Board 351: Preparing Early Engineers Through Context, Connections, and Community

Eric Davishahl; Anna Fay Booker; Petra Shea McDonnell-Ingoglia; Pat Burnett

Download Paper | Permalink

Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: June 26, 2024
Conference Session: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Tagged Topic: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Page Count: 11
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--46934
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/46934
Download Count: 60

Paper Authors

biography

Eric Davishahl Whatcom Community College orcid.org/0000-0001-9506-2658

visit author page

Eric Davishahl serves as professor and engineering program coordinator at Whatcom Community College in northwest Washington state. His current project involves developing and piloting an integrated multidisciplinary learning community for first-year engineering. More general teaching and research interests include designing, implementing and assessing activities for first-year engineering, engineering mechanics, and scientific computing. Eric has been an active member of ASEE since 2001. He was the recipient of the 2008 Pacific Northwest Section Outstanding Teaching Award and currently serves on the ASEE Board of Directors as Zone IV Chair.

visit author page

author page

Anna Fay Booker

biography

Petra Shea McDonnell-Ingoglia Whatcom Community College

visit author page

Academic Advisor and Outreach Specialist

visit author page

biography

Pat Burnett Whatcom Community College

visit author page

Pat currently teaches engineering at Whatcom Community College after 13 years of teaching in the Engineering Department at Edmonds Community College, including holding the chair position. He earned an MS in Physics from Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, and a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois of Urbana-Champaign.
Over the past 7 years, Pat has been working with various K-12 organizations to incorporate engineering practices in classrooms as they incorporate Next Generation Science Standards into their curriculum.
Pat has served as co-PI on NSF S-STEM and STEP grants.
Pat is currently serving as the chair for the Washington Council on Engineering and Related Technical Education (WCERTE).

visit author page

Download Paper | Permalink

Abstract

This NSF-IUSE project began in fall 2022 and features cross-disciplinary collaboration between faculty in engineering, math, history, English, and physics to design, pilot, and assess a new learning community approach to welcome precalculus level students into an engineering transfer degree program. The learning community spans two academic quarters and includes six different courses. The place-based curriculum includes contextualized precalculus and English composition, Pacific Northwest history, orientation to the engineering profession, and introductory skills such as problem-solving, computer programming, and team-based design. The program also features community-engaged project-based learning in the first quarter and a course-based undergraduate research experience in the second quarter, both with an overarching theme of energy and water resources. The approach leverages multiple high-impact educational practices to promote deep conceptual learning, motivate foundational skill development, explore social relevance and connection, and ultimately seeks to strengthen our students’ engineering identity, sense of belonging, and general academic preparation for success in an engineering major. Fall 2023 marked the first quarter of piloting the new learning community with a cohort of 19 students out of a capacity limit of 24. This paper reports on the demographics of the first cohort and compares them to enrollment in a parallel section of our Introduction to Engineering course that is not linked. We also share some of the students’ reasons for enrolling and their feedback on the experience. We found that students in populations with intensive entry advising such as International Programs and Running Start (a high school dual-enrollment program) appear to be overrepresented in the first cohort. This finding correlates with a theme in nearly all student responses that they learned about the program through advising. Finally, we describe some example activities and student projects that illustrate how the curriculum design integrates content across the academic disciplines involved.

Citation
Format

Davishahl, E., & Booker, A. F., & McDonnell-Ingoglia, P. S., & Burnett, P. (2024, June), Board 351: Preparing Early Engineers Through Context, Connections, and Community Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--46934

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This NSF-IUSE project began in fall 2022 and features cross-disciplinary collaboration between faculty in engineering, math, history, English, and physics to design, pilot, and assess a new learning community approach to welcome precalculus level students into an engineering transfer degree program. The learning community spans two academic quarters and includes six different courses. The place-based curriculum includes contextualized precalculus and English composition, Pacific Northwest history, orientation to the engineering profession, and introductory skills such as problem-solving, computer programming, and team-based design. The program also features community-engaged project-based learning in the first quarter and a course-based undergraduate research experience in the second quarter, both with an overarching theme of energy and water resources. The approach leverages multiple high-impact educational practices to promote deep conceptual learning, motivate foundational skill development, explore social relevance and connection, and ultimately seeks to strengthen our students’ engineering identity, sense of belonging, and general academic preparation for success in an engineering major.    
Fall 2023 marked the first quarter of piloting the new learning community with a cohort of 19 students out of a capacity limit of 24. This paper reports on the demographics of the first cohort and compares them to enrollment in a parallel section of our Introduction to Engineering course that is not linked. We also share some of the students’ reasons for enrolling and their feedback on the experience. We found that students in populations with intensive entry advising such as International Programs and Running Start (a high school dual-enrollment program) appear to be overrepresented in the first cohort. This finding correlates with a theme in nearly all student responses that they learned about the program through advising. Finally, we describe some example activities and student projects that illustrate how the curriculum design integrates content across the academic disciplines involved.

AU  - Eric Davishahl
AU  - Anna Fay Booker
AU  - Petra Shea McDonnell-Ingoglia
AU  - Pat Burnett
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 351: Preparing Early Engineers Through Context, Connections, and Community  
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/46934
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--46934
ER  -