Attracting and Retaining a Diverse Cohort of Engineering Majors: Building a Program from the Ground Up (original) (raw)
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The Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education: A Review of Results and Resources
Today's engineering graduates will solve tomorrow's problems in a world that is advancing faster and facing more critical challenges than ever before. This situation creates significant demand for engineering education to evolve in order to effectively prepare a diverse community of engineers for these challenges. Such concerns have led to the publication of visionary reports that help orient the work of those committed to the success of engineering education. Research in engineering education is central to all of these visions. The Need Research on the student experience is fundamental to informing the evolution of engineering education. A broad understanding of the engineering student experience involves thinking about diverse academic pathways, navigation of these pathways, and decision points-how students choose engineering programs, navigate through their programs, and then move on to jobs and careers. Further, looking at students' experiences broadly entails not just thinking about their learning (i.e., skill and knowledge development in both technical and professional areas) but also their motivation, their identification with engineering, their confidence, and their choices after graduation. In actuality, there is not one singular student experience, but rather many experiences. Research on engineering student experiences can look into systematic differences across demographics, disciplines, and campuses; gain insight into the experiences of underrepresented students; and create a rich portrait of how students change from first year through graduation. Such a broad understanding of the engineering student experience can serve as inspiration for designing innovative curricular experiences that support the many and varied pathways that students take on their way to becoming an engineer.
Connecting Incoming Freshmen With Engineering Through Hands-On Projects
American Journal of Engineering Education (AJEE), 2011
Engineering programs suffer a high attrition rate, which causes the nation to graduate much less engineers. A survey of the literature reveals that the high attrition rate is due mainly to the fact that the first year of an engineering program is all fundamental theory and students don't see the connection to their future engineering careers. To address this problem, educators in the Roy G. Perry College of Engineering at Prairie View A&M University launched a five-week summer camp entitled "College of Engineering Enhancement Institute (CE 2 I)" aimed at improving the performance of incoming freshmen in mathematics by one level and a smoother transition between high school and college. Each department in the college participated by introducing their individual curriculum through hands-on projects designed by faculty members. Computer Engineering, Computer Science and Computer Engineering Technology programs implemented multimedia projects to tie the incoming freshman to their selected majors. Results show that the camp met the expectations and successfully points the directions for our future engineering education practices.
Forging New Links: Integrating The Freshman Engineering Curriculum
2001 Annual Conference Proceedings
The School of Engineering at Western New England College is redesigning its traditional core curriculum to provide Freshman engineering students with a more integrated and challenging educational experience. We began this evolutionary process by creating two new courses for the Fall 2000 semester-a new four credit hour course called Introduction to Engineering and a one credit hour Engineering Seminar. The content of the new Introduction to Engineering course focused on learning the engineering design process and some of the tools (such as graphics, CAD, and various computer packages) needed to support that design process. This course was designed with a significant portion of its content devoted to hands on exposure to engineering design. The students experienced the entire design process twice during the Fall semester using RoboLabï›› by LEGO-DACTA as a platform to solve engineering problems. In the one credit hour Engineering Seminar, students learned strategies needed to be a successful engineering student (such as time management, test taking strategies, and oral and written communication skills) and were acquainted with various aspects of the engineering profession through trips to local industry and seminars given by practicing engineers. The Introduction to Engineering course was broken into four identical sections, each with fewer than 25 students enrolled. The faculty member teaching the section also served as the academic advisor for the students, allowing the faculty members to better advise students on their academic and professional pursuits. Faculty coordination and cooperation were cornerstones to the successful delivery of course materials. The new courses and curriculum structure were a success because the freshmen were able to demonstrate an understanding and ability to use the design process to solve engineering design problems.
