2007 EECT Division Meeting

ISA CAP Workshop a Success

A 4-hour ISA Certified Automation Professional (CAP) workshop was held on Wednesday afternoon of the 40th Annual NAIT Convention in Panama City, Florida. The workshop provided details on ISA's CAP program including application procedures, prerequisites, CAP domains and technical categories, and CAP examination information. Each participant received a CAP study guide from ISA (a $35 value). The EECT would like to thank Dr. Gerald Cockrell of Indiana State University for presenting this workshop.
 

From the President
NEWS from the Spring 2007 Executive Board Meeting

I am excited to report that the NAIT Executive Board tackled some very important issues that I advocated for on behalf of EECT and our NAIT organization recently in Ann Arbor, Michigan. These important issues included:

1. The Board approved a motion to change the name of our Selected Papers to Proceedings Papers. This was done to better align our conference proceedings terminology with other similar national organizations.
   
   
2. The Board approved a motion to allow the Journal of Industrial Technology (JIT) to automatically review the accepted Conference Proceedings Papers for potential publication in the journal. The JIT Board is considering developing a special issue of the JIT aimed at highlighting the best conference papers (i.e. The JIT Conference Edition) where the JIT might invite the author(s) to develop and/or revise a paper of interest to the Journal. The motion enables the JIT Board to explore this option more effectively.
   
   
3. The Board approved a motion that directs the NAIT home office to explore a future joint conference with the International Journal of Modern Engineers (IJME) and their INTERTECH partner journals. To learn more about this organization, please visit http://www.ijme.us/index.htm. Someday soon, I hope that our members will be able to attend a joint NAIT/IJME Conference where our members will be able to travel to a single location and present potentially in two different conferences. Longer term potential is that our members will not only have their proceeding papers reviewed by the JIT, but by the other six journals that currently sponsor the IJME/INTERTECH Conference/Organization.
   
   
4. The Board approved a motion asking our NAIT Accreditation Board (Independent Board) to investigate and develop a set of common core competencies that consider the content reflected on the Certified Industrial Technologist (CIT) exam. This motion seeks to try and close the gap between our current certification required content and our accreditation procedures. Currently it is possible for a school to be accredited by NAIT without that program showing basic evidence of competency in the certification exam content. We need to close this gap and make sure that we prepare our students to be successful in our certification process. The motion also seeks to better organize our identity as an organization. Although we enjoy the flexibility of our technical options based on regional needs, it is important to define our field if we are to articulate who and what we are to those around us.
   

Pictured below is the robot, called Magnet Finder 1 (MF-1), that beat all the competition in the tele-operated and fully-autonomous robotic manipulator contest. The goal of the competition was for the manipulator to sense and find a magnet in the sand, and place a steel NAIT pin on it. The MF-1 utilized a metal detector, a digital compass and a vision system along with three separate wireless control frequencies (Vision, Compass Data and Drive/Actuator).

The complete grading rubric can be viewed by clicking here.

Winning team members include: Emily Colburn, Heather Heltzinger, Josh Hosier, John Jenkins, Juan Rodriguez, Greg Schmell, Ale Sgro, Stephen Sickel, and Matt Wince.