Development and Assessment of an Undergraduate Curriculum for First-Year International Engineering Students

Abstract- Each year, the first-year programs team of an engineering student organization at a midwest university collaborates with engineering faculty to develop a first-year seminar that introduces students to college life and to engineering. The seminar is instructed by upper-division peer mentors who develop course lesson plans and learning objectives and mentor first-year engineering students. Over time, the number of divisions devoted primarily to international student instruction has increased from one to three divisions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which first-year international students perceive the seminar as beneficial to their college transition. Overall, international students more positively rated topics that were congruent with their interests and experiences. This paper is significant in that it assesses international students ’ perceptions of the course curriculum, describes revisions to the international student division curriculum, and details the overall benefits of international-to-international student peer mentoring within first-year engineering programs. Index Terms – Engineering curriculum, first-year engineering