Engineering a new core

A diverse and technically literate core of graduates from engineering programs is needed now more than ever before to help serve, lead, and transform a troubled world. In order to prepare our engineering students to be effective and ethical professionals, citizens, and individuals, we have restructured our curriculum through a new core that offers a more effective and coherent experience, providing more opportunities for interdisciplinary, experiential, and civic education. This paper presents our approach to preparing engineering students to not only be proficient in engineering and science principles but to be aware of the interplay among science, technology, and society. We describe the core requirements and how we adapted our program to incorporate their learning objectives through a combination of exercises required in the Introduction to Engineering course they take in their freshman year in conjunction with their senior capstone design project.