Open AccessIDEAS: Interdisciplinary Design Engineering and Service
Author(s) -
Ruth Davis,
Shoba Krishnan,
Tonya Lynn Nilsson,
Patti Fylling Rimland
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
international journal for service learning in engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1555-9033
DOI - 10.24908/ijsle.v0i0.5546
Subject(s) - demographics , service learning , service (business) , engineering management , engineering , community service , medical education , engineering ethics , psychology , pedagogy , business , public relations , sociology , political science , medicine , marketing , demography
This paper describes the development of the IDEAS: Interdisciplinary Design Engineering and Service program. This program supports and promotes community-based projects as a vehicle for providing students with real-world experience working with clients to solve need-based problems. IDEAS supports senior design projects, an interdisciplinary course on community-based projects, as well as extra-curricular projects through various student organizations. A complete description of the course, common projects and challenges is provided. We describe the benefits of developing long-term community partnerships. Student self-assessments of skills gained shows the course to be successful in providing engineering design experience and soft skills as well as professional sense of the positive societal impact of engineering projects. Course demographics show these projects attract a higher percentage of underrepresented groups than in the overall engineering student population.