Impact of the EPICS model for community-engaged learning and design education

Design experiences offer opportunities for students to develop a wide range of technical and professional skills.Community-engagement or service-learning is becoming more pervasive in engineering and offers opportunities forstudents to engage in designs that address human, community and environmental needs. Connecting engineering withthese areas is cited in the literature as a means to potentially enhance diversity and retention. Analyses in this paper indeedshow a positive impact on the retention of students who engage in the EPICS Program early in their academic program andfemale students in particular. Furthermore, there are many benefits of extended design experiences and the data shows thatparticipation over multiple semesters has a significant impact on the depth of the experiences. In addition to the personalbenefits, the participation of students over multiple years also offers opportunities for mentoring younger students withinthe course and can further impact the diversity and retention efforts.