Articles

Electrical Engineering manual authored by HCC team eases path for fledgling engineering students

Jan 13, 2026

HCC student Hector Villasana and full-time faculty member Dr. Reem Salim display the experimental lab manual that they wrote.

A major hurdle for students  wanting to jump into engineering is finding simple experiments accessible to beginners.

That’s why two members in the Engineering Department Houston City College (HCC) Northwest  have sought to ease this barrier by creating a manual of lab experiments for novice learners.

Reem Salim, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and her colleague, Hector Villasana, lab assistant and current student, have written an experimental lab manual titled “Electric Circuit” that includes 31 practical lab exercises for engineering students.

The idea for the manual came after the course ENGR 2405 - Electric Circuits was split into two sections. Previously, the course lectures included five labs throughout the entire semester.

“But they were not well-written and were taken from other universities,” Dr. Salim said.

A decision was made to split ENGR 2405 into a three-hour lecture and a one-hour lab section, and the two were asked to develop additional experiments for the 16-week course.

During the college’s winter break, Villasana asked Dr. Salim if he could develop a manual containing 15 experiments to supplement 11 labs, quizzes and exams throughout the semester.

She acceded to his request. Together, they compiled experiments and matched them to lectures to end up with the 31 experiments. The two ensured the experiments were accessible to new engineering learners.

Villasana, who is majoring in electrical engineering, wanted to develop a manual that would begin with simple engineering concepts before eventually delving into more complex topics like engineering laws, circuit elements, circuit analysis and more.

“We didn’t expect to have that many, but one idea came after another,” Dr. Salim said.

They piloted the manual during the Spring 2025 semester and found that each experiment merged well with all the topics covered in lectures. Each lecture now includes three to five experiments.

The manual was so successful that Dr. Salim and Villasana reached out to different publishers and ultimately partnered with educational publisher Kendall Hunt. The publisher may choose to market the manual to other universities and colleges.

“We didn’t care about how much royalties we were going to get from it,” the professor said. “We just want the manual to be used.”

“It’s building off what we’re teaching during the lectures. So, whatever we teach in the lectures, these experiments relate to that,”  Dr. Salim explained. “If you do something with your hands, the information just sticks and you understand the concepts better.”