2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

>> This paper is Complete; it is not a Work-in-Progress.
>> Selecting a major strongly tied to one’s interests and talents is a challenging task for many college students. For freshmen engineering majors, deciding a particular discipline on which to focus is sometimes confusing and intimidating. Unfortunately, it is common for a student to select a discipline based on limited or inaccurate information, to have a shallow understanding of that discipline or to feel little enthusiasm towards it, and to turn away from that discipline when the difficulty of required coursework ramps up in later semesters.
>> The authors of this paper want for their students to love what they do -- to be well-informed about their chosen profession and to use their enthusiasm for it as a well-spring of motivation, especially when their upper-division courses give them trouble. Towards that end, the authors have designed an Introduction to Engineering course, required of all engineering freshmen entering the authors’ institution, which presents to the students all engineering opportunities available at their school. The role of the engineer in society is defined and an overview of each discipline is presented. Since this course is delivered in the first semester, students (if they so desire) can change majors while maintaining their timeline for graduation.
>> This paper presents the structure of the Introduction to Engineering course. Three sections are taught by faculty from each of three departments: Civil and Construction Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. The three sections of students are a mixed population representing all engineering majors. The 15 weeks of the semester are split into three modules, and instructors move round-robin through each of the three sections. Major topics include (a) adoption of best practices for success in college and for studying engineering specifically, (b) examination of each sub-discipline within each major, and (c) cultivation of skills required to be successful as a practicing engineer.
>> After each of their three modules, students were surveyed regarding their understanding of their chosen discipline, their awareness of adjacent disciplines, their confidence in their selection of a technical major, and their enthusiasm for their chosen discipline. The evolution of the student’s attitudes across the semester indicates that exposure to a range of instructor and student perspectives in the common-enrollment Intro course generates greater interdisciplinary awareness. Seeing students more knowledgably committed to their engineering discipline, the authors anticipate greater student satisfaction and retention in their majors.