Interdisciplinary Approach To First Year Engineering Curricula

Abstract

With support from the STEM Talent Expansion Program (STEP) of the National Science Foundation, the Texas A&M University Engineering Program (TAMU) is drawing upon existing results to construct an improved learning experience for all engineering majors. Drawing from integrated curricula/learning community initiatives, physics, engineering, and mathematics faculty members are working together to help students more closely link concepts from the three subject areas. Faculty members have constructed specifications that design projects must follow to help students build tighter connections among the three subjects. A comprehensive assessment and evaluation plan has also been designed and implemented. This paper will describe the integration mechanisms, project specifications, and systems to address study skills, as well as data that has been collected and analyzed to date. Future assessment plans and strategies for expanding the program for more students and extending it to two additional firstyear engineering tracks will also be described.

How Do Students In A Project Based First Year Engineering Curriculum Perform In A Sophomore Engineering Mechanics Course?

“…Both the first-year calculus courses, MATH 151/152, and the first-year physics courses, PHYS 218/208, provide concepts and tools with which students can analyze and predict the performance of their designs and compare their predictions with the measured performances of the physical realizations of their designs. Descriptions of the five projects are available in earlier papers [8][9][10][11][12] so only brief descriptions of the five projects will be provided below.…”

“…Extensive changes in the first-year engineering course sequence (ENGR 111/112) and changes to the first-year physics (PHYS 218/208) and calculus course sequences (MATH 151/152) have been implemented [8][9][10][11][12]. The TAMU program is called STEPS.…”

Bringing Smart Materials Applications into a Project-Based First-Year Engineering Course

“…Specifically, these challenges include students' difficulty in associating engineering methods with some of the more conceptual topics learned in mathematics and physics, as well as students' lack of solid understanding of the engineering design process. 1 Thus, the curriculum is structured such that applied engineering methods can be directly related to aspects of mathematics and science that freshman students generally consider to be disconnected or abstract.…”

Integrating Aerospace Research Materials into a Project-based First-year Engineering Design Course

“…Texas A&M University (TAMU) converted their two freshman engineering courses into a project-based format centered on engineering design several years ago 2,3 . This project-based format provides incoming freshmen their first hands-on view of the engineering design process.…”