Materials Science: 10 Things Every Engineer Should Know on Coursera

Online

Created by UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education and hosted on the Coursera platform, this is an online course consisting of pre-recorded video lectures, auto-graded and peer-reviewed assignments and community discussion forums. This specialization program is self-paced and designed to help you master a specific career skill in as little as 4-6 months.

We explore “10 things” that range from the menu of materials available to engineers in their profession to the many mechanical and electrical properties of materials important to their use in various engineering fields. We also discuss the principles behind the manufacturing of those materials.

By the end of this self-paced course, you will be able to:

Recognize the important aspects of the materials used in modern engineering applications,
Explain the underlying principle of materials science: “structure leads to properties,”
Identify the role of thermally activated processes in many of these important “things” – as illustrated by the Arrhenius relationship, and
Relate each of these topics to issues that have arisen (or potentially could arise) in your life and work.

Section Number

000SWW100

Instruction Method

Online class

Section Notes

Enrollments are accepted on a continuous basis. For more information on Coursera online courses, including enrollment policies and technical requirements, please visit https://www.coursera.org/about/terms.

Enroll Now

Fee

Free and low-cost options available

Schedule

Enroll at any time and complete at your own pace.

Instructors

James Shackelford

James Shackelford has BS and MS degrees in Ceramic Engineering from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University in Canada, he joined the University of California, Davis, where he is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. For many years, he served as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the College of Engineering and later as the Director of the University Honors Program that serves students from a wide spectrum of majors. Dr. Shackelford also served as Associate Director for Education for the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology (CBST) and as Faculty Assistant to the Director of the McClellan Nuclear Research Center (MNRC) of UC Davis. He teaches and conducts research in the structural characterization and processing of materials, focusing on glasses and biomaterials. His current focus in teaching is doing so through online technologies. A member of the American Ceramic Society and ASM International, he was named a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society in 1992, was named a Fellow of ASM International in 2011, and received the Outstanding Educator Award of the American Ceramic Society in 1996. In 2003, he received a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Academic Senate of the University of California, Davis. In 2012, he received the Outstanding Teaching Award of the College of Engineering at UC Davis, and, in 2014, received an Outstanding Service Award from the UC Davis Division of Continuing and Professional Education. He has published well over 100 archived papers and books including Introduction to Materials Science for Engineers now in its 8th Edition and which has been translated into Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.