Engineering aims to retain students with Gateway program

Government statistics say that nearly 40 percent of students who enter undergraduate engineering schools in the United States transfer out within the first two years because they lose interest -- even before they take an engineering class. Hoping to change this statistic, and to address other problems with this country's engineering education, the Engineering School has embarked on a program "that should result in a radical change in our curriculum, at least from the students' point of view," Associate Engineering Dean John Keenan said this week. The Gateway Coalition -- comprised of the University, Case Western Reserve University, Columbia University, Cooper Union, Drexel University, Florida International University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, Polytechnic University and the University of South Carolina -- began in earnest last March, when the National Science Foundation awarded the Coalition a $15 million grant. Engineering Dean Gregory Farrington said yesterday that by being involved in the coalition, "we at Penn will both have extra resources to accelerate the reinvention of our curriculum and educational program, and also be connected more closely with a variety of other schools attempting to solve problems similar to those we face." Farrington is the University's current member on the Coalition's Governing Board and Keenan is the alternate member. However, Farrington said Engineering Professor Jacob Abel will take over as the permanent member when he returns to the University at the end of the semester to assume his new position as Associate Engineering Dean for Education Development and Special Programs. Participants in the Gateway Coalition say the diversity of institutions is an asset. "We felt that it was very important that whatever changes were made and promulgated that we have an opportunity to try them out in a variety of [institutions]," Coalition Project Director Eli Fromm said. Fromm, who is also an electrical and computer engineering professor at Drexel, said the objectives of the Coalition fall into four broad areas: curriculum structure, human potential development, instructional technology and evaluation measures. Joseph Bordogna, head of the directorate for engineering at the National Science Foundation and former dean of the Engineering School, said the impetus for the Gateway Coalition was a decade-long series of studies concluding that engineering education needs to be more of an integrative process. Bordogna added that the ultimate goal of the Coalition is to get about 70 of the nation's 300 engineering schools to implement the changes that will stem from the Coalition. "It is probably going to take 10 years to make this big shift," Bordogna added. Currently, engineering is not taught according to the integrative methodology, and a "paradigm shift" in the way engineering is taught, is needed in this country, Bordogna said. "What we want to see is an increased amount of integration in the first two years and especially in the first year," Keenan said. Bordogna added that a new curriculum should emphasize teamwork. "In our country, we teach students to be independent . . . but that's not the way life goes in the real world," Bordogna said. "You have to work in teams." "Retention rates go up when you get these students to work in teams," Bordogna added. Bordogna said that he hopes a restructured curriculum will make engineering more stimulating for students. "Forty percent of students leave after the first two years not because they can't hack it," Bordogna said, "But because they get disinterested." "We're trying to shift things around a bit . . . to excite the students," Bordogna said.

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