Core Engineering Renaissance At Rensselaer: Engineering Discovery A Pilot First Year Course
2005 Annual Conference Proceedings
Introduction and Motivation Are engineering schools meeting the needs of today's young women and men not just to study engineering, but to become engineers? Are they showing young students, even before they enter college, what it means to be an engineer and how engineers can help people and contribute to society? Do our young students share with us in the responsibility for their education and are they prepared for a process of lifelong learning necessary for the technical leadership required to face an unpredictable future? Do engineering students view the required fundamental courses in science, mathematics, and social science as disconnected courses that must be taken as part of some rite of passage into the study of engineering, or as the interrelated fundamental body of knowledge essential for the practice of engineering? These questions are being asked nationwide by students and parents, university faculty, government administrators, and industry executives. Unfortunately, the answers indicate an urgent need for a systemic change-incremental change is not an option. Recent times have seen no clear path forward and an apparent absence of focused, action-oriented leadership. New generations of students, with different backgrounds, interests, skills, and needs, must be enthused about the profession of engineering and better prepared, in both technical and non-technical areas, to creatively advance technology and solve the problems the 21 st century will present. Renaissance engineers, men and women who get involved in public policy, stand for practical and cooperative solutions, work to change the world to make it a better place, and improve the quality of life for all the people of the earth, are needed. To create them requires a new approach to engineering education. The U.S. is in a competitiveness-and-innovation struggle with the rest of the world, primarily India, China, and Japan. The U.S. is also facing a critical shortage of engineers. Several factors have contributed to this. Among them are: (a) There has been a 37 percent decline in engineering interest by college-bound high school students over the past 12 years; (b) The U.S. now ranks 17 th among nations surveyed in the share of its 18-to-24-year-olds who earn natural science and engineering degrees. In 1975, it was third. Engineering B.S. degrees peaked in 1985 at 77,572 (2.2% women), and plunged to 60,914 (1.7% women) in 1998 1 ; (c) The U.S. has become overly dependent on the global workforce while no longer dominating the global marketplace for technical talent as it once did 6. Who then will take us into the future? Science and engineering together are the engines for economic growth and national security. Universities are failing to attract women, underrepresented minorities, people with disabilities, and perhaps, most importantly, those students who were never exposed to the excitement and fulfillment of an engineering career. What are the Essential Requirements for a 1 st-Year Engineering Curriculum? The freshman year is critical for keeping promising students on the engineering track. A firstyear engineering curriculum is a bridge between high school and the in-depth study of the engineering disciplines. This bridge, at most universities, is very rickety and many students fall
Today's engineering graduates will solve tomorrow's problems in a world that is advancing faster and facing more critical challenges than ever before. This situation creates significant demand for engineering education to evolve in order to effectively prepare a diverse community of engineers for these challenges. Such concerns have led to the publication of visionary reports that help orient the work of those committed to the success of engineering education. Research in engineering education is central to all of these visions. The Need Research on the student experience is fundamental to informing the evolution of engineering education. A broad understanding of the engineering student experience involves thinking about diverse academic pathways, navigation of these pathways, and decision points-how students choose engineering programs, navigate through their programs, and then move on to jobs and careers. Further, looking at students' experiences broadly entails not just thinking about their learning (i.e., skill and knowledge development in both technical and professional areas) but also their motivation, their identification with engineering, their confidence, and their choices after graduation. In actuality, there is not one singular student experience, but rather many experiences. Research on engineering student experiences can look into systematic differences across demographics, disciplines, and campuses; gain insight into the experiences of underrepresented students; and create a rich portrait of how students change from first year through graduation. Such a broad understanding of the engineering student experience can serve as inspiration for designing innovative curricular experiences that support the many and varied pathways that students take on their way to becoming an engineer.
Creating New Learning Environment to Foster Enrollment in Engineering Programs
Springer eBooks, 2017
A discovery adventure! This is the program that has been developed by the Education Research Team of COPEC-Science and Education Research Councila K12 School program for a city, with the goal of providing better and effective knowledge for young students, especially those who do not think about to enter a University. The main goal is to encourage more bright young minds to pursue careers in engineering or technology, by providing K12 students, from public schools of a municipality, knowledge about science and research methodology in a way that it will remain as a life practice. It fits into the counties' necessity to improve competitiveness in technology growth, which has implications in workforce development, as well as in science and technology development. The main characteristic of this project is the possibility to apply new and innovative approaches, which provide teenagers students the ability to develop concepts and theories to solve and understand
AC 2007-1064: A NEW MULTIDISCIPLINARY ENGINEERING EDUCATION INITIATIVE
Philadelphia University is developing a new engineering school based on a strategic decision made three years ago to re-engineer its School of Textiles and Materials Technology and expand undergraduate educational offerings beyond its legacy B.S. textile engineering program. Today, the school has re-emerged as the School of Engineering and Textiles, currently offering baccalaureate degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and General Engineering with a choice of minor concentration tracks in Industrial, Mechanical, Environmental, Textile, or Architectural Engineering. Furthermore, two new programs, Architectural Engineering and a dual degree program in Environmental Engineering/B.S. Chemistry (environmental science) will be offered beginning fall 2007.