A new engineering course, “Engineering Discovery,” is being offered to freshmen for the first time this semester. This pilot course was offered to all freshmen who entered with undeclared engineering as their majors, which was approximately 250 students; of those, 110 students elected to take the course. The course is being offered as a four-credit elective for one section this fall to 30 students; the remaining 80 students will take the course in the spring semester.
According to the course’s website, Engineering Discovery is a class designed to expose students to a variety of engineering principles and answer questions such as, “What does an engineer do and how does an engineer think?” The class is meant to blend the areas of science, mathematics, and social sciences so that students can see how each area impacts the other.
Dr. Kevin Craig, director of Core Engineering, has worked on implementing Engineering Discovery for over two years. He sees this course as a way for RPI to maintain its leadership role in and improve the quality of undergraduate education.
The class is being taught in three different parts, with each part having two different professors. The engineering measurements section is being taught by Craig and Dr. Bill Mielke; the engineering discovery section is being taught by Dr. Henry Sneck and Dr. Donald Bunk; and the engineering computing part is being taught by Craig and Dr. Mike Kupferschmid.
The course will be taught in a hands-on manner, investigating systems that encompass a variety of engineering disciplines. This year, the class will focus on investigating multi-disciplinary engineering systems such as a toaster and room humidifier. In the upcoming years, Craig hopes to expand the program to include highly complex systems such as a fuel cell, which offer much more range in the sub-system disciplines students can study.
If the pilot Engineering Discovery course goes well, plans are being made to expand the course to include all engineering freshmen within two years. At the current moment, plans include expanding the course from covering 16 percent of the engineering freshmen this year, to 50 percent next year. Depending on the response over the next few years, Engineering Discovery could also expand to a two semester course, with one semester focusing on an overall system and the second semester focusing on the several sub-systems contained within that first system.
Craig’s hope is for Engineering Discovery to build “a bridge between high school and the in-depth study of engineering principles.” As the course is developed, the teaching material may be used to introduce engineering principles to high school students. “I want to create a culture of mentoring,” Craig said. The material developed during the teaching of Engineering Discovery will be uniquely suited for the needs of high school seniors that are interested in engineering, but unsure of the profession as a whole.
