Expanding Curricular Pathways into Engineering at Liberal Arts Colleges to Broaden Diversity Within the Profession

Macalester College, Saint Paul MN

Investigators

Abstract

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project will help to increase the number and diversity of engineering graduates in the United States by examining the role that liberal arts colleges might serve in helping students to consider engineering as a career option. This project will support a workshop to re-envision the format of established dual degree programs that combine three years of study at a liberal arts college and two years in an engineering program. This approach, frequently referred to as a 3-2 program, has seen diminished student interest in recent years. This workshop entitled: "Engineering Connections in the Liberal Arts College Environment" will bring faculty together to re-envision the 3-2 dual degree option and develop creative approaches expanding pathways into engineering for students of liberal arts colleges. Liberal arts colleges have long supplied a disproportionate number of graduates, including women and underrepresented minorities, into the professions and the workshop will help to extend this success to engineering. Successful engineering innovation is increasingly seen as demanding critical thinking, communication skills, and an understanding of context, all hallmarks of liberal education. Participants, including 3-2 program advisers, will come from physics, engineering, mathematics, philosophy, and other disciplines, drawn from the institutions of the liberal arts colleges across the country. The workshop will focus on three main topics. Given the diversity in student populations at many liberal arts colleges, how might more attention to engineering in a liberal arts college inspire more women and members of other underrepresented groups to become involved with engineering? What alternatives to the traditional 3-2 pathway into engineering might take better advantage of the liberal arts college environment and serve a wider array of student interests? What kinds of curricular and co-curricular programs can liberal arts colleges develop to build smoother transitions into engineering and better community among students interested in pursuing careers in engineering and/or design? The workshop will lead to a transformation of the way faculty think about engineering education through rethinking what it is to engineer. This will result in better knowledge of how to integrate the liberal arts culture into the education of an engineer and how to better inform liberal arts college students about their potential as future engineers. The project includes efforts to communicate the results of this work to the broader higher education community.