Cleveland State Community College President Bill Seymour, left, and UTC Chancellor Steve Angle sign a new engineering/computer science agreement on Monday, Nov. 12.
UTC and Cleveland State Community College signed an agreement on Monday, Nov. 12, to create a relationship between each schools’ engineering and computer science programs.
The agreement sets up a system in which Cleveland State students who complete a two-year program at the college can transfer to UTC with an exact list of the courses and number of hours they need to earn a bachelor’s degree, says Ahad Nasab, head of the Department of Engineering Management and Technology and coordinator for the agreement.
The agreement covers all majors in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at UTC. A similar arrangement with Chattanooga State Community College also is close to being finalized, he says.
Joining forces with other schools is “community building and attracting students to our program,” Nasab says.
In another element, the agreements allows UTC students to use the mechatronics lab at Cleveland State. Mechatronics integrates computer technology, electronics and mechanics into a single system, for example, the robots that assemble cars at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga.
UTC’s mechatronics program started this semester—Nasab came from Middle Tennessee State University to help develop the program—and a lab is being put together but isn’t finished. Until it is, having access to Cleveland State’s facilities is very helpful for UTC students, Nasab says, and Chattanooga State has a similar mechatronics lab.
Discussions for similar agreements are underway with other colleges in the region, he says, including Dalton State, Covenant College and Roane State.
