Page 105 - Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century

Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
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88 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

EEC contributions viewed through the expectations lens will be exam-
ined in three categories: the performance and capabilities of engineering
graduates; the participation of underrepresented groups in engineering;
and the number of engineering graduates.

The Performance and Capabilities of Engineering Graduates

The EECs made major contributions to the formulation, refine-
ment, and assessment of student outcomes beyond the traditional focus
on knowledge and applications of engineering science. The EECs fo-
cused significant attention on engineering design and teamwork. In al-
most every design activity created by the EECs, students worked in
teams. Most of the partner institution in the ECSEL coalition devel-
oped and subsequently institutionalized a first-year engineering course
that emphasized engineering design as a process and enabled student
teams to engineer meaningful prototypes. Multidisciplinary design, in
which engineering majors from many disciplines, and sometimes other
majors, worked together on teams, was a key aspect of activities devel-
oped by SUCCEED; partner institutions developed capstone courses in
which multidisciplinary teams developed solutions to problems posed
by external clients. SUCCEED partners also developed design courses
for first-year engineering students. Many institutions in all of the EECs
developed team projects as integral parts of both first-year integrated
curricula and individual courses.
Another goal of numerous institutions was integration, that is, the
linking of concepts among courses to enable students to transfer knowl-
edge to novel situations, both in their undergraduate courses and in
their subsequent careers. Coalition partner institutions initiated numer-
ous integrated-curriculum pilot projects, especially in first-year cur-
ricula. Based on their experiences with these pilot programs, many then
proceeded to institutionalize integrated curricula that combined learn-
ing communities, student teams, and active/cooperative learning. How-
ever, some unique features of the pilot projects (e.g., specific topical
rearrangements) did not transfer to the institutionalized versions either
because of perceived increases in faculty workload or resistance to
changes in the institutional culture (e.g., “That’s not the way we do it
here.”).
In developing multidisciplinary design and integrated curricular
projects, the EEC institutions had to create much of the required infra-

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