» TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES
Technical Committee on Control Education
I
got the call at 5:30 a.m. that an essen-
tial member of the team tested posi-
tive for COVID-19. We were ready
to deploy, but without this skilled
technician, the project was in peril.
The team had assembled in Louisiana
for a helicopter flight to a deep-water
offshore platform in the Gulf of Mex-
ico. As a member of a team of consul-
tants, technicians, and managers, we
had double-checked the people and
equipment needed to install a first-of-
a-kind monitoring system. This was
the culmination of years of planning
and months of work to prepare for the
limited time window when we could
travel into a ballast tank confined
space and perform the delicate sen-
sor installation. During the height of
­COVID-19, we were required to quar-
antine for five long days of isolation in
a hotel before the travel.
Everything was going as planned—
until we received the call that the as-
ymptomatic technician had tested
positive. It was a substantial mobili-
zation effort, and delaying the project
would be a significant setback. The
project manager did not want to delay
the project and immediately went to
work to find online training resources.
Within a day, this project manager had
acquired enough knowledge to fill the
role of the missing team member. Re-
flecting on the success of the project,
the outcome depended on a critical
point when it appeared that it couldn’t
go forward because of a skill gap. The
combination of resourcefulness, con-
fidence, and online training resources
enabled the project success. Like the
project manager who took the initiative
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2022.3209054
Date of current version: 4 November 2022
14  IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS  »  DECEMBER 2022
to learn, one of the most important
skills that an engineer develops is the
confidence and ability to learn new
skills. The availability of online learn-
ing modules gave him confidence to go
ahead with the project (Figure 1).
The mission of the IEEE Control
Systems Society (CSS) TC on Control
Education is to introduce control and
support lifelong learning. The TC
promotes control as a field that spans
science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics. It provides students at
all levels (including precollege, under-
graduate, graduate, and postgraduate)
the opportunity to explore the world
of control engineering.
Programming jobs are expected to
grow three times faster than other oc-
cupations (+22% growth) over the next
decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of
Labor. Process control, instrumentation,
and systems engineering are careers
that use programming to measure,
communicate, automate, and regulate.
To support those in the workforce, ac-
cessible resources are needed on topics
of relevance. There is a strong need for
education resources to support uni-
versity instructors and students in the
introduction of process control. Univer-
sity instructors need drop-in modular
FIGURE 1 An imperiled project turned into a success because of online learning resources.
materials to enrich course plans. Uni-
versity students need introductory ma-
terials to supplement learning in the
classroom. Most university programs
have one course on dynamics and con-
trol that is focused on teaching the ba-
sic principles. A map of control theory
(see Figure 2) is a high-level overview
of the many other topics that can be
used to analyze, plan, and implement
automation strategies.
The IEEE CSS TC on Control Edu-
cation is focused on three current ob-
jectives for 2022–2023:
»» curate online learning resources
» » promote hands-on laboratory
experiences
»» support and develop the control
education community.
Each of these three areas is described
in the following sections, with TC
activities. Readers with an interest in
control education are encouraged to
contribute by attending TC meetings,
sharing resources, organizing educa-
tion-focused conference sessions, and
providing survey feedback.
CURATE ONLINE RESOURCES
The IEEE CSS TC on Control Educa-
tion collaborates with the IFAC TC on
Control Education (led by Antonio
Visioli) and the American Automatic
Control Council TC on Control Edu-
cation (led by Daniel Abramovitch).
The TCs seek to curate information on
freely available learning and teaching
resources for the first course in con-
trol. The aim is to provide a website
where instructors can get an over-
view of free and modular resources
to adopt with their own students.
The resources are freely accessible,
with many available for download
via a URL. Additional links can be
added to https://tinyurl.com/control-
resources as an ongoing collection of
resources. Reports of the survey are
available from Rossiter et al. [1] and
Serbezov et al. [2].
Another initiative is https://­
resourcium.org, an education resource
FIGURE 2 A map of control theory segmented by control methods, planning, state estimation, modeling and simulation, and system
stability. (Source: Brian Douglas, Engineering Media, https://engineeringmedia.com/map-of-control; used with permission.)
compendium that is hosted by Brian
Douglas (Figure 3). Resourcium is a
collection of automation and control
resources, such as videos, websites,
control hardware, and simulators.
The website has a concept of journeys,
which are ordered lists of resourc-
es on a particular topic that can be
shared among instructors or given
to learners on a guided path. A full
search of the resources and journeys
in the database is available by clicking
the search button in a blank search
field. The topics can be explored in
the navigation menu.
HANDS-ON LABORATORY
EXPERIENCES
The committee organizes workshops
and special sessions on education,
bringing academia and industry
together to facilitate learning experi-
ences to attract students to control engi-
neering. In addition to her service as the
general chair for the 2022 American Con-
trol Conference (ACC), Bonnie Ferri
organized a special session to high-
light small portable experiments that
conference participants built for educa-
tion or research purposes. A curated
list is archived as an open resource for
other instructors searching for experi-
mental labs. Each contribution describes
fundamental concepts being demon-
strated or explored and sample experi-
ments or projects that are done with the
experiment. Bonnie developed hands-
on learning and portable experiments
in electrical and computer engineering
courses and was awarded the 2022
DECEMBER 2022  «  IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS  15
 John R. Ragazzini Education Award
for contributions to control education.
Another contribution from the com-
mittee to hands-on laboratory experi-
ences is the temperature control lab
with an Arduino, LED, two heaters, and
two temperature sensors (Figure 4). The
heater power output is adjusted to main-
tain a desired temperature setpoint.
This pocket-sized lab has interfaces
with Python, Matlab, and Simulink for
teaching control theory for university
students and professionals. This open
source community lab has been repli-
cated 10,000 times and is used at 70 uni-
versities to teach dynamics and control.

SUPPORT AND DEVELOP

FIGURE 3 The resourcium.org collection of automation and control resources, organized
by topic and journeys.
THE CONTROL EDUCATION
COMMUNITY
The IEEE CSS TC on Control Educa-
tion meets twice per year with the
ACC and IEEE Conference on Deci-
sion and Control (Figure 5). The com-
mittee organizes the semiannual
meetings as a platform to promote the
control field. Visit the group page for
more information and to join the TC
meetings: http://ieeecss.org/technical
-committee/tc-control-education.

There is a new
LinkedIn group
for the IEEE CSS
TC on Cont rol
FIGURE 4 The TC is expanding the use of portable, inexpensive control labs, such as the Edu c a t i o n a t
temperature control lab. ht t p s://w w w.
l i n ked i n.com/
groups/14058224/ with 312 members.
Join the online group to receive an-
nouncements, share content, and lead
important initiatives for the control
education community.
John Hedengren

FIGURE 5 Join the IEEE Control Systems Society TC on Control Education.
REFERENCES
[1] J. A. Rossiter, A. Visioli, A. Serbezov, J. D.
Hedengren, B. Douglas, and K. Zakova, “Open
access resources to support learning of control
engineering,” in Proc. Eur. Control Conf. (ECC),
London, U.K., Jul. 11–14, 2022, pp. 1–6, doi:
10.23919/ECC55457.2022.9838096.
[2] A. Serbezov, K. Zakova, A. Visioli, J. A. Ros-
siter, B. Douglas, and J. D. Hedengren, “Open
access resources to support the first course in
feedback, dynamics and control,” in Proc. Adv.
Control Educ., Hamburg, Germany, Jul. 24–27,
2022, pp. 1–6.

16  IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS  »  DECEMBER 2022