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Introduction

Virginia Tech, a land grant institution, is well into its second century. Its objectives are education, research, and community service. Virginia Tech has grown over the past 130 years from an institution with a student body of 43 to its current enrollment of over 25,000, comprising about 5000 new freshman each year. Of these entering freshman, roughly 1500 will enter the Engineering program.

Virginia Tech’s engineering program puts an emphasis on immediately involving its entering engineering students in engineering topics. These introductory topics are structured to give these students a taste of engineering curricula and to expose them to problem solving techniques. Early involvement in engineering problem solving helps stimulate, refresh and/or retain the interest that these students have already shown in the engineering profession. Virginia Tech’s success in maintaining a respected and rigorous engineering program is combined with an exceptionally high retention rate of its freshman in engineering. The latest figures indicate that nearly 70 percent of freshman engineering students graduate from Virginia Tech with an engineering degree; an additional 20 percent graduate from Virginia Tech with other than an engineering degree, and the remainder transfer to another institution or take on other challenges. 1 Although admission standards to the engineering program are reasonably high (average 1250 combined SAT and top 10% of class), we feel our high retention rate is partially attributable to the exposure the students gain in their first engineering classes. At Virginia Tech these classes are EF1015 and EF1016.

First Year Courses

Engineering Fundamentals EF1015 is the students' first exposure to engineering at Virginia Tech. The faculty take this opportunity to present the students with a myriad of engineering topics. A two credit class, EF1005 sections are purposely kept small (maximum of 32) to engender a personal relationship among classmates and with their EF instructor/advisor. For nearly two decades Virginia Tech has required entering freshman in engineering to purchase their own computer. This EF1015 class is, therefore, an introduction for many of these students to ownership, maintenance, and use of a computer. The EF1015 syllabus includes an introduction to the profession, examination of ethics and ethical theories, traditional pencil-and-paper problem solving techniques, algorithm development and graphing. These skills are then translated to computer solutions, currently via MATLABTM.

EF 1016 addresses traditional engineering graphics and computer graphics, with one desired outcome an enhanced ability to visualize in three dimensions. This year, Virginia Tech is using Autodesk's Mechanical Desktop Release 6.0. We intend to introduce NC milling into the EF1016 course this semester. EF1016, like its sibling EF1015, meets for two 50 minute classes each week and is a 2 credit course. As many of our students have no engineering graphics experience or computer experience upon entering the program, we do not intend to produce industry-ready drafters or computer-aided-drafters. We do, however, want these students to use their cognitive skills to explore engineering design. It is this design challenge that often sparks an interest in different aspects of engineering for the student.

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright Ó 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Gregg, M. (2002, June), International Context For First Year Engineering Students Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10391