Pre Eminence In First Year Engineering Programs

The Department of Freshman Engineering (FrE) at Purdue University is currently celebrating its 50 th Anniversary. For five decades the Department has slowly evolved, reacting to nationwide trends and advances by incorporating new pedagogical approaches to engineering education, and adopting engineering technologies appropriate to the time. The Department is now looking towards taking a leadership role in engineering education reform. Such a step will create opportunities to reform the first-year engineering program, long the centerpiece of FrE. FrE serves as the gateway to the Schools of Engineering with all students completing the FrE core curriculum being admissible as sophomores to the professional engineering degree programs at Purdue. In this role, FrE works closely with the Engineering Professional Schools, the School of Science, and the School of Liberal Arts, as well as industry, alumni and parents to recruit, retain, and reinforce outstanding engineering students. Transformation of the first-year program needs to find balance between a number of opposing forces. A minimum of fundamentals in science and math are required to prepare students for their sophomore engineering coursework, and exposure to the nature of engineering and its opportunities is needed to enable students to identify an appropriate career path. However, the academic rigor of the first year in engineering is overly challenging and even shocking for many students. Still, calls for engineering education reform speak of educating students in areas of communication, ethics and professionalism, design, working in teams, leadership, entrepreneurship, and global understanding (to name a few), all of which vie for curriculum time. As we seek to transform the first year we also need to keep an eye to current engineering education research, and to those issues touching on matters of diversity and social responsibility. This paper will share the struggle and the insight gained by its authors in transforming a highquality first year program into one seeking recognition as "preeminent." Planning activities, reactions to opportunities and threats, overcoming resource constraints, showcasing and exploiting of strengths, shoring up of weaknesses, and the overall process of transforming the first-year program will be discussed.