Most schools in the U.S. have moved, and continue to move, from a Quarter to a Semester system (Q2S) curricula. From student learning the point of view of, it is well known that the semester system has many advantages over the quarter system. At our institution, most students of the mechanical engineering program work full-time in the industry during the day, and take classes in the evenings. Additionally, due to classes meeting once a week in our 10-week quarter system, we firmly believe that transitioning into a 15-week semester system will immensely help student engagement and retention due to truncated semester class meeting times each week as well as the dissemination of the same lecture topics over longer time-frame. Our university transitioned from the Q2S system in fall 2017. Furthermore, in order for our program to be competitive with other schools, we have reduced the total number of semester credit hours necessary for graduation, with every effort made to ensure full comprehension of the course contents in the quarter system in this Q2S transition. The present paper discusses the restructuring of our ABET accredited undergraduate mechanical engineering (ME) curriculum for Q2S, its challenges, advantages, and changes made to the content in some courses.
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