Penn State alumnus who with his wife has donated in excess of $1 million toward engineering at Penn State.6 In 1999, the department itself was named for Harold and Inge Marcus, a couple living in Seattle who donated $5 million to the department.7 In 2005, the department restructured the undergraduate industrial engineering curriculum for the first time in 21 years. Shifting its focus somewhat from its traditional Manufacturing emphasis, the new curriculum introduced several new introductory courses related to the Service Industry . An industry advisory board in conjunction with faculty helped guide the changes, mentioning Healthcare , Supply Chain s and E-commerce as service industry examples of where industrial engineers might be utilized. Under the new curriculum, students take a number of refactored courses, and are offered a choice between three separate subject tracks, allowing them to focus their major on manufacturing, the service industry, or Information Technology .89 FACILITIES Today, the main offices of the department are located in the Leonhard Building. The building has 95,200 square-feet on three main floors, and its exterior is made of brick, cast stone and glass. While the building contains some offices for mechanical engineering faculty and hosts a variety of engineering and non-engineering related classes, it primarily serves industrial engineering students and faculty. The building contains two large lecture halls and three smaller classrooms, a 24-hour computer lab, and undergraduate and graduate student lounges.10 The building also contains numerous research and instructional laboratories, including the Benjamin W. Niebel Work Design Laboratory,11 the Metrology Laboratory (equipped with Laser Micrometer s, Coordinate Measurement Machine s and a roundness testing gauge), |
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