2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As students begin their educational career, they often are not able to initially interact with professors who are experts in the major of study that they have chosen. In many programs, students take general education and prerequisite courses in the first couple of years and then take courses taught by professors in the program major of their choice. This can potentially lead to students feeling isolated and left questioning whether their choice of study was the correct decision. With retention being an important issue in every higher education program, if interaction with experts in students’ field of study could happen earlier in the program, this interaction might foster an increase in retention, providing students with a fuller educational experience.
For Architectural Engineering students in a program with both Architectural and Architectural Engineering majors, measures should be taken to ensure that all students feel they are a part of the program instead of an afterthought. One question asked involves how to achieve a sense of belonging in a program where students largely enroll in basic introductory courses during their first year and a half of the program, at which time they have little to no interaction with the Architectural Engineering faculty. One method being investigated is to include a structural engineering professor in introductory architectural design studios, allowing them to interact with students in the initial semesters of the program. This interaction allows both Architecture students to be introduced to structural concepts and Architectural Engineering students to feel more fully immersed in the program through their interaction with engineering faculty.
This paper will present an overview of and assess the relative success of a curriculum change in which a structural engineering professor is introduced into beginning architectural design studios with the intention to interact with both architecture and architectural engineering students. Additionally, a literature search will be included outlining similar research being incorporated into undergraduate research on this topic and method of instruction. The paper’s conclusions and recommendations will include results of student surveys given during the courses along with information obtained through researching other architectural and architectural engineering programs, and how their design studios are structured.