The Integrated Mechanical Engineering Curriculum At The Universite De Sherbrooke

Since 1996, the School of Engineering at the Université de Sherbrooke has been offering a totally renovated mechanical engineering curriculum. Starting from scratch, this new curriculum is based on a competency development approach which is aimed at educating engineers beyond knowledge transfer through the development of student know-how and know-how-to-be (i.e., attitudes). This is achieved via four major program thrusts, which are: integrating knowledge, learning in an engineering context, promoting technical and personal achievement and increasing student responsibilities. As salient programmatic features, this curriculum incorporates, among others: design from day 1, a closely integrated sequence of courses within a semester and from one semester to the next, engineering integration semester projects and a large-scale capstone design activity. In addition to presenting a broad overview of this curriculum, the paper focuses on the first semester to illustrate the “mechanics” of making such a wide ranging reform work.