Increasing Freshman Contact with Engineers - A Revamp of ENGR101, Tulane's Freshman Intro to Engineering Course

摘要

In prior years, an entering freshman wanting to pursue a career in engineering could not either refute or verify that decision based on anything other than entry-level math and science classes until well after his first year of study. At Tulane, a third of the freshmen initially enrolling in the School of Engineering decided to pursue other majors by the end of their freshman year. For the 2003-04 academic year, a new approach was taken for ENGR101, Tulane's Introduction to Engineering freshman course. The traditional one-hour weekly lecture format was changed, adding three departmental seminars with simultaneous sessions on topics of each department's choosing, guest speakers on topics of interest, and active learning modules as possible. Three additional elements were added as outside-the-classroom activities: mini-lab sessions conducted primarily by graduate students, lunch appointments with faculty members, and off-site visits with local engineering alumni.