June 7, 1996: Volume 37, Number 5

Engineering: A New Curriculum

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.

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