What is CUSP™? (http://cusp.dl.umn.edu)
As the name implies, CUSP™ is a Consortium of Universities for Sustainable Power. This consortium will include universities that have come together to utilize, collectively evolve and promote the curriculum developed at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities with the help of funding from various organizations including NSF, ONR (Office of Naval Research), NASA and EPRI.
Our vision in creating this consortium is to create a global community of teaching/learning scholars whose mission is to provide a first-rate education in the field of Electric Energy Systems with an emphasis on sustainability.
CUSP™ Curriculum
This curriculum consists of the following 3 undergraduate courses (and 5 and more graduate-level courses in Power Electronics, Electric Drives, Power Systems, Power System Protection and Electric-Machine Design being developed, partially through ONR funding):
- Power Electronics
- Electric Machines and Drives, and
- Electric Power Systems
Hallmark of CUSP™ Curriculum
The hallmark of this curriculum is that each course offers most comprehensive resource to its user, who may decide to use it as appropriate. Please note that all the material (other than the hardware labs and the textbooks) can be downloaded free-of-charge by the consortium members.
Each course consists of the following:
(* Available only to consortium members)
- A list of Course Learning Objectives
- Textbook specifically written to fulfill these objectives
- Video clips for most lectures: approximately 30 such video clips, each an average of 15-minutes long with Captions. These high quality video clips explain the fundamentals in a rapid-fire manner, unlike the recording of in-class lectures.
- Slides used as a basis of the above video clips
- *Concept Quizzes that reinforce the fundamentals in the video
- *In-class discussion problems
- Hardware Lab with the Manual
- Software Lab with the Manual
- *Online Homework problems using Moodle (can be converted to another platform)
- *Forum for a dialog between Consortium members
Increasing Student Enrollments:
Now for several semesters, student enrollment in power-related senior-technical elective courses is averaging over 100 students per course, making power the most popular option in the Dept of ECE at the University of Minnesota.
Active Learning Classroom
