Development and Implementation of a Long-term Freshmen Service Project: The Design and Deployment of an Engineering Outreach Experience for Underserved Populations

Freshmen year programs in engineering have received recent and growing attention as a method to engage first year students in their profession and start them on a path to success. Service learning is a well-known pedagogical method that has been shown to improve retention, especially of underrepresented groups in engineering, and to promote deeper learning through reflection. This paper describes the implementation of a new long-term (full year) service learning project where 240 freshmen mechanical engineering students worked together in small teams to design and deploy an engineering outreach experience for a designated age-group of 411 grade students. This educational experience is designed to expose the freshmen engineering students to a variety of concepts and skills necessary for successful negotiation of their engineering careers. The project encourages the freshmen to challenge their assumptions and conceptions of what an engineer is and does. Other knowledge and skills gained include understanding and using the engineering design process, effectively working on engineering teams, effectively communicating, planning and making decisions, all while solving an openended problem. The experience also asks the freshmen to consider diverse perspectives as they design for the targeted populations. The paper describes the project implementation and presents results from student reflections and from a survey. Lessons learned and recommendations for best practices are also presented. Freshmen Year Context and Objectives During the 2010-2011 academic year the department of Mechanical Engineering at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) began a process of redesigning the freshmen year experience for its incoming Mechanical Engineering students. At Cal Poly students enter the university with a declared major and begin taking major courses their first quarter. The department is large, with 180-240 incoming freshmen each year and a total of 1177 students. The previous freshmen year was somewhat traditional in approach and consisted of several classes on design communication, a broad introductory course including a lecture that provided an overview of various Mechanical Engineering subjects (e.g. mechanics, thermodynamics, mechatronics, and design) and supported those with a three hour/ week handson laboratory. There was a strong feeling among the faculty that the freshmen year could be redesigned to better support the overall program goals. One often cited goal of the redesign of freshmen engineering programs is to increase retention through discipline-specific design activities. At Cal Poly, the one-year retention rate of Mechanical Engineering students is currently over 95% and the two-year retention rates are above 80% and generally rising over the last decade. These percentages are roughly the same when sorted by gender and ethnicity, making retention only a minor concern in this redesign. A bigger goal for the curriculum designers was to steer students not interested in Mechanical Engineering into other programs early in their time at Cal Poly, since changing majors becomes more difficult if not impossible in the third and fourth years. Other broad goals included building a community of learners and a first introduction to the design process. P ge 26510.2 A survey of the engineering education literature was performed to guide the development of a freshmen year experience. A wide variety of freshmen engineering curricular design is available, and this paper is not intended as a review of these. Brannan and Wankat report on a survey of first year programs, noting in particular that many innovative, large freshmen programs focus on laboratory and design content. Several other specific examples will be mentioned in the following sections. After reviewing the literature and the goals of the entire four year Mechanical Engineering program, the faculty identified the main objectives of the freshmen year redesign. • Knowledge of the Mechanical Engineering Discipline: Introduce students to the field of mechanical engineering with the goal of helping the students better understand the discipline. This will allow students to make an informed decision early in their career whether to continue to pursue a Mechanical Engineering degree or switch to another major. • Professional Skills and Attitudes: Give students skills necessary to succeed in the program and as professional engineers. This includes developing teamwork skills, fostering good study habits, developing a growth mindset with regards to education, and ethically fulfilling their professional obligations of service to humanity. • Design Methodology: Students learn how to approach open-ended engineering design problems with a structured design process and to communicate their ideas through writing, speech and engineering drawings. • Create a Community: Allow students to make connections with the Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering community and develop support systems that will help them succeed during their time as students. This includes getting to know the faculty, understanding department procedures, finding extra-curricular opportunities and gaining exposure to other academic opportunities such as study abroad.