Iron Range Engineering Program Given Green Light

Distinguishing Characteristics of the New Engineering Program

Educating Engineers: Designing for the Future of the Field, together with other recent research and reports on engineering education, make a compelling case for envisioning engineering education in a new way. The new Iron Range engineering program will explore a completely different way of approaching engineering education. Some of the characteristics of this new approach are:

·Primary emphasis is on development of learning outcomes that have been spelled out in national reports, including The Engineer of 2020. This emphasis is contrasted with primary emphasis on coverage of topical material that characterizes many of the engineering programs throughout the world.

·Faculty members in the new program will invest heavily in developing abilities of students in the program to assess their development with respect to these outcomes. To support self assessment faculty members must be able to articulate criteria with which development with respect to these outcomes can be evaluated.

·All learning activities will be organized around externally-sponsored projects. Each semester, students will be working on several externally-sponsored projects concurrently. Faculty members will use the projects as contexts for developing competencies and learning subject matter. Students will be enrolled in courses primarily to address the logistical requirements of university procedures, but there will not be courses following patterns that are used throughout the world.

·Students complete course and graduation requirements by exceeding or meeting levels of competencies with respect to clearly articulated outcomes.

·Initially, the program will be an upper division program. Students will be recruited from community colleges where they will have fulfilled their lower division requirements. A four-year program is envisioned in 6-8 years.