THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SERVICE LEARNING INTO ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT COURSES

摘要

Service learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities. Considering the practicality of the engineering profession, the administration and faculty at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), thought it would be beneficial to incorporate service learning into various engineering courses, including Engineering Management (EM) as well as Civil Engineering and Construction Management (CECM) courses, starting in the Spring 2015 semester. The service learning aspect was incorporated into an EM course on Lean Manufacturing that was offered at the graduate level. This course includes both graduate as well as undergraduate students, which will enable the assessment to be done for both undergraduate as well as graduate students. In CECM, the service learning aspect was incorporated into the undergraduate senior design capstone course. Both faculty members in EM as well as CECM, reached out to contacts they had in local firms and nonprofit organizations and expressed interest to further strengthen their existing relationships with them. This was done by getting real projects that the students would work on, as part of their homework assignments and projects in their respective classes. This paper helps establish a process for incorporating service learning on a broader scale into the engineering curriculum at CSUN and would thus create an environment for evaluating service learning courses over a period of 4-6 semesters.