Research Initiative: A Holistic Cross-Disciplinary Project Experience as a Platform to Advance the Professional Formation of Engineers

West Virginia University Research Corporation, Morgantown WV

Investigators

Abstract

To remain a world economic leader, the U.S. must develop an engineering workforce who are more competent in their problem-solving skills considering social dimensions of problems we face as a society. Today's engineering graduates are well prepared in the technical aspects of the engineering. To address the complex, multi-faceted problems facing the world today, engineers also need to develop a wide range of nontechnical skills and work effectively in multidisciplinary teams. This new breed of engineer needs to not only be a problem solver, but also a problem definer, leading multidisciplinary teams of professionals in setting agendas for future engineering grand challenges. This project seeks to understand professional formation of engineering students and equip engineering faculty with social science research expertise that will enable them to address current w in the engineering curriculum. A cross-disciplinary experience for engineering undergraduates is developed to solve a contemporary engineering problem and to study the professional formation of engineers. In this way, engineering students expand the problem-solving toolbox beyond the realm of traditional engineering through a collaborative exchange with social science disciplines. A Holistic Engineering Project Course exposes students to global issues, broadens their outlook, increases their professional skillsets, and can serve as a platform of future engineering education that responds to engineering challenges and expectations of future engineering graduates. A Cross-Disciplinary Team Learning model is designed to assess the professional formation of engineers. Diverse sets of quantitative and qualitative empirical data are collected and analyzed to validate the theoretical model, and to assess the value of the Holistic Engineering Project Course in the professional formation of engineers. The overarching research questions are: (1) How effective is a cross-disciplinary open-ended problem-based experience in the formation of future engineers and in preparing engineers to address 21st century challenges we face as a society? (2) How effective is the open-ended problem-based experience as a platform for instructing engineering faculty in social science research methods? This research informs engineering educators on much-needed understanding of effectiveness of cross-disciplinary courses in engineering curriculum. Research findings on professional formation through the Holistic Engineering Project Course can be shared throughout West Virginia University and disseminated through conference and journal articles to encourage other engineering faculty to use social science research skills to expand their pedagogical approaches. In addition, this holistic course approach provides a compelling opportunity to engineering educators around the country to rethink the traditional approach to engineering capstone experiences. The proposed project is expected to impact the engineering PIs, who benefit from the guidance of faculty mentors in social science methods and approaches. Through collaboration with different student groups/organizations and department academic advisory board, underrepresented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students (e.g., minority, women, first-generation college students from rural West Virginia) are identified and recruited to participate in the capstone offerings. The research contributes to the NSF?s Research Initiation in Engineering Formation program by conducting research on the professional formation of engineers that introduce three engineering faculty to social science research methods and allow them to further extend engineering education studies in the future. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.