Aesthetics and emotional engagement: Why it matters to our students, why it matters to our professions

This special session takes the form of a guided discussion, using a hands-on flow visualization exercise as focal point. Our goals are 1) to foster conversation and document ideas about how the aesthetic qualities of engineering topics can be used to deliberately draw the emotional engagement of students; 2) to gauge how the FIE community currently views the aesthetics of engineering, and brainstorm new visions for how aesthetics could be used to improve recruitment and retention of a diverse student population as well as lead to innovative methods for the teaching and learning of core engineering content; 3) to explore the feasibility of viewing aesthetics-driven emotional engagement as a necessity and not an ancillary benefit in course design.