Liberal Studies in Engineering - Workshop Report

On the 30th and 31st of January, 2015, some sixty scholars from the humanities, arts and social sciences as well as engineering met at the National Academy of Sciences building in DC to discuss the possibilities for establishing an undergraduate, pre-professional degree program — a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies in Engineering — meant to attract students undecided about choice of a major who still have sufficient interest to enroll in a program that keeps open the possibility that they might pursue a career in engineering. The workshop over the day and one-half included six sessions, each led off by a panel of from three to six project participants. The first part of this report contains summaries of panelists’ remarks. A second part provides a narrative of themes discussed and questions raised during the discussion sessions.Support for this event was provided by the National Science Foundation’s Improving Under- graduate STEM Education program (award no.1451399 made to MIT), by the Teagle Foundation, and by the Deans of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and of Claremont Graduate University’s School of Educational Studies