Reverse-engineering engineering education

We propose a program, Reverse-Engineering Engineering Education, to address the objectives of the Coalition for Life-Transforming Education. In this program, engineering undergraduate students will teach incoming engineering undergraduate students, as well as faculty, and administrators about their backgrounds, challenges, and context, to help create a culture focused on experiential learning, mattering, and support. With the help of faculty mentors, students will design and deliver seminars on topics related to their identities and their educational experience.

The resulting impact will be assessed and measured by accepted methods. In the process, we hope to instill in engineering students important elements of empathy, identity and purpose, that will strengthen the cultivation of character, societal consciousness, hence of trust.

The proposal addresses the incoming cohort of engineering undergraduates, which is approximately 600 students (including transfers from community colleges and other institutions). Upon its successful conclusion, the project will be offered for scale up to all other academic units at USC (with an incoming annual cohort of more than 3,000).