Foundation Coalition first year integrated engineering curriculum at Texas A&M University-Kingsville: development, implementation and assessment

This paper presents a first year integrated engineering curriculum that was implemented at Texas A&M University-Kingsville in the 1995-96 academic year. The curriculum is the result of the efforts by the Foundation Coalition, a National Science Foundation sponsored engineering coalition of 7 institutions around the United States. The goal of the Coalition is to implement curriculum reform in engineering education. In line with the goals of the Foundation Coalition, this curriculum was designed to incorporate changes in four major thrust areas: curriculum integration, technology enabled learning, human interface development, and assessment, evaluation and dissemination. Traditional first year courses in Science, Engineering, Math, and English, have been modified such that topics are delivered based on a predefined sequence which emphasizes basic skills and thematic concepts rather than discipline boundaries, and problem solving strategies, and design. Active learning, or collaborative learning, is also being used in the classroom.