The emerging national movement to transform undergraduate education in engineering (TUEE) requires a radical shift from lectures and other forms of traditional passive learning. The TUEE Collaboratory features a very collaborative student-centered active learning model that features interdisciplinary, team-based, open-ended problem solving and project learning involving real-world situations, often with real customers and real potential employers, throughout the undergraduate experience. All access, diversity and inclusion issues would be addressed systematically as well and embedded from the outset. The TUEE Collaboratory model fosters a student-centered, professional practice experiential learning environment for transforming undergraduate education in engineering/computer science. The first cohort of at least 40 students will graduate in 2026 at each lead University that would establish at each regional TUEE Collaboratory.

The Current Situation

Harvey Mudd College and Olin College of Engineering have been doing very well at student-centered, active project learning throughout the undergraduate experience for decades but they have a combined enrollment of less than 1,400 students.

The Problem

All large universities lack, by far, the capacity (numbers of faculty) to provide adequate coaching and mentoring for the various projects, programs, activities, and events required to implement student-centered active project learning throughout the undergraduate experience for each student.

The Solutions

Operating Framework | Innovative Features | Strategic Partners

Engaging Alumni

The University would engage its own alumni as the source of practicing professionals and recent retirees to collaborate with administrators, faculty, staff and students to overcome the faculty capacity problem that has prevented large universities from implementing student-centered active learning throughout the undergraduate experience for decades. Alums would participate in creating and developing the required elements throughout the AY 2024-2025 Development Phase, for implementing the proposed comprehensive TUEE Collaboratory pilot during AY 2025-2026.

Establish Strategic Partners

The University would immediately establish founding Strategic Corporate Partners (SCPs). SCPs would be major local companies employing hundreds of The University alumni with engineering and IT backgrounds that live in the local metropolitan area (data can easily be found on LinkedIn with a profile on each alum). The University Alumni Chapters would be established with each SCP. During fall 2024, The University would also begin engaging alumni members and partnering with local professional chapters of national professional societies (ACM, ASEE, ASME, IEEE) and diversity organizations (AISES, MAES, NSBE, SACNAS, SHPE, SWE).

Student Professional Practice Scholars (SPPS)

SPPS – a diverse cohort of second and third-year honors students majoring in BME, CpE, CS, EE, or ME with 3.0+ GPAs would be fully established by late October 2024 with an initial cohort of about 100 honors students attending the inaugural Day on Campus with Strategic Partners (SPs) event in November 2024. The SPPS cohort provides the student teams for all student-centered projects, programs, activities and events beginning with the fall term 2024 and throughout the entire two-year project. The size of the SPPS cohort would be scaled accordingly throughout the project to be completed by June 2026. The TUEE Collaboratory model is designed so that each student participates in many interdisciplinary student-centered team based open-ended problem solving activities and design projects throughout their undergraduate experience. They will enter their chosen professional workplace as a practicing engineer / computer scientist.

No Disruption of Current Academic Programs

Except for the four-course academic design spine, the TUEE Collaboratory model is a large student-centered experiential education program with no changes required by The University in currently planned academic programs, courses, activities or events throughout the entire two-year proposed project. During the two-year pilot, only the few students and faculty directly involved in the TUEE Collaboratory effort would be affected.

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