Tours Take Engineering Students Out of Classroom

Merrimack College engineering students are getting out of the classroom and touring local facilities to learn about possible engineering careers and professional practices first-hand.

Electrical Engineering Students Visit Raytheon

Ten Merrimack College Electrical Engineering students recently visited the Raytheon facility in Andover, Mass. on a tour organized by Timothy Coughlin, president of the student chapter of (IEEE) at Merrimack. The students were guided through the facility by Daniel Coughlin ’09 (Timothy’s brother) and Robert McCarthy ’09 – both Merrimack graduates and current employees of Raytheon. Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Merrimack William Bowhers accompanied the students as they witnessed printed circuit board manufacturing, e-ray inspection, system tests, in-flight reliability and ground based radar assembly operations.

“A tour like this helps the students see the wide range of opportunity that exists for electrical engineering majors,” said Bowhers. “Raytheon did a great job of organizing the tour with a different electrical engineer from each department sharing his and her knowledge and excitement about work within each field.”

Civil Engineering Students Tour Green Manufacturing Facility

Fifteen civil engineering seniors recently took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Mark Richey Woodworking manufacturing plant in Newburyport, MA on a field trip for an Environmental Design Class, led by Adjunct Professor Doug Leaffer. The students viewed the industry's first clean-burning biomass furnace in Massachusetts, which heats 80,000 square feet of the company's 130,000 square foot facility using sawdust and wood chip by-products from the company's millwork, and nearly eliminates the consumption of fossil fuel for heating.

"The opportunity for Merrimack seniors to tour the woodworking industry's first clean-burning biomass furnace in Massachusetts offered a unique perspective for young engineers to consider alternative energy design as a viable and growing component of civil engineering projects they will soon be involved with as graduates."

Photo Caption: Merrimack College Adjunct Professor of Civil Engineering Doug Leaffer (sixth from left, beneath sign), Greg Porfido, Chief Operating Officer (at center of photo), and Mark Richey, President, with students from the Environmental Design class at Merrimack.