Applying the Core: Creating Relevance Contextualizing Professional Development for STEM Careers

在密集的工程课程中，工科学生缺乏专业技能发展的机会。将专业技能添加到课程中而不丢失关键技术内容的唯一方法是将这些技能整合到现有的技术环境中。大多数工程专业的学生都希望了解他们的领域及其对社会的广泛影响和应用。我们将这种愿望与专业技能发展的需求结合起来，使用专注于协作学习的教学技术（学生所学的总和远远超过教师通过与同行以及该领域的行业和学术代表的真实互动所传授的价值）。其结果是一门“应用核心”课程，专注于工程科学与工程设计应用之间的桥梁主题；沟通，网络，生活平衡等专业发展技能的使用，在一个集成的流线型格式提供必要的脚手架，以建立这样的桥梁。这就是这个项目的智力价值。这个项目的重点是试点课程（电气工程），同时做必要的研究，以确认这些目标的实现。为了产生更广泛的影响，该项目还为将课程推广到工程的其他子领域、其他教员和其他机构奠定了基础。

Interdisciplinary (99)In packed engineering curricula, engineering students lack exposure to professional skills development. The only way to add professional skills into the curriculum without loss of critical technical content is to integrate these skills into an existing technical context. Most engineering students express a desire to understand their field and its broader impacts and applications to society. We combine this desire with the need for professional skills development using pedagogical techniques focused on collaborative learning (where the sum of what students learn far exceeds what the instructor teaches through the value imparted by authentic interaction with peers and both industry and academic representatives within the field). The result is a course "Applying the Core" focused on bridging topics of engineering science with applications of engineering design; communication, networking, life balance, and other professional development skills used, in an integrated streamlined format to provide the necessary scaffolding to building such a bridge. This is the intellectual merit of the project. This project focuses on piloting the course (in electrical engineering) while doing the necessary research to confirm the attaining of these objectives. For broader impacts, the project also creates a foundation for generalizing the course to other sub-fields of engineering, other faculty, and other institutions.