Minor In Engineer Studies: A New Program For A New Era
Date
2007-06-24
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American Society for Engineering Education
Abstract
A new program has started in our school. This is a true multidisciplinary program that includes
the whole engineering college and all engineering fields. The major goal of the program is to
provide technological awareness and understanding of the technical issues to non-engineering
students. Since many managers, directors, and policymakers (all around the world) are making
decisions on technological-based issues, it makes sense to provide them with a conceptual-based
technology education. This paper covers the major premise of our efforts, the way it is planned,
the way we include all majors in the college, and the way we work together to make it happen.
This is a collegewide effort that includes all levels from the dean and the dean’s office to the
individual departments, as well as some of our graduate and undergraduate students. The big
challenge is how to teach the classes—i.e., who the audience is. This paper shows the detailed
planning, implementation, and early results and challenges of our first course developments and
implementations. The paper provides examples of classes, the material that we cover in the first
class for non-majors, and the approach of teaching such classes. The students in these classes are
mainly in such fields as political science, business, environmental science, policy studies, and
other parts of the social sciences. All of the classes in this minor program are designed with basic
high school algebra as a prerequisite. The students will learn the concepts and even go through
basic back-of-the-envelope calculations that will help them appreciate engineering solutions. The
paper provides examples of such concepts as well as reactions of the students. Currently, we
have the overwhelming support of the students. While the official start of the program is January
2007, students have shown great support and are working with the director of the program and
the College of Engineering to take classes in advance to be a definite part of the program. This
paper will address the main issues as to how we go about teaching technology and engineering
appreciation to non-engineering students.
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Comments
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: Mina, M. (2007, June), "Minor In Engineer Studies: A New Program For A New Era." Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--3005.
Copyright 2007 American Society for Engineering Education.
Posted with permission.