Re Inventing Engineering Education One New School At A Time
- Conference
- Location
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Louisville, Kentucky
- Publication Date
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June 20, 2010
- Start Date
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June 20, 2010
- End Date
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June 23, 2010
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Multidisciplinary Engineering
- Page Count
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14
- Page Numbers
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15.1014.1 - 15.1014.14
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--16213
- Permanent URL
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https://strategy.asee.org/16213
- Download Count
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447
Paper Authors
Susan Blanchard Florida Gulf Coast University
Susan M. Blanchard is Founding Director of the U.A. Whitaker School of Engineering
and Professor of Bioengineering at Florida Gulf Coast University. She received her M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University in 1980 and 1982, respectively,
and her A.B. in Biology from Oberlin College in 1968. She is a Fellow of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the American
Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Robert O'Neill Florida Gulf Coast University
Robert J. O'Neill, P.E. is Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering at Florida Gulf Coast University. Dr. O'Neill received his B.S. from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1975, M.S. in Structural Engineering and Geotechnical Engineering from Stanford University in 1984, and a Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from Kansas State University in 1993. Before joining FGCU in August of 2006, he was a Professor of Civil Engineering at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) where he is an active member of the Committee for Faculty Development and an ExCEEd Mentor.
James Sweeney Florida Gulf Coast University
James D. Sweeney is Professor and Chair of the Department of Bioengineering at Florida Gulf
Coast University. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Case
Western Reserve University in 1988 and 1983, respectively, and his Sc.B. Engineering degree
(Biomedical Engineering) from Brown University in 1979. He is a Senior Member of the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and
Biological Engineering.
Lisa Zidek Florida Gulf Coast University
Lisa Zidek joined Florida Gulf Coast University as Academic Program Director and Associate Professor of Bioengineering in January, 2007. She received the BS in Industrial Engineering from Marquette University, the MS in Mechanical Engineering from Marquette University, the MS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and the Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering with a specialization in Health Systems Management from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She is the lead instructor for the Engineering Service Learning, Engineering Entrepreneurship and Health Care Engineering courses at FGCU, coordinates the Introduction to the Engineering Profession course, and is involved in many outreach programs in the local K-12 schools.
Simeon Komisar Florida Gulf Coast University
Simeon J. Komisar joined Florida Gulf Coast University as Program Director of Environmental Engineering, Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering in August 2008. Dr. Komisar received a B.A. from Yale University in 1974, a BSCE and MS Environmental Engineering from the University of Massachusetts in 1986 and his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Washington in 1993. Prior to his appointment at FGCU, Dr Komisar was the Undergraduate Program Coordinator for Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. His expertise is in water and wastewater engineering and the beneficial re-use of solid wastes and treatment residuals.
Diana Stoppiello Florida Gulf Coast University
Diana Stoppiello joined Florida Gulf Coast University as Academic Advisor for the U.A. Whitaker School of Engineering in April, 2006. She received a B.S. in Accounting from the College of Mount Saint Joseph and an MBA from Xavier University. She is the former Advisor for the College of Education at Florida Gulf Coast University. Prior to advising students, she worked in sales management, accounting, and customer service management.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
Re-Inventing Engineering Education One New School at a Time
Introduction
Few engineering schools have the opportunity to start from scratch and address the calls for reform in engineering education that came from the National Science Foundation, the engineering community at large, and the National Academy of Engineering through its 2004 and 2005 reports, The Engineer of 2020 – Vision of Engineering in the New Century and Educating the Engineer of 2020 – Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century.1,2 The Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering (http://www.olin.edu/), which opened to its inaugural freshman class in fall 2002, graduated its first students in 2006, and achieved ABET accreditation for three degree programs (electrical and computer, mechanical, and general with concentrations in bioengineering, computing, materials science, and systems) in 2007, is one such school, and the U.A. Whitaker School of Engineering (http://www.fgcu.edu/eng/index.html) at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU, http://www.fgcu.edu/), which graduated its first students in bioengineering, civil engineering, and environmental engineering in May 2009, is another. They are similar in that both FGCU (a public university) and Olin (a private college) focus on excellence in undergraduate education and have multi-year contracts for faculty rather than a tenure system. One big difference between the two is that Olin began with a commitment of more than $400M, which made it possible for Olin to offer free tuition to classes who entered before fall 2010, whereas the U.A. Whitaker School of Engineering has received ~$24M in public and private funding for a 70,000 gsf building and $2.2M in recurring funding from the state to support the costs associated with teaching engineering and pre-engineering courses.
Background
FGCU began its engineering programs from a blank slate by hiring the Founding Director (February 2005), an academic advisor, and an office manager and with a commitment to build a state-of-the-art facility for engineering education and hire 13 additional faculty members, including several in leadership positions.3 Lessons learned from The Engineer of 2020, The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman,4 the NSF-sponsored Babson-Olin Symposium on Engineering Entrepreneurship Education,5 the Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) Project at North Carolina State University,6 and a 2006 Project Kaleidoscope workshop on designing undergraduate science and mathematics facilities7 all contributed to the development of engineering at FGCU and to the design of its new building (Holmes Hall), which opened for classes in January 2009. During the U.A. Whitaker School of Engineering’s initial 5-year period, its vision and mission evolved based on input from faculty and external advisors and in response to the addition of computer science to become:
Blanchard, S., & O'Neill, R., & Sweeney, J., & Zidek, L., & Komisar, S., & Stoppiello, D. (2010, June), Re Inventing Engineering Education One New School At A Time Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--16213
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