Asee peer logo

A Review of Multi-Disciplinary Introduction-to-Engineering Courses and Unified-First-Year Engineering Programs

Download Paper |

Conference

ASEE Southeast Section Conference

Location

Arlington, Virginia

Publication Date

March 12, 2023

Start Date

March 12, 2023

End Date

March 14, 2023

Conference Session

First Year and Cross-Disciplinary

Tagged Topic

Professional Engineering Education Papers

Page Count

13

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44980

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44980

Download Count

138

Paper Authors

biography

Gregory J. Mazzaro The Citadel Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-5814-7425

visit author page

Dr. Mazzaro earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Boston University in 2004, a Master of Science from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2006, and a Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 2009. From 2009 to 2013, he worked as an Electronics Engineer for the United States Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland. For his technical research, Dr. Mazzaro studies the unintended behaviors of radio-frequency electronics illuminated by electromagnetic waves and he develops radars for the remote detection and characterization of those electronics. In the Fall of 2013, Dr. Mazzaro joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The Citadel. There, he is currently an Associate Professor and the primary instructor for Electromagnetic Fields, Communications Engineering, Interference Control in Electronics, and Antennas & Propagation.

visit author page

biography

Kevin Skenes The Citadel

visit author page

Kevin Skenes is an associate professor at The Citadel. His research interests include non-destructive evaluation, photoelasticity, manufacturing processes, and engineering education.

visit author page

biography

Timothy Aaron Wood P.E. The Citadel Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-3926-7314

visit author page

Timothy A. Wood is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The Citadel: The Military College of South Carolina. He acquired a Bachelor's in Engineering Physics Summa Cum Laude with Honors followed by Civil Engineering Master's and Doctoral degrees from Texas Tech University. His technical research focuses on structural evaluation of buried bridges and culverts. He encourages students through an infectious enthusiasm for engineering mechanics and self-directed, lifelong learning. He aims to recover the benefits of the classical model for civil engineering education through an emphasis on reading and other autodidactic practices.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

Incoming freshmen engineering students often select their discipline without significant understanding of the implications for future studies and career opportunities. Without exposure to multiple disciplines, students can find themselves frustrated as they discover that their chosen major is not as rewarding or is not providing career opportunities as expected. Currently, at the authors’ institution, all freshmen complete a discipline-specific introduction-to-engineering course. To better align students’ expectations with their choice-of-major, the authors will develop a common first-semester engineering course to introduce freshmen to all engineering opportunities while it is still possible for them to change majors and maintain their original graduation timeline. Many institutions have maintained an isolation between engineering majors with zero overlap between curricula. Some institutions have implemented a common first year which includes an introduction-to-engineering and problem-solving course in the Fall followed by a computer-aided problem-solving course in the Spring. Still other schools split this difference; they offer a common Fall-semester introduction or a common Spring-semester computer-based problem-solving course. The authors’ institution will offer a (new) non-discipline-specific introduction in the Fall; each discipline will build on this introduction in the Spring with its own (existing) computer-applications course. For a common freshman course to be implemented, a careful balance must be struck between materials which are not discipline-specific (and tend to lack depth) vs. materials which are specific to individual disciplines (and allow for deeper study of a particular major). Some schools have implemented clever active-learning techniques and service-learning opportunities into their freshman-intro courses to foster interest, build a sense of identity amongst aspiring engineers, and increase student retention. In this paper, the authors provide an extensive review of introduction-to-engineering courses and unified-first-year engineering programs across the United States. A summary of lessons learned will guide development of an introductory course at the authors’ home institution and position it as the cornerstone of a unified all-engineering-major freshman year.

Mazzaro, G. J., & Skenes, K., & Wood, T. A. (2023, March), A Review of Multi-Disciplinary Introduction-to-Engineering Courses and Unified-First-Year Engineering Programs Paper presented at ASEE Southeast Section Conference, Arlington, Virginia. 10.18260/1-2--44980

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015