Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Main Menu

Session 2125

Integration of Design Throughout the Curriculum of a BSE Program

Robert LeMaster, Richard Helgeson, and J. Douglas Sterrett

Department of Engineering College of Engineering and Natural Science University of Tennessee at Martin

Introduction

Although fundamental to the engineering profession, design is one of the more difficult subjects to teach. Design by its very nature is broad in scope and draws on the creative talents, management skills, and engineering knowledge of those involved. Design problems are typically open ended, have multiple solutions, and require decisions based on incomplete information. Engineering analysis is a fundamental part of the design process. Analyses are frequently required as part of the design process to size or select components or to verify that design requirements have been met. However, if there is nothing to design, no failure to investigate, or process to improve, there is no need for the engineering analysis skills that are a major component of the traditional engineering education. Thus, engineering design and its supporting management, analysis, communications, and interpersonal skills should be the backbone of an engineering education.

Engineering educators are recognizing that it is not possible to teach design in a single course or Capstone design project. Lovas1 developed workshops that focused on integrating design into the engineering curriculum. Fronczak and Webster2 and Thompkins3 describe a sequence of six design courses that biomedical engineering students start taking during their first semester sophomore year and finish in their last semester senior year. This design course sequence is intended to provide the students a sustained opportunity to develop their creativity and judgment. Sheppard and Gallois4 describe a “design spine” of eight design courses that run through all eight semesters of a student’s education. The goal of these eight courses is to achieve greater integration of design with the science and engineering science courses. Brousseau, etal5, describes a similar approach in which students participate in a series of eight design workshops, one per semester. Kartam6 approaches the problem somewhat differently, and describes how design content is integrated into traditional courses that are most geared towards design.

This paper discusses how design content has been integrated into the curriculum of a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) program at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Due to the mixture of core and specialty courses in the BSE curriculum, the approach taken to integrate design throughout the curriculum is a mixture of dedicated courses2-5 and design content in traditional courses6.

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

Main Menu

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Sterrett, D., & Helgeson, R., & LeMaster, R. (2002, June), Integration Of Design Throughout The Curriculum Of A Bse Program Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10290