| Teams of undergraduate students
have finished building key elements of a pharmaceutical manufacturing line
to be used in reaching out to high school students as part of an academic
program supported by the NSF-funded Center for Structured Organic Particulate
Systems (CSOPS), an Engineering Research Center (ERC) based at Rutgers
University and with Purdue University as one of the Center partner institutions.
The overall goal of the Center's
student teams is to design and build a table-top manufacturing line that
demonstrates the operations involved in producing a pharmaceutical tablet.
The system will be used to introduce high school students to pharmaceutical
manufacturing and pique their interest in the field. The demonstrator
operations include blending, roller compaction, milling, and tableting.
As of late 2009, the CSOPS student teams have designed and built a blender
and are nearing completion of a mill. They have also finished preliminary
designs for a roller compactor.
The effort is part of Purdue
University's Engineering Projects in Community Service, a for-credit effort
in which teams of undergraduates design, build, and deploy real systems
to solve engineering-based problems for local community service and education
organizations. Each of the teams has a multi-year partnership with
a community service or education organization. Projects are in four
broad areas: human services, access and abilities, education and outreach,
and the environment. Students earn one or two academic credits each
semester and may register for up to four years. Projects may last
several years, and so can be of significant size and impact.
CSOPS has also contributed
support to four teaching assistants, faculty advising time for four professors
across multiple semesters, and project supplies. This program shows
the full-circle impact of education and outreach at an ERC, with the mentoring
of the undergraduate students by the faculty, and then of K-12 students
and teachers by the undergraduates. |
