Soldier to Engineer: Planning VCU's Pathway

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。该工程教育研究奖授予弗吉尼亚联邦大学，将聘请研究人员设计一个评估军事训练、课程作业和职业专业的系统，以努力减少完成其六个项目之一的本科学位所需的额外学分。本项目旨在通过与军兵种合作，将在职培训和军事课程与相应的工程课程相对应，从而缩短获得学位的时间。因此，它将成为所有大约360所工程学校和近200万9/11后退伍军人的巨大财富。要确定的过程和等效性很可能成为现成的程序，将作为其他机构的模型。许多退伍军人都受过专门的培训，并具有广泛的技术实际应用经验。然而，大多数工程学院并没有很好地招募和留住这群独特的学生。该项目希望通过开发将工程课程转变为退伍军人更合理的途径的过程来改变这种状况。研究结果将促进对如何修改工程教育管道的理解，使退伍军人能够进入并有效地通过该计划取得进展，以便他们能够填补工程工作。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This engineering education research award to Virginia Commonwealth University will employ researchers to design a system for evaluating military training, coursework and occupational specialty in efforts to reduce the number of additional credits needed to complete an undergraduate degree in one of its six programs. This project aims to reduce the time to degree by working with service branches to identify equivalency credits for on-the-job training and military courses with corresponding engineering courses. As such, it will be a tremendous asset to all of the approximately 360 engineering schools and the almost 2 million post 9/11 veterans. The processes and equivalencies to be identified could well become readymade programs that will serve as a model for other institutions. Many veterans have specialized training and experience with the practical application of a wide array of technologies. However most colleges of engineering are not well positioned to recruit and retain this unique cohort. This project is expected to change this state of affairs by developing processes that transform the engineering curricula into a more plausible pathway for veterans. The results will advance understanding of how to modify the engineering education pipeline to allow veterans to enter and efficiently progress through the program so that they can fill engineering jobs.