Minor In Engineer Studies: A New Program For A New Era

A new program has started in our school. This is a true multidisciplinary program that includes the whole engineering college and all engineering fields. The major goal of the program is to provide technological awareness and understanding of the technical issues to non-engineering students. Since many managers, directors, and policymakers (all around the world) are making decisions on technological-based issues, it makes sense to provide them with a conceptual-based technology education. This paper covers the major premise of our efforts, the way it is planned, the way we include all majors in the college, and the way we work together to make it happen. This is a collegewide effort that includes all levels from the dean and the dean’s office to the individual departments, as well as some of our graduate and undergraduate students. The big challenge is how to teach the classes—i.e., who the audience is. This paper shows the detailed planning, implementation, and early results and challenges of our first course developments and implementations. The paper provides examples of classes, the material that we cover in the first class for non-majors, and the approach of teaching such classes. The students in these classes are mainly in such fields as political science, business, environmental science, policy studies, and other parts of the social sciences. All of the classes in this minor program are designed with basic high school algebra as a prerequisite. The students will learn the concepts and even go through basic back-of-the-envelope calculations that will help them appreciate engineering solutions. The paper provides examples of such concepts as well as reactions of the students. Currently, we have the overwhelming support of the students. While the official start of the program is January 2007, students have shown great support and are working with the director of the program and the College of Engineering to take classes in advance to be a definite part of the program. This paper will address the main issues as to how we go about teaching technology and engineering appreciation to non-engineering students.