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1. Building a Sustainable University-Wide Interdisciplinary Graduate Program to Address Disasters

   Paretti, M.C.; Deters, J.; Webb, M.; Menon, M. (July 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Disasters are becoming more frequent as the global climate changes, and recovery efforts require the cooperation and collaboration of experts and community members across disciplines. The DRRM program, funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT), is an interdisciplinary graduate program that brings together faculty and graduate students from across the university to develop new, transdisciplinary ways of solving disaster-related issues. The core team includes faculty from business, engineering, education, science, and urban planning fields. The overall objective of the program is to create a community of practice amongst the graduate students and faculty to improve understanding and support proactive decision-making related to disasters and disaster management. The specific educational objectives of the program are (1) context mastery and community building, (2) transdisciplinary integration and professional development, and (3) transdisciplinary research. The program’s educational research and assessment activities include program development, trainee learning and development, programmatic educational research, and institutional transformation. The program is now in its fourth year of student enrollment. Core courses on interdisciplinary research methods in disaster resilience are in place, engaging students in domain-specific research related to natural hazards, resilience, and recovery, and in methods of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration. In addition to courses, the program offers a range of professional development opportunities through seminars and workshops. Since the program’s inception, the core team has expanded both the numbers of faculty and students and the range of academic disciplines involved in the program, including individuals from additional science and engineering fields as well as those from natural resources and the social sciences. At the same time, the breadth of disciplines and the constraints of individual academic programs have posed substantial structural challenges in engaging students in the process of building interdisciplinary research identities and in building the infrastructure needed to sustain the program past the end of the grant. Our poster and paper will identify major program accomplishments, but also draw on interviews with students to examine the structural challenges and potential solution paths associated with a program of this breadth. Critical opportunities for sustainability and engagement have emerged through integration with a larger university-level center as well as through increased flexibility in program requirements and additional mechanisms for student and faculty collaboration. 

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2. X+CS: A Computing Pathway for Non-Computer Science Majors

   Mitchell, S; Cole, K; Joshi, A (March 2020, ASEE Mid Atlantic Section Spring Conference, 2020)

   With computing impacting most every professional field, it has become essential to provide pathways for students other than those majoring in computer science to acquire computing knowledge and skills. Virtually all employers and graduate and professional schools seek these skills in their employees or students, regardless of discipline. Academia currently leans towards approaches such as double majors or combined majors between computer science and other non-CS disciplines, commonly referred to as “CS+X” programs. These programs tend to require rigorous courses gleaned from the institutions’ courses for computer science majors. Thus, they may not meet the needs of majors in disciplines such as the social and biological sciences, humanities, and others. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is taking an approach more suitably termed “X+CS” to fulfill the computing needs of non-CS majors. As part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, we are developing a “computing” minor specifically to meet their needs. To date, we have piloted the first two of the minor’s approximately six courses. The first is a variation on the existing Computer Science I course required for majors but restricted to nonmajors. Both versions of the course use the Python language and cover the same programming content, but with the non-majors assigned projects with relevance to non-CS disciplines. We use the same student assessment measures of homework, projects, and examinations for both courses. After four semesters, results show that non-CS majors perform comparably to majors. Students also express increased interest in computing and satisfaction with being part of a non- CS major cohort. The second course was piloted in fall 2019. It is a new course intended to enhance and hone programming skills and introduce topics such as web scraping, HTML and CSS, web application development, data formats, and database use. Students again express increased interest in computing and were already beginning to apply the computing skills that they were learning to their non-CS courses. As a welcome side effect, we experienced a significant increase in the number of women and under-represented minorities (URMs) in these two courses when compared with CS-major specific courses. Overall, women comprised 52% of the population, with URMs following a similar upward trend. We are currently developing the third course in the computing minor and exploring options for the remaining three. Possibilities include electives from our Information Systems major. We will also be working with our science, social science, and humanities departments to utilize existing courses in those disciplines that apply computing. The student response that we have received thus far provides us with evidence that our computing minor will be popular among UMBC’s non-CS population, providing them with a more suitable and positive computing education than existing CS+X efforts. 

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3. Building CS Teacher Capacity Through Comprehensive College/High School Partnerships

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3478431.3499364  

   Flatland, Robin; Matthews, James; White, Pauline; Egan, MaryAnne; Moya, Jesse (February 2022, SIGCSE 2022: Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)

   Expanding access to and engaging diverse groups of students in high school computer science (CS) classes depends on qualified CS teachers. In this paper, we describe how faculty at our liberal arts college built CS teacher capacity at over 20 school districts through comprehensive college/high school partnerships. The majority of these districts serve rural or high-needs students, groups underrepresented in CS classrooms. The program works primarily with in-service teachers from other disciplines, helping them develop the expertise to teach CS. It is comprehensive in that it includes curricula and professional development for a high school level CS course and a dual-enrollment college level CS course, pathways to CS certification, community events, and opportunities for teacher leadership and collaboration. These modes of engagement are structured so that novice and veteran teachers and college faculty have opportunities to interact in different capacities over several years to create a robust professional learning community. Initial survey results show increasing levels of teacher confidence and sense of belonging, and increasing student confidence in their CS abilities. 

