Improving Undergraduate Engineering Education through Student-Centered, Active and Cooperative Learning

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The Improving Undergraduate Engineering Education through Student-Centered, Active and Cooperative Learning project at Utah State University involves a multi-fold plan to increase the number, diversity, and quality of engineers entering the workforce. The project will provide four-year scholarships to 26 undergraduate students majoring in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Environmental Engineering. The project responds to the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness' call for more engineers to meet the nation's technological workforce needs. The scholarships will allow talented and financially needy students to reduce the time spent working to cover tuition and expenses and devote time to study and other activities beneficial to students' ability to graduate and enter the engineering profession. To broaden participation, the project will include recruitment through entities which target economically disadvantaged students and underrepresented groups. Informed by recommendations from the National Research Council's "How People Learn" study, the program will institute learning communities, organized between two departments led by faculty mentors. The program will take advantage of existing student educational support and professional development services including: supplemental instruction (tutoring & peer study groups), undergraduate research, field trips, internships and co-ops, and career counseling. Further, they will increase use of research-proven instructional practices (such as problem-based learning and project-based learning) in several engineering classes to enhance the learning environment for all students, not just program scholars. The program will offer seminars to College of Engineering faculty to promote adoption of research-proven pedagogies and improve teaching and learning in all six College departments. Formative and summative evaluation will be performed by an external evaluator. The project will provide information on program outcomes and lessons learned from the project to the K-16 STEM education community nationwide by dissemination through journals, conferences, and web resources.