2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A standard feature of many, if not most, undergraduate engineering programs is the requirement that students in the program take a certain number of technical elective courses. The widespread and long-standing use of this requirement in engineering programs may have led to a situation where many faculty do not even consider the purposes these courses serve, or whether requiring students to take a certain number of these courses is in the best interest of the students. The intention of this paper is to start a conversation on the purpose and appropriate number of technical electives required in an undergraduate engineering program.

Technical electives can provide students with a number of benefits. One benefit is that technical electives give students the opportunity to learn specialized knowledge of an advanced nature that they can then apply to their work in various subfields of engineering. For example, a mechanical engineering student interested in the electricity-generation industry would benefit from taking technical elective courses in traditional power generation methods and in renewable energy technologies. But by their very nature as electives, technical elective courses should not be teaching material that is expected to be learned by every student graduating from a particular engineering discipline. Requiring students to take several such courses may impact their ability to take courses from other disciplines which may be beneficial to them in achieving their personal career goals. Therefore, it is important for engineering programs to consider the results they are intending to achieve by requiring students to take technical electives, how these courses may be impacting the overall education of the students, and what is an appropriate number of technical elective courses to require. It can be noted that ABET accreditation requirements should not be forcing programs to require students to take technical elective courses.

In this paper, an overview of the nature of technical elective courses will be provided. The potential benefits and detriments of requiring technical elective courses will be explored. The paper concludes with some recommendations of what engineering programs should do as they consider the optimal number of technical elective courses to require of their students.