This paper presents a first year integrated engineering curriculum that was implemented at Texas A&A4 University-Kingsville in the 1995-96 academic year. The curriculum is the result of the efforts by the Foundation Coalition, a National Science Foundation sponsored engineering coalition of 7 institutions around the United States. The goal of the Colaition is to implement curriculum reform in engineering education. In line with the goals of the Foundation Coalition, this curriculum was designed to incorporate changes in four major thrust areas: curriculum integration, technology enabled learning, human inte$ace development, and assessment, evaluation and dissemination. Traditional first year courses in Science, Engineering, Math, and English, have been modified such that topics are delivered based on a predefined sequence which emphasizes basic skills and thematic concepts rather than discipline boundaries, and problem solving strategies, and design. Active leaming, or collaborative leaming, is also being used in the classroom.
Engineering Experiment Station, an agency of the Texas A&M University system. She holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration, BBA and MBA. Her research interests and publications involve engineering education, diversity, and underrepresented engineering groups and issues.
The report Rising Above the Gathering Storm increased concern for keeping the U.S. economically competitive and placed attention on the role of K-12 education in emphasizing mathematics and science to produce quality students, well prepared for higher education, to supply the nations' growing need for engineers and scientists. To address the urgent need for more engineers and the lack of understanding by K-12 teachers about what an engineer does, the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University leveraged two National Science Foundation funded programs to provide engineering research and career information for high school science and mathematics teachers.The College has NSF funding for a Research Experience for Teachers Site (RET) and a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program (STEP). Though normally these two programs are worlds apart, the College leveraged the two to create the Engineering Teacher Outreach Program (E-TOP) which collaborates with teachers from targeted partner schools with large populations of first generation students who may not have had access to information on engineering as a possible degree or career choice.The RET leadership partners engineering faculty, many of whom are NSF CAREER awardees, with grade 7-12 science and mathematics teachers for engineering research experiences. Teachers' summer on-campus experiences include working on a project associated with the research area of the engineering faculty member. They also work with a STEP engineering faculty member to develop an experiential learning project for their classrooms. The model of developing engineering projects to enhance student learning is used in the STEP and targeted at first-year engineering students. This paper will outline the process for leveraging the two NSF-funded programs and present findings from evaluation conducted during and after the teachers' summer experiences. The pilot project will compare data collected with survey data from prior RET teacher participants.
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