The Master of Engineering in Particle Technology program at the University of Delaware was originally conceived as a conventional residential instructional program.  Early in our first year (2014), we received a request from a working engineer in Vermont,400 miles distant, to complete the program remotely.  Realizing that employed engineers represented a significant market for the program, we implemented changes in how we delivered our courses to allow simultaneous attendance by residential and remote students.  In this talk, I will discuss those changes and the tools (hardware and software) we used to facilitate hybrid instruction.  Overall, we found the conversion to be flexible to teaching style, inexpensive, and simple to implement.

Perhaps the most significant lesson we learned was that providing education in particle technology to working engineers is an important and largely unmet need.  Most working engineers are unable to take full courses on an academic schedule, therefore other channels for delivering content need to be developed.  I will describe a “straw man” for one approach that is being prototyped by the International Fine Particle Research Institute (IFPRI).

Prof. Jim Michaels worked at Merck & Co. for twenty-one years, where he established and directed an industry leading center of excellence in materials science and particle technology.  This department supported all product sectors at Merck, including small molecules, vaccines and biologics, sterile products, consumer care, and animal health.  He retired from Merck in 2014 to join the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware.  At UD, he joined Bert Diemer to develop, teach, and direct the Masters of Engineering in Particle Technology program.  Jim is also Vice President of the International Fine Particle Research Institute, responsible for administering IFPRI’s global research program.  He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and an Sc.D. from M.I.T., all in chemical engineering.