A First-Year Course as a Foundation for Engineering Education

Abstract: First-year students interested in studying an engineering discipline need an introduction to that discipline that is both broad and meaningful. Most do not have sufficient information about the discipline to finalize their choice of major. Also, those who remain in the major lack an overall view of the discipline and fail to recognize connections between subsequent topics studied. These deficits can be overcome through the use of a first-year course in which the students do meaningful introductory work in a broad assortment of topics organized to provide an integrated view of the discipline. An introductory chemical engineering course is described as an example of the first-year course suggested above. The course is structured around an engineering design problem which can be solved by designing a simpl