Olympic gold medalist to teach new introductory course

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Olympic medalist and EE alum Curtis Tomasevicz will teach a new introductory engineering class at UNL.
Olympic medalist and EE alum Curtis Tomasevicz will teach a new introductory engineering class at UNL.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is well-known for its athletic programs, which produce numerous world-class athletes, and for the College of Engineering, which provides a world-class education.

Now, there’s a class that will teach students about both worlds.

A Special Topics class -- BSEN 492 (Introduction to Engineering: Athletics) – will be offered for the first time in the spring semester 2015, which begins in January.

Don’t let the senior-level number sway your decision. This class is targeted to help freshman students prepare for careers in engineering and also for success in other college classes. Students will learn the basics of engineering, across multiple disciplines, and the realm of athletics will be used as a vehicle to teach those basics.

Curtis Tomasevicz, an Olympic gold medalist and former Husker football player who has both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from UNL, has been hired as a full-time lecturer and will teach both sections of the course. Those sections are on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – one from 9:30 a.m. to 10:20 a.m., and the other from 10:30 a.m. to 11:20 a.m.

“If you come to this class and you have a passion about sports and athletics, you don’t have to leave that passion behind to come to engineering,” said David Jones, the College of Engineering’s associate dean for undergraduate studies. “Through that lens we are going to show you how that is lived out across the breadth of engineering.

 The real meat of it is that we want to get these freshmen to be sophomore engineers. To do that, they need to have the skills, habits and practices that engineers have. We need to make sure they get that very foundation. It transcends all majors.”

“The real meat of it is that we want to get these freshmen to be sophomore engineers. To do that, they need to have the skills, habits and practices that engineers have. We need to make sure they get that very foundation. It transcends all majors.”



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