With my staff colleagues, I created a new course to serve undergraduates and grad students from our department, as well as students from programs around our campus. Engineering for Entertainment covers structural engineering, rigging systems, fluid power, tracked wagons, motorized winches, stage lifts, turntables, and automation control systems and for live events. We took advantage of our program’s unique strengths in these technologies and carefully built a structure for the course that could accommodate students from a broad range of backgrounds, and levels of experience. The course is offered each year and is team-taught by two of our production staff.
I also worked with the faculty in the School of Engineering to include this course as a technical elective for Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering students. This cooperative agreement speaks to the quality of the course and was an essential part of making it feasible for MAE students to include it in their already packed schedules. This course is part of the MFA Design curriculum as well as the Entertainment Design and Technology minor and counts as an elective for the BA Theatre program. To increase visibility, I created a website to share with interested students.
click to view syllabus as PDF
click to visit course flyer website