Perspectives of undergraduate apprentice teachers assisting with freshman design projects

For the past few years, Lehigh University (USA) has offered a course, ENGR 3 (Engineering 3), that provides freshman with a design experience. This course gives freshman students the experience of what the field of engineering consists of including hands on engineering design and production in a group setting, written and oral formal reports, the need to document all group activities, and the need to meet multiple deadlines. This experience has proven invaluable to Lehigh freshmen. However, this process should not stop at the freshman year, but instead should continue throughout the student´s education. By becoming an apprentice teacher for the ENGR 3 course, students can acquire new perspectives of the design and production processes and additional experience in managing several groups. This paper describes the experiences of two students that enrolled in ENGR 3 and the roles they played through their junior year.