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Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
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DESIGNING FROM A BLANK SLATE 107

in substantial engineering projects; specialization, in which students
develop and apply in-depth knowledge in their chosen fields; and real-
ization, in which students bring what they have learned to bear on
problems approaching professional practice. In all three phases of the
curriculum, students are engaged in interdisciplinary engineering
projects that require them to put theory into practice, to put engineer-
ing in a larger context, and to develop teaming and management skills.
As a student progresses, projects become increasingly open-ended and
authentic. Students have significant flexibility in charting their path
through the curriculum, but all students must demonstrate a mastery of
required material through regular assessments.

The Foundation
Figure 3 illustrates the basic structure and requirements of the cur-
ricular “foundation,” which encompasses approximately the first two
years of a student’s education. A central building block of the founda-
tion is the cohort (a large block of coursework—equivalent to three
conventional courses) taught by a multidisciplinary faculty team. The
cohort combines two disciplinary topics with a large interdisciplinary
project, thus requiring close coordination between the understanding of
underlying disciplines and the application of this knowledge to real en-
gineering problems. Cohorts also provide a logical environment for stu-
dents to develop entrepreneurial skills, such as opportunity assessment
and teamwork. Finally, cohorts address student choice—in a given se-
mester, students can opt for one of three “flavors” of cohort.
For example, a student particularly interested in entrepreneurship
might opt to pursue a given set of physics and math learning objectives
while doing a related product-design and development project. An ar-
tistically inclined student might enroll in a cohort that uses kinetic sculp-
ture to motivate and reinforce the same physics and math objectives. In
some cases, cohorts combine two technical subjects (e.g., physics and
mathematics); in other cases, cohorts emphasize context by combining
technical with nontechnical material (e.g., materials science and busi-
ness). In all cases, cohorts provide connections between subjects and
bring theory into practice through projects.
Another prominent feature of the curriculum is the sophomore
design project in the second semester of the sophomore year. Although
students are engaged in design throughout the first two years through

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