2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Integration overload? Learnings from making a new link between mechanical engineering classes

Presented at Mechanical Engineering (MECH) Session 12: Curriculum Development and Program Innovation

This Tinkerer's Triumphs and Tragedies lightning talk shares lessons learned from a new in-classroom activity developed to strengthen curricular integration in a large multiprogram department, as part of an NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grant. Implemented into a Modeling and Control of Dynamic Systems course, the assignment asked students to apply Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer concepts to model the transient response of a thermal system. The objective was to help students connect knowledge across different courses and tackle realistic multidisciplinary engineering problems. The activity was posed as a design problem where 1) students needed to solve for parameters to meet a requirement and 2) there was not a unique solution. The activity was piloted in Spring 2024 and iterated upon in Spring 2025. Over the course of the two semesters, feedback from hundreds of students was obtained from wrapper questions and surveys.

A key challenge to integrating curriculum in this large department is the variable timing of when students take classes. Despite efforts to reduce dependence of the new assignment on heat transfer knowledge by emphasizing fundamental thermodynamics principles and by allowing teamwork, many students conveyed anxiety about having to draw on knowledge from a heat transfer course they had not taken yet. However, several other meaningful insights were derived from student feedback. First, students appreciated a design problem that was more realistic and open-ended than typical textbook-style problems. This prompted instructors to introduce more problems with similar features throughout the course, while perhaps deemphasizing new multidisciplinary content. Second, some students described a high level of existing curriculum integration in Modeling and Control of Dynamic Systems; the course already integrates knowledge from physics, math, statics, dynamics, and electronic instrumentation courses. This latter finding prompted the NSF RED team to 1) map a comprehensive inventory of existing integration among courses to better focus resources on new activities and 2) apply improved pedagogical methods in upper level courses to increase students’ practice and metacognition of integrating multidisciplinary knowledge to solve engineering problems.

Authors

Sarah Felix Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [biography]

Sarah Felix is a Professor of Practice at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering department. She teaches control systems courses and design courses, and manages department-level curriculum initiatives. Dr. Felix worked in industry for 14 years prior to teaching.
Luiz Victor Repolho Cagliari http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-3561-0939 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Prof. Eric Burkholder http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7420-4290 Auburn University [biography]

Eric Burkholder is an Assistant Professor in the departments of physics and chemical engineering at Auburn University. He completed a PhD in chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology studying the physics of soft active matter. He then transitioned into STEM education research during his time as a postdoc at Stanford Univeristy. Eric's research focuses on the intersections of assessement, problem-solving, and equity in the undergraduate and graduate STEM classroom.
Dr. Amy Jo Svirsky http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5652-2380 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [biography]

Amy Svirsky is the former Learning Assessment Specialist for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She worked with faculty to design and use learning outcomes assessments, analyze student learning data, and support curricular improvement. She is currently the Assessment Specialist with Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering (MANE) faculty for the NSF RED grant focused on engineering education transformation. Her expertise includes program evaluation, data literacy, and assessment in higher education. She earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University in applied sociology with a focus on program evaluation.
Diana-Andra Borca-Tasciuc Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [biography]

Diana-Andra Borca-Tasciuc is a Professor in the Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she has been a faculty member since 2006. She holds a B.S. in Physics from Bucharest University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a recipient of the 2008 NSF CAREER Award and the 2013 Fulbright Scholarship. Her research interests lie in energy conversion, with a current focus on power harvesting microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), solar energy integration in building envelopes, and nanoscale thermal transport processes. Her work spans both fundamental and applied research, leading to over 100 journal articles and conference proceedings, as well as several patents and patent applications.
Shankar Narayan Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Prof. Antoinette Maniatty Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [biography]

Antoinette M. Maniaty is a professor and currently the department head of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). She earned a B.S. degree from RPI in 1987, an M.S. degree from the University of Minnesota in 1988, and a Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 1991, all in Mechanical Engineering. After spending one year as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, she joined the faculty at RPI in 1992 as the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor (1992-1997). She was one of four women scientists and engineers nationwide to be awarded a Luce fellowship by the Luce Foundation in 1992. In 1993, she received a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award. She was a member of the Defense Science Study Group in 2000 and 2001. In 2001, she was the first Loewy Visiting Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Lehigh University. In 2005, she was named a Fellow of the ASME. On July 1, 2023, she was named Head of the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at RPI.
Dr. Catalin Picu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (SoE) [biography]

Catalin Picu is a Professor in the Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He holds a B.S. in
Mechanical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Dartmouth College. He held a research position at Brown University between 1995 and 1998. His research focuses on the mechanical behavior of materials, with emphasis on soft fibrous materials.

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