WIP: Advancing Scholarly Pursuits Within Standard Curriculum Through the Ocean County College Honors by Contract Program

This Work in Progress (WIP) paper is about the innovative practice for providing community college students access to advanced and specialized topics in a community college setting. The Ocean County College Honors by Contract program allows eligible students to work individually with faculty members on higher-level educational activities related to course objectives while enrolled in a regular course. This paper written jointly from the perspective of the Engineering & Industrial/Technical Studies program chair and a student will provide an example of access to biomedical engineering well ahead of what would have happened after the completion of the associate's degree in engineering, then transfer to a four-year program that specializes in biomedical engineering. Through this program, the student can pursue focused projects relating to their interests in fields where there can be a connection but not a full course available. In this paper we will highlight the initial project “IMPLANTABLE MYOELECTRIC PROSTHESIS (IMES)” that allowed the student to research the topic then utilize CAD skills to start a multi-semester extracurricular project that will look at materials, mechanical and electrical design for this bio-mechanical device. This initial project will benefit additional students as the later phases will be implemented through the Engineering club. All Engineering Club projects are executed with industry quality methodology: Customer contract, formal requirements, high level design, detailed design, build and manufacturing, and formal verification testing. Later Honors by Contract projects for this student, are allowing her to study the general theory and application of mathematics to Electrocardiogram (ECG) and Electroencephalography (EEG). Overall, students are expected to do at least four Honor by Contract courses, after which they may graduate with honors. In addition to this acknowledgement of their academic strength, the direct access to personalized academics and indepth work with their sponsoring instructor energizes their pursuit of our degree and those that will follow. (Abstract)