Assessing the effectiveness of integrated freshmen curricula in engineering

Summary form only given. Reform across subject areas through curricular integration has an overarching goal of achieving high academic success for all students. A number of schools in the country associated with the National Science Foundation Engineering Education Coalition program have incorporated reform across subject areas as one of their objectives. In an attempt to reform engineering education at Arizona State University, the Foundation Coalition (FC) program offered an integrated freshman program and embedded four core reform competencies in its strategic plan and across all subject areas. The core competencies are emphasized not only for high academic success but for student retention and professionalism. The four competencies include: utilization of technology-enabled education, improvement of human interactions that affect the educational environment, integration of subject matter within the curriculum, and promotion of life long learning. This report contains outcomes from comprehensive evaluation of the FC program. The evaluation included assessment of FC students and a non-FC comparison group of students.