The Mechanical Engineering Department at a private, mid-sized university was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) grant in July 2017 to support the development of a program that fosters students’ engineering identities in a culture of doing engineering with industry engineers. The Department is cultivating this culture of “engineering with engineers” through a strong connection to industry, and through changes in the four essential areas of, a shared department vision, faculty, curriculum and supportive policies.
This paper reports our continued efforts in these four areas and our measurement of their impact. Shared department vision: During the first year of the project, the department worked together to revise its mission to reflect the goal of fostering engineering identity. From this shared vision, the department aims to build a culture to promote inclusive practices. In the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic, this shared vision continued to guide many acts of care and community building for the department.
Faculty: The pandemic prompted faculty to reflect on how they delivered their courses and cared for students. To promote inclusive practice, faculty utilized recorded lectures, online collaboration tools and instant messaging apps to provide multiple ways of communication for students. Although faculty summer immersion had to be postponed due to pandemic, interactions with industry continued in design courses, and via virtual seminars and socials. Efforts were also extended to strengthen connections between the department and recent graduates who just began working in industry and could become mentors for current students.
Curriculum: A new curriculum to support the goals of this project was rolled out in the 2019-20 academic year. The pandemic hit right in the middle of the initial implementation of this new curriculum. Therefore, to maintain the essence of the new curriculum that emphasizes hands-on, doing engineering and experiential learning in the remote setting, many adjustments and modifications were made. Although initial evidence indicates the effectiveness of the new courses/curriculum even under remote teaching and learning, there are also many lessons-learned that can be examined for future implementations and modifications of the curriculum.
Supportive policies: The department agreed to celebrate various acts of care for students and cares for teaching and learning in Annual Performance Reviews. Faculty also worked with other departments, the college, and the university to develop supportive policies beyond the department. For example, based on the recommendation from the department, the college set up a Student Advocate role who would assist students navigate through any incident that make they feel excluded. The new university tenure and promotion guidelines have just been approved with the support from the faculty in the department. Additionally, the department’s effort of building an inclusive culture is aligned with the university initiative for a reform to emphasize anti-racism curriculum.
Details of the action items in each area of change that the department has taken to build this inclusive culture to foster engineering identity are shared in this paper. In addition, research gauging the impact of our efforts are discussed.
This project was funded by the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) IUSE/PFE: RED grant through NSF.
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Lessons Learned: Making the “New Reality” More Real: Adjusting a Hands-on Curriculum for Remote Learning
This is a Lessons-Learned paper.
During the past years the Mechanical Engineering program at XXXX has made numerous curricular changes that focus on cultivating a culture of “engineering with engineers” and developing strong engineering identities in their students. The four major changes in the curriculum include implementing an integrated electrical engineering and data acquisition (DAQ) course sequence, adding a vertically integrated design projects (VIDP) course sequence, modifying an existing design sequence, and adding real engineering into existing courses. Many of these changes rely on hands-on labs and on creating connections between students and industry. In the spring of 2020, the pandemic forced the program to offer all of its courses online and challenged the department to rethink how it could continue its strong hands-on, industry-focused program. Most courses were quickly flipped and online class time via Zoom focused on community building and small group discussions. New checks and activities helped to keep students engaged and provided regular feedback to instructors on student progress. Lab assignments were modified so that all lab work could be done remotely. This paper details these changes, describes successes and failures, and discusses lessons learned.
A summary of the paper will be presented as a lightning-talk during the 2021 ASEE Annual Conference.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1730354
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10334059
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASEE annual conference
- ISSN:
- 0190-1052
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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