First-year engineering students arriving this fall will take on something that students before them could only anticipate for the first two years of study: engineering
design.
As part of the revised engineering curriculum starting this fall, planners have scrapped what Dean Richard Kenyon calls the “have faith” approach: that all the math and physics students learn the first two years would eventually lead to engineering.
Instead, freshmen engineers this fall will take a “Fundamentals of
Engineering/Computer Science” module – one of three continuous year-long modules – that will examine the social, political and cultural contexts of engineering problems, not
just math and science, Kenyon said. In addition to faculty from engineering and computer science, the module will be team taught by faculty from departments including economics,
philosophy, sociology or environmental studies.
“If there has been something missing from engineering education over the last 40
years, it is context,” Kenyon said. “We've done a great deal of analysis,
technique and skill. But we haven't fully developed the social, cultural or intellectual
contexts of engineering.”
First-year students also will take a year-long module of integrated math and physics
courses. Traditionally taught separately and with little or no coordination, students have
had difficulty transferring their math skills to physics and relating those disciplines to
engineering. Math and physics will be team taught by faculty from both departments. The
objective, explains Kenyon, is to strengthen students' understanding of the relationships
between mathematics and physics as well as to provide a better bridge from the sciences to
engineering subjects.
Besides the two year-long modules – Fundamentals of Engineering, and Integrated Math
and Physics – students will take the full-year “GenEd” module of freshman
preceptorial and two inter-related history courses.
The second year of the program, while still under development, will continue the core
concept through the first term. Students who complete the second year in any of the
engineering disciplines will remain eligible to move into the third year in any program
except computer science. Students may transfer to computer science by making up required
elements.
The third year will focus on studies within the particular discipline, but the concept
of engineering as the basic discipline will remain. The penultimate experience in all
disciplines will take place during the fourth year in a comprehensive engineering project
of a disciplinary nature. Most projects will be year-long and involve students from more
than one discipline.
Students will be encouraged to pursue a Term Abroad or international exchange or a term
in industry without the need to substantially lengthen the duration of their undergraduate
study.
In the past year, the College has developed new exhanges for engineering and computer
science with the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez, the Czech Technical University in
Prague, the Technical University of Wroclaw in Poland, the Middle East Technical
University in Turkey, and the University of Wales in Swansea.
The revision of the College's engineering curriculum was supported by a grant of
$750,000 from the GE Fund.