Keeping today's students on the path to a better world

By Michael Gillis

The path to a career in engineering used to begin in the backyard or the garage.

“Most of my friends bought some old, beat-up car and rebuilt it many times and made it work,” recalls Shefford Baker, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell University’s College of Engineering. “That wasn’t very sophisticated engineering, but it was hands-on, applied engineering.”

Students pursuing an engineering degree today are more likely to have reached the top level in a video game than souped up a Chevy. Upon arrival at Cornell they are thrown head-first into a demanding and intense education. Their days are filled with technical coursework and methodology that has been short on practical application in the first few years. Without experiences like tinkering with cars, radios, or ailing home appliances, many fail to see the relevance.

Cornell Engineering is changing that by helping students see how math, science, programming, and communication all fit together in a career that can help solve the world’s problems. Changes to the college’s curriculum are already under way. The reason is simple: Students need to understand how their steady diet of technical course work applies to the real world.

“Helping beginning students to understand the tools, scope, and impact of engineering is important because modern students have spent a lot less time engaged in activities that one would traditionally think of as engineering before they get to college,” Baker says.

The opportunity for curriculum improvements was identified by the college’s Committee on Curriculum Transformation in 2005. That panel issued a report detailing which components of the curriculum needed attention and the importance of providing the necessary breadth of engineering’s core concepts while maintaining a balance with technical instruction.

Their report was handed off the following year to the Curriculum Task Force, assembled by W. Kent Fuchs, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering, with instructions to suggest changes to the common curriculum.

The task force searched for a formula to better align engineering with math, chemistry, physics, and computing. Easier said than done, since what has been done so far seems to be working well for faculty and students.

First-year blues
One of the key points identified by the Curriculum Task Force is the difficulty first-year engineering students face in absorbing so much technical information without tangible, real-world context.

“Traditional engineering curricula consist primarily of isolated technical courses created for the purpose of imparting detailed skills, and they provide little opportunity to understand the breadth and depth of engineering careers,” reads the panel’s November 2006 report. “Because students don’t have a clear idea what engineering disciplines are like, they are ill equipped to select a major—or even to decide whether engineering is right for them.

That challenge, compounded by a heavy load of technical classes, can be daunting.

In fact, it’s during the first year that the college sees its highest rate of attrition among engineering students, says Lisa Schneider, director of the college’s Engineering Learning Initiatives. And although Cornell fares better than many other schools, Schneider adds that the first year, and even first two years, can prove intimidating and inflexible.

“You don’t want to turn students off,” she says.

That problem is even more pronounced for female students, she adds.
“If they don’t see the relevancy, even if they’re getting A’s, they’ll leave and go to a different college, a different major,” she says. “You’ve got some bright students here, so you want to make sure you’re engaging them so they can see the path.”

In addition, students feel pressured to decide quickly. “We want students to be free to choose any engineering major to the end of the second semester,” Baker says, but added that maintaining flexibility in the curriculum is a challenge.

Chemical engineering, for example, calls for commitment by the second semester. “You start closing doors fairly quickly,” Baker says.

Completing all the required courses in time to choose a major doesn’t leave much room to explore other classes. “You can take one elective freshman year,” says John Harris ’12, “but it’s hard.”

The college recognizes the demand for more flexibility, and educators are working to build in more options.

“Many students want to take courses in management, leadership, finance, and related areas,” says David Gries, associate dean for undergraduate programs at the College of Engineering. “Few Cornell engineering students these days go into the job market and spend the rest of their life simply doing technical engineering. They may start new companies or run large corporations. Typically they become leaders in their professional and personal lives, so it is important for students to have the flexibility they need to take these courses.

 “The difficulty, of course, is in providing that flexibility,” says Gries  “while also providing the depth that they need.”

But while faculty and educators explore more flexibility in the curriculum,  some positive change is already in motion.

Who needs math?
Engineering students, that’s who. The problem is, by the time students are in the thick of their undergraduate years, many have forgotten the math they learned in the first few years.

“It’s a very common refrain among engineering professors that students often seem to have forgotten all the math they ever learned,” Baker says.
The importance of math was not lost on the Curriculum Task Force.

According to the report, research indicates there are significant benefits when “math skills are applied immediately and constantly in science and engineering courses ... in terms of comprehension, retention, and fluency in problem solving.”

That research led the committee to offer up one of it first recommendations to better integrate math and engineering in the first year.

Working with the math department, the faculty implemented an important change in Math 191, the first engineering calculus class.

“We replaced one of the two recitations in Math 191 with a collaborative-learning session,” Gries explains. “Students work in groups to solve engineering problems, using the mathematical concepts being learned in the course. The problems are developed by engineering faculty. This replacement has two goals: One, get students working with each other; and, two, provide motivation for the mathematical concepts being learned.”

That kind of interaction is invaluable, Schneider says.

“Ideally, they’ll learn the math better because they’re engaging in something they’re interested in,” she says. “They came here to study engineering. They can see right off the bat that what they’re learning in math is applicable to ­engineering.”

Baker adds that the math department’s support of the effort, which included assistance with the integration, helped move the process along.

