Motivating and Investing in the Freshmen: Paving the Way for the Future

This paper describes an introductory freshman experience course, “Introduction to Building Systems” that was five years in the making and meets several critical goals for this engineering department. The ten-week course consists of a large group lecture and a small group activity each week and is team-taught by a tenured faculty member and the department head. Industry support from Hilti and Simpson Strong-Tie provides materials and expertise for two of the activities. University support assists with the welding, digital fabrication, and building tour activities. A review of the literature addresses how this course aligns with and differs from other existing introductory experience courses. The development of the course is described using a highly regarded systematic design of instruction process. Future changes are discussed based on assessment data from the first two iterations of this course.