The motivating principle of the BESTEAMS (Building Engineering Student Team Effectiveness and Management Systems) project is to create a modular student team training program that can be integrated into any existing engineering undergraduate curriculum. Funded by a three-year NSF-Course, Curriculum, Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) grant, the BESTEAMS curriculum is comprehensive and developmental, offering three levels of instruction (introductory, intermediate, advanced) in three key areas of team functioning (personal awareness, interpersonal dynamics, and project management). The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of student evaluation of the introductory level curriculum that has been introduced into the Clark School of Engineering's Introduction to Engineering Design course (ENES 100). Students completed three team work modules presented by faculty trained in the module delivery during the 2001-2002 academic year. The first Introductory module related to personal effectiveness and increasing self awareness. Using the widely recognized Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI), the module shows students how knowing their own preferred learning style can give them insight into themselves as well as their teammates' view of educational and team tasks (N = 379 students). The second Introductory module (interpersonal dynamics) addressed basic communication issues including giving and receiving feedback, typical stages of team development, and brainstorming activities (N = 125 students). The final module on project management, covered personal time management in the context of team projects and included project definition, scoping and the creation of Gantt charts (N = 144 students). 1. The BESTEAMS Project: Modules for Team Training BESTEAMS stands for Building Engineering Student Team Effectiveness and Management Systems. In addition to the University of Maryland, the current BESTEAMS partners include: Howard University, Morgan State University, and The United States Naval Academy (USNA). The diversity of partners is deliberate: one goal of BESTEAMS is to create a team curriculum that is appropriate in a wide range of different engineering schools, ranging from the historically Black to a military context, from public to private institutions, for men and women of all nationalities. The ultimate goal is to be a catalyst for a professional engineering environment that is welcoming and comfortable for all people. P ge 806.1 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education BESTEAMS focuses on teaming as a means of bringing about permanent change in the engineering environment. Engineering project teams, ubiquitous in the profession, are becoming a cornerstone of the engineering education system. Team-based product design and development delivers increased productivity, significant time-to-market reductions and profitability gains. The early work of the BESTEAMS partners was to develop and implement a prototype team training system called the Engineering Project Team Training System or EPTTS. EPTTS included segments on teamwork delivered through the “filter” of learning styles (using Kolb’s Learning Styles Inventory, LSI6). Faculty-training workshops to teach engineering instructors to use EPTTS and companion materials on their own were developed. Nearly 900 engineering students in 20 different classes at four different institutions were trained by the BESTEAMS partnership in personal awareness using the Kolb LSI. These early efforts supported the belief that student training in proven personal and team dynamics methods improves the team experience for both faculty and students.8 2. Design of Curriculum Modules As implied above, the creation of a successfully operating student team is not automatic. Good will or intention to be effective team members is not sufficient. Teams are collections of individuals who must learn to interact with each other and with the “team” as a whole. BESTEAMS identified three domains of team performance that are key to successful team functioning. These three aspects define the type of process training we have devised for engineering students and provide the basis for assessing team effectiveness. The domains are described in Table 1. Table 1. BESTEAMS Engineering Student Team Training Curriculum by Module and Team Performance Domain. Track Personal Interpersonal Project Management Introductory Kolb Learning Styles Feedback, Team Development & Learn Styles in Team Context Individual Time Management & Project Scoping Intermediate Felder’s Inventory of Learning Styles Human Resource Management: Conflict Resolution Project Organization