“The math department really got on board with that very early,” he says.
Classes in Math 191 now consist of two or three instructor-led sessions and two steered by TAs. They incorporate collaborative workshops in which students apply calculus to real engineering problems.

“It’s not just math. They do relate to other subjects, like physics,” says Lyssa Lincoln ’12. “So I can see the benefit of that.”

Based on the success of changes to Math 191, Gries says the college is planning to extend the concept to Math 192.

Do you compute?
Another task force recommendation in the mix is a boost in the number of computing credits required, up from four to five.

“Computing is ubiquitous these days, and it is important for engineers to have knowledge of more than one language and programming environment,” Gries says. “The previous one-course, 4-credit requirement tried to do this, but there wasn’t enough time in that course.”

Now students must take a 4-credit course in programming fundamentals in either MATLAB or Java, as well as a 1-credit course in the other language.

“It’s a good idea, because they used to combine Java and MATLAB in one semester” says Laura Hyde ’12. “I don’t have any computer background, so this way I get to do one and then do the other.”

The task force’s 2006 report spells out how significant computing skills are today to the contemporary student.

“Students should be able to write computer programs to solve engineering problems as a matter of course, as routinely as they use a computer to write papers or access the Internet,” the report reads. “Further, students need experience in the use of different programming languages and environments. At the moment, these objectives are not reached for all engineering students.”

A working knowledge of programming is an asset for engineers, Baker says.
“Just as you need math, you need to understand how computer programs are written and work,” he says, adding that once a student is fluent in one programming language, that skill can be applied more effectively to solving engineering problems in other programming ­languages.

The right chemistry
The third change to the curriculum is the elimination of Chemistry 211, Chemistry for the Applied Sciences, a decision made in conjunction with the chemistry department.

“(Chemistry 211) was more of a terminal, survey course, for students who would be taking only one course in chemistry,” Gries says. “It was felt that it was better to teach the students fewer topics but go more in-depth in them. So, the students now take Chem 209, which has the same content as Chem 207. When this change was made, the chemistry department suggested having a separate course for engineers, Chem 209, and using 207 only for non-engineers. The engineering version, Chem 209, can rely more on mathematics because all incoming engineering students have had the equivalent of high school calculus.”

“The exams are much better because it’s much more math-based,” says Arianne Babina ’12. “We don’t have to write up lab reports like the other class. Ours are more based on our calculations and results.”

Baker says the change allows students to dig a little deeper, as opposed to outlining the basics.

“If you’re skimming over the tops of the trees, you don’t really get much of an appreciation of the details and structure,” Baker says.

Change is in the air
As the curriculum evolves, faculty and educators recognize they need to complement those changes by evaluating other components of the undergraduate experience.

That experience, they know, will play an important role in the careers graduates choose after leaving ­Cornell.

“Employers are looking at student GPAs, and they really want the top students, but also, for the most part, they know that a student who has successfully gone through the curriculum at Cornell is going to be a pretty good student,” Schneider says. “So they’re looking at what other things (students) are bringing to the table. Do they have good communication skills, teamwork skills; (are they) a good person to have on the team?”

The engineers of the 21st century do need to be more aware of the world around them, as well as possess skills that may not have been emphasized in the past.

One report, The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century, published in 2004 by the National Academy of Engineering, details how engineering is evolving.

“Given the uncertain and changing character of the world in which 2020 engineers will work, engineers will need something that cannot be described in a single word,” the report states. “It involves dynamism, agility, resilience, and flexibility. Not only will technology change quickly, the social-political-economic world in which engineers work will change continuously. In this context it will not be this or that particular knowledge that engineers will need but rather the ability to learn new things quickly and the ability to apply knowledge to new problems and new contexts.”

 Among suggestions from the task force to enhance the undergraduate experience and better equip students to compete globally is providing more opportunities to study off campus.

“We will be encouraging our undergrads to spend time abroad—spending a semester at a university, doing an internship, or doing it through co-op,” Gries says. “In engineering, and indeed many other fields, the work is done on a global scale, and having an experience abroad, experiencing firsthand another culture, can change one’s perspective tremendously. We are steadily developing relationships with universities in other countries, and it is now easy for students, depending on their major, to study in India, Mexico, Germany, Hong Kong, and Singapore. We have two programs with Ecole Centrale Paris.”

Heather Hunter ’09 CE attended a civil engineering summer camp at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur this year. “This was an incredible trip, I did things I never expected, like morning exercises every day with a general from the army, meeting the president of India, and singing a song in Telugu on stage,” she says. “I learned a ton not just about civil engineering, but about India, its history, languages, politics, music, and movies. I also learned a lot about myself.”

But, like other changes to the curriculum, providing more experiences like Heather’s will need some fine tuning over time. As Baker points out, coordinating a student’s course load with education abroad can be complicated.

“We would love to have students study abroad, but we have a very demanding curriculum, and at pretty high levels,” he says, adding that sending a student abroad can encroach on some of the critical class time on campus.
Nonetheless, Baker says Cornell students still have an upper hand.

“There are some things the real world cares about that Cornell is good at and I think is better at now,” Baker says. “Cornell students are able to work anywhere in the world.”