Improving The Freshman Engineering Experience

The University of Maryland Baltimore County has undertaken four initiatives to improve engineering education and awareness. The first initiative was to revamp the Introduction to Engineering Course (ENES 101) from a traditional lecture and design-on-paper course, to an active learning lecture and hands-on engineering design course. The revised ENES 101 course was presented and discussed during a three-day summer workshop to introduce high school teachers and counselors to the field of engineering. This workshop lead to the faculty at Eastern Technical High School’s request for the development of a formal partnership with UMBC to teach the equivalent of the ENES 101 course in the high school environment. It is not the intent of the partnership to be a recruiting tool for UMBC, but rather to expose high school students to a college level introductory engineering course. This partnership and its expansion to other high schools is the second initiative. The third initiative is the establishment of a new variation (ENES 101Y) of the Introduction to Engineering course which is committed to helping new UMBC engineering students understand the academic expectations at a research university, develop their individual success strategies, and connect with the many resources that are available to help ensure success. The fourth initiative was a summer bridge program that was taught in the summer 2003 for new incoming students that are part of our STEP (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program NSF DUE 0230148) and CSEMS (Computer Science Engineering and Mathematics Scholarship NSF DUE 0220628) projects.