Many engineering programs have implemented project-based, first-year experiences to foster the development of skills and attitudes that improve student retention and better prepare students for an increasingly dynamic and global workplace. Project-focused approaches increase the workload of already busy faculty members and can be difficult to sustain, particularly when budgets are tight. Added responsibilities such as ordering and managing supplies, resolving technical issues faced by students, and maintaining tools and machinery rob faculty of time that could be better spent focusing on the learning experience. Louisiana Tech University has addressed this issue by implementing a project-focused curriculum that we call Living with the Lab. This curriculum decreases a portion of the faculty workload by transferring the ownership and maintenance of laboratory platforms and tools from the university to the students. Each student purchases a robotics kit with a programmable controller, sensors, servos, and software. In addition, students are required to purchase a kit that includes a majority of the tools necessary to complete the required projects in the new curriculum. The robotics kit and toolkit provide the foundation for a laboratory and design platform that is completely mobile and accessible at all times. Despite Louisiana Tech's transition to a student-owned laboratory and design platform, a significant portion of the faculty workload still includes tasks necessary to appropriately facilitate our project-based approach. To increase the sustainability of the curriculum, our faculty team has implemented a student-run help desk that is responsible for many of the tasks required to sustain the curriculum. By analyzing help desk data collected throughout the year, we measure and identify the types of activities performed by the student-run help desk as well as the utilization of it by Louisiana Tech's first-year engineering students. This paper describes our first-year approach, the management of project supplies and equipment, the help desk, and the assessment data collected throughout the year.
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