Keeping The "General" In General Engineering: Designing Multidisciplinary Courses For The First Year Of Engineering

The General Engineering program at Clemson University teaches two courses required for all students planning to major in engineering. The first course, Introduction to Engineering, focuses on presentations and tours by each of the engineering departments. During the past year these presentations have become more active. The second course, Introduction to Engineering Problem Solving and Design, teaches a variety of skills fundamental to engineering. Since these courses address multiple disciplines, it has been a challenge to represent the content and perspective of all eight engineering programs offered at Clemson. This paper describes recent changes in the General Engineering curriculum designed to improve the multidisciplinary character of these courses. In the first-semester course, some participation by technical disciplines outside of engineering helps to communicate the multidisciplinary context of engineering. Various approaches are being used in the second-semester course. These include identifying the learning objectives of the curriculum, restructuring exercises around these objectives, and engaging faculty from the engineering departments in the design of new activities and content. Changes to Introduction to Engineering Problem Solving and Design are catalyzed by an NSF grant to study the benefit of using real-time sensors in the curriculum. These sensors can measure a wide range of phenomena, facilitating the study of process variables and approaches that were previously difficult to include. What first-year students know about engineering What first-year students think they know about engineering At summer orientation sessions, we ask incoming first-year students why they chose engineering as a major. The responses we hear include “I was good in math and science in high school,” “I have a relative who is an engineer,” and “I want to have a career where I can make a lot of money.”