As a chemical engineering graduate, class of '79 I've been anxious to get a look at the new Zachry Engineering Center. I still have a hard time believing that the old Zachry which was so modern and impressive to me as a fish so many years ago was deemed obsolete and replaced a few years ago. I finally got my chance this past Friday as I was in town for the game. What I saw walking through the new building couldn't have surprised me more.

The classrooms have glass walls so you can see into them. Instead of seeing professors deriving equations on white boards with their backs to the class I saw this:



Groups of students sitting around tables watching monitors while the professor lectured or wandered around. Some students seemed engaged, some were using their phones or talking with each other. I was lucky enough to find a professor who had a few minutes to talk. He said those tables are called pods and that's how it's done in the new Zachry. He said students could even access the course remotely.

Is this now the norm? Is this how college students are taught these days? After my tour I walked across the street to the Jack Brown Engineering center but classes were done for the day and the classrooms were closed but they didn't have glass walls so I couldn't see into them. Also, the professor I spoke with said all the engineering departments have their own buildings now, so what exactly is Zachry used for?

Zachry was completed after I finished my grad school in engineering. Taught the traditional way. Lecture, tests, labs, final exam, and work. I toured the new Zachry when it was dedicated and is an all instructional facility for all of engineering. No depts are located in the building. It is a heavy on technology, labs, and personal learning.

I also have toured the actual class rooms and visited with students working engineering problems in the study areas. They were grinding and I smiled. Real work holding a pencil and solving the problems on paper. They looked familiar.

In other classes there was heavy use of a lap top solving complex problems like stress analysis. We did it the old fashioned way with pencil and paper.

Well thank you HoustonAg. The professor I spoke with also said that none of the engineering departments are housed there (but he told me that Dr. Banks has her office there).

So what was seeing wasn't any kind of lab, at least one that I recognized. So I guess it was some kind of hands on instruction? What kind of course would be an example of that?

I graduated with a BS in civil engineering in 2021. Most of my classes my last 2 years were in Zachary and were almost all lectures. I can only recall having 1 lab in Zachary, and it was for an electrical engineering circuit class. The ones that weren't in Zach were a mix of lectures and labs; those lectures were in a more traditional lecture hall. There didn't seem to be an obvious reason why some classes where in Zach and others weren't, so I would guess either it comes down to the professor's preference or it's random.

Overall I wasn't a fan of the classroom layout you took a picture of, I would much prefer a lecture hall. It felt less engaging as you weren't looking at the professor in most situations, and it was just too convenient to not pay attention. It was nice during exams as you had way more desk space than those stupid little flip up desks in lecture halls.

My last semester there I was told the Civil department was going to move into Zachary, but I guess that changed based on what you were told.

Our first semester the wife had to TA a EE lab for non EE's. She found one student in tears during a three phase power lab and asked what was wrong. The student responded, "every time I connect these wires I get electrocuted."

We've had fun with what her response should have been for over thirty years.

Good times in Zachary. We lived in the ISSE Lab.

You must be talking about the power lab that was in the basement. I remember there was a three phase motor and generator down there and some large wire connector boards on the wall that had major black arcing marks all over them. The TA wouldn't let us touch anything. I always thought that, coupled with the black streaks all over those panels, was hillarious. This was 1996 era.