Visteon Automotive, one of the world's leading automotive suppliers, recently donated an Air Handling Control Subsystem to Kettering University's Bosch Automotive Electronic Systems Laboratory. This system, which is valued at $2,500, will help faculty and students perform tests on various environmental sensor inputs used on the heating and ventilation air control system for the 2001 Ford Explorer SUV.

Kettering celebrated this donation with a system demonstration on campus followed by a luncheon in the Gold Room of the Campus Center. Attendees included representatives from Visteon, Kettering faculty, staff and students.

Dr. Mark Thompson and Dr. Mohammad Torfeh, who serve as professors of Electrical and Computer Engineering and help oversee activities associated with the Bosch Automotive Electronic Systems Laboratory, both agree that this latest donation will enhance experiments conducted in the laboratory and provide students an opportunity to use the latest testing equipment available within the industry.

"From an educational standpoint, this system allows students to test exterior and interior environmental temperature sensors, as well as sunload sensors," Thompson said. "So students get a chance to engage in experiments that currently take place at companies like Visteon well before they graduate from Kettering."

Funded through a generous $750,000 grant by the Bosch Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH, and its affiliate company ETAS Inc., the Bosch Automotive Electronic Systems Laboratory represents one part of an ambitious Automotive Electronic Systems Initiative currently under development by Kettering's Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept.