The Department of Electrical Engineering, Automation and Computing is the successor of the Radiotelegraphy Division founded in 1956 at the College of Maritime Studies in Rijeka. During that one-year study, the Division trained highly qualified radio operators with a good knowledge of maritime radio communications and marine electronics, trained to operate and maintain marine radio communication and navigation devices.
According to the regulations of the time and the stage of technological development, this included sending and receiving messages by using the Morse code. After graduation, students boarded ships as trainees - telegraph assistants.
In the early 1960s, the Radiotelegraphy Division began a two-year study program.
With the establishment of the Faculty of Maritime Studies and Transport, the Department of Maritime Telecommunications continued to train radio telegraphists at the level of a two-year study, but with the persistent efforts to make it a four-year study of maritime communications and marine electronics due to increasingly complex radio communication, navigation, and other ship's electronic devices that developed rapidly and spread throughout all ship's systems.
In line with the trends in the development of maritime communications and the growing scope and importance of electronic and power engineering devices on board, in 1980, the Department had launched a four-year university study of maritime communications and marine electronics.
In 1990, there were done some structural changes to the four-semester study program; it became a five-semester study program with a special emphasis on the maintenance and servicing of marine electronics, power engineering and automation. In 2005, the first generation of students enrolled Electronic and Information Technologies in Maritime Studies, according to the new program harmonized with the Bologna Declaration. The study programs have been raised to the level of university studies and supplemented with contents that are in line with the latest trends in the development of marine electronics, strongly entering into the field of information sciences.
After completing a three-year undergraduate study in the academic year 2008/2009, in 2010, for the first time the students were allowed to enrol in a two-year graduate study, therefore, in 2010 the first generation of masters of electrical engineering graduated from the Faculty of Maritime Studies with the possibility of enrolling a doctoral study.
The development of study programs becomes permanent, all in order to prepare current and future experts for modern technologies and new forms of maritime business and to provide all successful participants with the appropriate authorizations, essential for boarding ships as electrical engineers. Thus, the current undergraduate study program contains the IMO Model Course 7.08 program for electrical engineering officers' education, which is based on the STCW 1978 convention.
The Department's field of work includes teaching, professional and scientific activities in electrical engineering, automation and informatics in maritime affairs, i.e. electrical, computer, communication and navigation technologies applicable on modern ships and on land, in ports, shipping companies and the maritime economy as a whole.
Specialized communication simulators and several laboratories with specific equipment are used in teaching processes.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
