Interdisciplinary Freshman Experience

This paper summarizes a cooperative effort undertaken by the Aeronautical, Electrical, and Computer Engineering Departments at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University that led to the development of a team-taught interdisciplinary engineering course offered to incoming freshmen. The authors discuss the inception of the project, the development of the course content, and the lessons learned from the first year of teaching the course as a prototype using a select subset of incoming engineering freshmen. In the past, each engineering department at Embry-Riddle University conducted its own introduction to engineering class. The College decided about a year ago that our graduates saw themselves as engineers in their specific discipline and not as engineers on an interdisciplinary team. In order to begin the change of philosophy, a team was put together from each engineering department to create a freshman course that would emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of current engineering practice. The instructors share lecture and grading responsibility, and attempt to integrate material relative to their own areas of expertise into an interdisciplinary design experience.