2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As part of a broader multi-year curriculum and cultural change initiative in a research-intensive department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), multiple teaching-and-learning environments were designed in a 2nd-year systems engineering course. These learning environments aim to cultivate problem definition and solving skills, strengthen professional identity, enhance team skills, augment computational skills, develop stakeholder awareness and engagement capabilities, and augment reflective and independent learning capabilities in undergraduate civil engineering and environmental engineering students. The overarching goal is to develop more holistic engineers with entrepreneurial mindset. This paper discusses the teaching-and-learning environments designed and implemented as well as the rationale for creating them, and presents initial anecdotal data to characterize how students are experiencing and valuing these learning environments. These learning environments are part of a broader curriculum change initiative to develop a vertically-integrated spine of courses designed to engage undergraduate students early and more consistently via a common learning experience. The cohort-based experience facilitates development of their problem solving and definition skills, computational skills and professional skills at growing levels of technical maturity. The paper is potentially useful to engineering educators looking to augment student engagement, enhance sense of belonging to the profession and major, promote student success, augment the quality of undergraduate experience, and graduate holistic engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset.