2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

When did Statics become so difficult? A root cause analysis of the high failure rates in a high-enrollment foundational course

Presented at Mechanics Division (MECHS) Technical Session 1A

A trend that has been observed at many institutions, and which has seemingly increased in momentum in post-pandemic years, has been the perception among many engineering students that the foundational Engineering Statics course is extremely daunting and one of the most challenging courses in the curriculum. At the authors’ institution – a large enrollment public land-grant university – this perception is supported by the fact that in recent years, the course has had the highest DFW rate (course was dropped before completion, the course was failed, or the earned grade was ‘D’) of any large-enrollment course across the entire institution. Given an annual course enrollment exceeding one thousand students, the Statics course has developed a reputation of being an extreme obstacle in the way of progress toward degree, and a source of growing negative sentiment among students, and frequently, their parents. As a means of better understanding the reasons behind the current challenges to success in Statics, the authors have conducted an in-depth investigation in attempts to identify root causes of the issues witnessed both within the course structure itself as well as bigger-picture upstream curricular issues. The three primary phases of this investigation included: 1) identifying and objectively exploring common anecdotal assumptions about root causes, such as ‘poor’ trigonometry skills, a lack of physics ‘knowledge’, not ‘understanding’ vectors, etc.; 2) developing a conceptual map of course topics that clearly identified precedence and dependencies among topics; and 3) aligning learning assessments with the conceptual mapping to determine specific topics where students first struggled, thus leading to the inability to master concepts later in the course. Key findings of the work have included relatively precise identification of the basic vector arithmetic skills necessary for course success, and discovery of a significant difference in the assumptions made about student mathematics skills coming into Statics versus the actual level of math preparation. It is this latter point that has led to further exploration of how to address a potential gap in the curriculum with the hopes of better preparing students for Statics success. The results of this investigation serve not only to inform continued course redesign and improvement at the authors’ institution, but also as a roadmap for other institutions who are exploring ways to address the challenges to student success in their respective Statics courses.

Authors

Dr. Christian J. Schwartz P.E. Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

Cris Schwartz, PhD, PE serves as Assistant Dean for Student Success in the College of Engineering, and is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University. He was previously on the faculty at Texas A&M University and a Senior Research Engineer at Southwest Research Institute. In his role as assistant dean, Dr. Schwartz oversees efforts directed at student success and retention with special focus on first-year and foundational courses that serve multiple engineering majors. He leads the Surface Sciences research group which focuses on issues that link biology, tribology, and design. This includes extensive work with the friction and wear of polymers, orthopedic biomaterials, tactility of polymer materials, and skin tribology. He has a special focus on using skin tribology investigation to improve tactual assistive technologies for persons with blindness or other visual impairment. He is a licensed professional engineer and an active engineering consultant. He has taught courses in the areas of engineering design, kinematics, materials science, mechanics, statistics, and tribology, and has been recognized for his classroom efforts with the Student Led Award for Teaching Excellence (SLATE) and the Peggy L. and Charles L. Brittan ’65 Teaching Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching.
Dr. Hartanto Wibowo Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

Dr. Hartanto Wibowo is a faculty member in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at Iowa State University. His areas of expertise are structural and earthquake engineering. He has been teaching multiple courses ranging from the foundational engineering mechanics course to graduate-level design course.
Prof. Nathan Miner Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

Nathan Miner is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering department at Iowa State University.
Mr. TRAVIS HOSTENG Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

Travis Hosteng is a faculty member in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental
Engineering at Iowa State University. His areas of expertise are bridges, timber design and structural engineering.
He has been teaching multiple courses ranging from the foundational engineering mechanics course to
Senior level capstone design-build course.
Prof. Sriram Sundararajan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2234-320X Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

Sriram Sundararajan is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering at Iowa State University. His research areas encompass multiscale tribology (friction, lubrication and wear) and engineering education.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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