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4. Reclaiming the Large Foundational Engineering Classroom: Instructors’ Needs and Aspirations

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8659006  

   Soledad, Michelle; Murzi, Homero; Grohs, Jacob R.; Knight, David; Case, Scott W.; Smith, Natasha (October 2018, 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   This Work-In-Progress research paper presents preliminary results and next steps of a study that aims to identify institutional data and resources that instructors find helpful in facilitating learning in large foundational engineering courses. The work is motivated by resource-driven compromises made in response to increasing engineering student populations. One such compromise is teaching some courses (usually foundational courses taken by students across multiple disciplines) in large sections, despite research suggesting that large class environments may correspond with unfavorable student learning experiences. Examples of courses often taught in large class environments are mathematics, physics, and mechanics. We are currently working with a cohort of instructors of foundational engineering courses as part of an NSF Institutional Transformation project. We have collected qualitative data through semi-structured interviews to explore the following research question: What data and/or resources do STEM faculty teaching large foundational classes for undergraduate engineering identify as being useful to enhance students' experiences and outcomes a) within the classes that they teach, and b) across the multiple large foundational engineering classes taken by students? Our inquiry and analysis are guided by Lattuca and Stark's Academic Plan Model. Preliminary analysis indicated that instructors would like more opportunities to interact and collaborate with instructors from other departments. These results will inform activities for our Large Foundational Courses Summit scheduled for Summer 2018 as part of the project. 

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5. Complementary and Contrasting Perspectives: Collaborative Teaching across Engineering, Computer Science, and the Liberal Arts

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--56130  

   Rodak, Carolyn; Dosiek, Luke; Burkett, Andrew; Henseler, Christine; Chandler, Christopher; Chattopadhyay, Sohini; Webb, Nick (June 2025, ASEE Conferences)

   Not AvailThe Templeton Institute at Union College “catalyzes learning through a dynamic environment that fosters collaboration within and across engineering, computer science, and traditional liberal arts disciplines. Its mission is to enable connections, experimentation, innovation, and discovery through integrative coursework, projects, and research” (“Mission and Goals”). One mechanism used to complete this mission is the creation of multidisciplinary courses that blend Engineering, Computer Science, and the Liberal Arts. The Templeton Institute recognizes that time and resources can be barriers to designing new collaborative, multidisciplinary courses. To decrease the impact of these barriers, the Templeton Institute provides a number of one-time incentives for new course development, which provide critical support during the design and implementation phase of launching new courses. In the 2024-2025 academic year, the Templeton Institute selected three team-taught courses through a competitive application process. The first course, AMU/ECE-246 “What Does Data Sound Like?” is a collaboration between faculty members in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Music. This course introduces students to the field of data sonification, where they learn to translate data into sound, explore its interdisciplinary applications in fields such as Healthcare, Engineering, and the Arts, and gain hands-on experience with tools and techniques for both scientific and creative projects. The second course is a collaboration between Spanish and Hispanic Studies, German Studies, and Civil and Environmental Engineering, ESC/ISC-221 “Humanity-Centered Design: Ecodesign Your Life.” This Fall 2024 course focuses on offering a humanity-centered course which will enable students to broaden their understanding of ‘design’ from multiple disciplines and diverse perspectives with a focus on our lives, experiences, and stories of people, communities, and ecosystems. The third course offered through the Templeton Institute is STS-101 “Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society.” This introduces students to the range of methodologies, epistemologies, topics, and concerns central to the field of STS, including how scientific and technological concepts develop, take root, and evolve; the role of scientists and engineers as technologies interact and intersect with broader societies; and the ethical responsibilities associated with the development of technology. These and other fundamental questions are explored in this introductory survey course, team-taught by four of Union College’s faculty members from English, History, Classics, and Computer Science, with a guest lecturer from Engineering. This demonstrated team-taught, multidisciplinary approach taken by all of these Templeton Institute courses has had a number of immediate benefits to faculty and students both inside and outside of the classroom: (1) an increased mixing of Engineering, Computer Science, and Humanities disciplines; (2) the development of unique multidisciplinary undergraduate research projects; and (3) a number of collaborative grant proposals for more intentionally integrated and harmonious curricular planning. This paper (if selected) will introduce these three courses in more detail, outline benefits and challenges of this Union College and Templeton Institute model, provide first-hand faculty and student perspectives from the courses, and include a discussion of the benefits of providing differing, complementary, or contrasting perspectives on current issues through the lenses of various disciplines. 

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