CITY LIMITS: Enginuity: Drexel tries an innovative approach to engineering.
For engineers – and soon all students – at Drexel University, the times they are a changin'. With the introduction of a new curriculum stressing an integrated approach to learning, Drexel's College of Engineering is "on the cutting edge in the country," Drexel President Richard Breslin said. The new concept, dubbed the Enhanced Educational Experience in Engineering, involves team teaching and combines various disciplines traditionally taught separately to make the subject matter more relevant for students, school officials say. Core courses in humanities, math and science are taught cooperatively by groups of professors to the same group of students for up to five terms. The innovative approach to education has been successful so far, Drexel officials say, and the school's five other colleges will join the program next fall. Changes at Drexel began in 1988, Breslin said, when the National Science Foundation – believing that engineering education on a national scale was "old, tired and in disarray" – put out a request for proposals to change the way engineering is taught. Drexel's proposal showed the "single greatest promise" for reforming the manner in which engineering education is delivered. That proposal, for which Drexel received $2.1 million from the National Science Foundation, now forms the basis of its experimental curriculum. The new curriculum went into effect in 1989 with a pilot group of 100 students, according to Breslin. Under the Drexel Curriculum, students work in teams to conceptualize, plan solutions and solve problems from the beginning of freshman year, starting the first school term with a bridge-building contest, Drexel spokesperson David Mueller said. The bridges, made out of plastic pieces and subject to certain specifications, are tested for weight-bearing ability in a student-organized contest. The freshmen continue to refine their problem-solving skills when classes begin, as first-year biology is integrated with calculus, chemistry and humanities, Bioscience and Biotechnology Professor Wayne Magee said. Lab experiments are less regimented and more curiosity-directed. "We are moving away from 50-minute lectures based on one thousand-page textbooks to a much more personalized, project-oriented approach centered around lab," Magee said. He added that students in integrated biology classes find the material more interesting and easier to learn. Students keep journals, which they use to write a personal narrative about the changes they observe in themselves from fall to spring terms, said Valarie Arms, associate professor of humanities and communications. They also read novels with scientific themes, which they discuss with humanities and chemistry professors in tandem, and do collaborative, technical writing, applying techniques learned in humanities coursework to papers written for biology. Unlike the traditional engineering curriculum, the program places a heavy emphasis on refined oral and written communication skills, which are needed when making presentations of ideas to employers, Breslin said. Arms said the concentration on communications also aids in preparing students for Drexel's unique cooperative education program, in which all Drexel students spend up to 18 months working full-time in industry before graduation. With the Drexel Curriculum, students learn engineering as an integrated discipline, rather than an applied science, Engineering Dean Y.T. Shah said. Concepts are tied together, and the focus is on how they impact each other, Breslin said. The goal of the Drexel Curriculum is a broad, well-rounded preparatory education aimed at solving real-world problems and producing engineers who can both define and solve problems. Each team of professors meets once a week to discuss their teaching techniques and issues related to the integration of vastly different disciplines, said Arms. A student representative attends these faculty meetings to share student concerns about and reactions to the classes, Arms said. The student-faculty interaction and dialogue which result are beneficial and an important part of the learning process, she said. A sense of camaraderie has developed among the faculty members involved in the project, Arms said, as they have discovered and become excited about shared interests. "It's a unified faculty," Arms said. "We don't always agree, but we support one another and we recognize the importance of what each one is doing." Breslin agreed, noting that "the synergism [between faculty and students] is found to be very intellectually stimulating." All of the professors involved in teaching the Drexel Curriculum, regardless of discipline, have made a committment to what Arms calls "life-long learning" – emphasizing teamwork, technology, and hands-on experience from the outset. "We want our students to be creative, open to new ideas," she said. "We want them to become leaders," and the Drexel Curriculum encourages that development "in every way possible." Also technology is changing so fast that the technical knowledge an engineer learns in college will likely be obsolete in five years. For this reason, Arms stressed the interconnectedness and coordination of all of the subject areas incorporated into the Drexel Curriculum. Shah explained that the emphasis of the new curriculum is its immediate exposure of freshmen to engineering and its concepts, rather than a traditional first-year program of math, science and humanities. Students seem to like this approach better as well. Shah believes that although they are working harder, they are finding engineering a more interesting discipline. "The retention rate of E4 [Enhanced Educational Experience in Engineering] students is double-digit better [than students in the traditional engineering program] which seems to indicate significant student satisfaction," Breslin said. Engineering freshman Kevin Murphy praised the Drexel Curriculum. "I like E4 because all of the freshmen [in the program] take the same courses, so we work in teams, study together and help each other out," Murphy said. "All of the material we learn in calculus, chemistry and physics is directed toward engineering – all of the teachers work together." Grades in the program have been, on average, at least as good if not better than those of students taking a traditional course load of engineering study, according to Shah. The engineering background of the E4 undergraduates also appears to be equally good or better than that of students who have studied the conventional, non-integrated curriculum, he added. But even with all of its advantages, the Drexel Curriculum is not perfect. It may be difficult to place students who bring transfer credit to Drexel into integrated courses if they have already taken parts of the material slated to be covered, Magee said. The new Drexel approach is also highly intensive, in time, money and faculty commitment. Planning must be completed a year, not months, before a term begins, and faculty members – who have thus far joined the Drexel Curriculum integration project on a voluntary basis – must be willing to make a greater effort to be involved with students and other members of their faculty team. The next step for the Drexel Curriculum will take place this coming fall, when the integrated approach will be phased into Drexel's other undergraduate schools: the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Business and Administration, the College of Information Studies and the Nesbitt College of Design. Breslin has said the integration project will not be "monolithic" in nature, but will instead be adapted to each school as it seems appropriate. Information Studies Dean Richard Lytle sees its implementation in his school as "go[ing] even further in relating theory to practice and combining education with experience."