{"id":321,"date":"2019-02-08T16:01:15","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T21:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/?page_id=321"},"modified":"2026-05-26T15:49:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T19:49:24","slug":"teaching","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teaching<\/h1>\n

This is my 14th year teaching at Western Carolina University.\u00a0 I have taught courses to freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and graduate students in a variety of different sub-disciplines of mechanical engineering.\u00a0 Overall, I have taught 76 courses with 23 different courses titles.\u00a0 Details on select courses are shown below.<\/h3>\n

ENGR 331 - Design for Manufacturing<\/strong>
This course teaches Seniors in Engineering about manufacturing methods and how knowledge of these principles can be used to improve product design.\u00a0 A multitude of design for assembly (DFA) and design for manufacturability (DFM) principles are employed.\u00a0 The course has individual projects and group projects focusing on design optimization to enhance product performance and reduce cost.\u00a0 Worst-case and statistical stack up tolerance analysis and Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) calculations are performed to ensure that the overall design can be assembled properly without fit problems.<\/p>\n

ET 141 - Engineering Materials and Processes<\/strong>
This course is targeted for Freshman.\u00a0 Students learn about different materials used by engineers to produce products and the processed used to shape them.\u00a0 Content includes crystal structures, equilibrium diagrams, ASIS\/SAE steel designation system, heat treatment, and general properties of a variety of different materials.\u00a0 Processes include hot working, cold working, rolling, drawing, extruding, casting, milling, turning, laser cutting, water jet cutting, EDM, etc.\u00a0 The course includes lecture and hands on laboratory activities.<\/p>\n

ET 593 - Simulation and Analysis of Engineering Systems
<\/strong>Three elements are necessary for a thorough understanding of an engineering system; 1) a solid theoretical foundation and a thorough understanding of the engineering principles pertaining to the problem; 2) well developed computer simulations based on sound theory that take into account complex system interaction, and 3) real world experiments that confirm the computer simulations. This course is designed to provide engineering students with the conceptual foundation and technical skills needed to understand and predict behavior of engineering systems. Students will learn how to create mathematical models of various engineering systems and use MATLAB to run computer simulations and predict system performance.\u00a0 The early portion of the course will focus on understanding the concepts of mathematical modeling and learning basic computer techniques to perform the simulations. \u00a0The latter portion of the course will focus on applications of these basic principles, independent research to learn additional techniques applicable to the student\u2019s specific project, and advanced techniques presented in the course.<\/span><\/p>\n

ET 660 - Innovation in Engineering Design<\/strong>
This graduate level course enhances students' understanding of innovation in product and process design. The course introduces several techniques to enhance innovation in engineering.\u00a0 Each day an assignment is given to lead students through the creative design process.\u00a0 The initial assignment is to invent a new product, process or service.\u00a0 Through later assignments the idea is develops applying principles learned at each lesson to their original creative idea.\u00a0 Class time includes small group discussion to help each student develop their projects and discuss the design details.<\/p>\n

ET 662 - Lean Six Sigma for Manufacturing and Design<\/strong>
This graduate level course will introduce students to the principle of lean manufacturing and six sigma quality. The course will begin with a discussion of Lean<\/u> principles with a focus on how to use these principles to improve the flow of a manufacturing process and reduce waste.\u00a0 \u00a0Next, we develop a fundamental understanding of product variability and statistics.\u00a0 With this foundation, we learn to apply six sigma<\/u> (6s) techniques to improve a manufacturing process. The course will then shift form manufacturing to design where statistical methods are used to determine stack-up tolerances that take into account variability of multiple component systems.\u00a0 Finally, the course will close with a study of Design for Six Sigma Manufacturability<\/u> (DFSS).\u00a0 The course will include several projects to practice the skills learned.<\/p>\n

ET 688 - Directed Projects<\/strong>
This course is designed for graduate student who work full time and are enrolled on the graduate program and taking classes in the evening.\u00a0 Students apply principles learned in other courses to a real problem at their workplace.\u00a0 \u00a0Students propose a project, perform that activities, and report on the progress to their project adviser.\u00a0 The Project adviser assist the students with challenges and guides the student work ensuring proper depth and focus.<\/p>\n

ET 332 - Strength of Materials<\/strong>
This course is designed to introduce engineering technology students to the concepts and techniques needed to solve deformable body problems.\u00a0 Students will build upon the problem solving skills developed in their statics course where they solved rigid body stationary problems to now include stationary deformable bodies.\u00a0 Fundamental principles of stress, strain, elasticity, material strength and stress concentrations will be explored.\u00a0 These concepts will be applied to solve axial, torsional, beam and, combined loading problems.<\/p>\n

ENGR 350 - Principles and Practice III<\/strong>
This course is the third is a series of course in the engineering project-based learning core at WCU.\u00a0 The course guides Juniors through the product development process taking into account engineering design principles including integration of business requirements.\u00a0 Content includes idea conception, researching and pitching an idea, product planning, identification of customer needs, product specifications, development of conceptual designs, down-selection, concept testing, and design for manufacturability.\u00a0 Special topics on professional, ethical, global, environmental, and contemporary issues are also included.<\/p>\n

ENGR 400 & 450 - Engineering Project Management Lab<\/strong>
The last two course in the engineering project-based learning core at WCU is a two semester senior design project.\u00a0 Each team of students develop an engineered product or process for an external customer.\u00a0 Every team works on a different project and has a customer contact and a faculty mentor.\u00a0 Every year I have mentored anywhere from one to three teams.\u00a0 As a faculty mentor, I teach the students how to interact professionally during our weekly teleconference with the customer.\u00a0 I assist with the design process and provide specialized technical training when needed.\u00a0 The course includes, development of customer requirement, conceptual designs, design reviews, customer specifications, detailed design, prototype development, prototype testing, design optimization, and a final public presentation.<\/p>\n

Other Courses<\/strong>
Additional course include\u00a0the following:\u00a0 ENGR 190 \u201cTechnology Systems\u201d, ENGR 211 \u201cMaterial Science\u201d, ET 333 \u201cStrength of Materials Lab\u201d, ET 352\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cFundamentals of Thermal Engineering and Applied Thermodynamics\u201d, ET 389 \u201cCooperative Education\u201d,\u00a0ET 420 \u201cAdvanced Engineering Materials\u201d, ET 425 \u201cMetrology and Reverse Engineering\u201d,\u00a0ET 461 \u201cEngineering Project Management Lab\u201d, ET 471 \u201cEngineering Project Management Lab\u201d,\u00a0ET 493-50 \u201cSpecial Topics: Engineering Biomechanics\u201d, ET 593-02 \u201cSpecial Topics: Simulation and Analysis of Engineering Systems\u201d, ET 593-80 \u201cSpecial Topics: Design for Six Sigma Manufacturability\u201d, ET 680 \u201cIndependent Study\u201d,\u00a0ET 688 \u201cDirected Project\u201d,\u00a0ET 698 \u201cComprehensive Exam: Thesis Defense\u201d,\u00a0ET 699 \u201cGraduate Student Thesis\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-321","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2700,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/321\/revisions\/2700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/mtanaka\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}