Introduction

This chapter aims to call attention to the “middle years” of engineering study, which are often overlooked from a research perspective. There have been tremendous efforts over the past two decades focused on the first year and final year of engineering education. Although there have been efforts targeted at the middle years, which we summarize in this chapter, we argue that there is a need for more attention and research-driven innovations for these formative years for the emerging engineer.

The second and third years of engineering study are times when students are focused on their specific engineering disciplines, beginning with the foundational engineering sciences and leading to discipline-specific core courses. Our goal is to highlight creative and successful efforts in these years. We hope this can inspire other instructors to use these examples as models for adaptation to their own disciplines and courses. We focus on several major engineering disciplines, but deliberately leave out computer science because at many institutions this department may not reside in the engineering school. Furthermore, we do not review the myriad literature related to distance and online learning, service-learning, or cooperative education. Our intended audience includes new engineering faculty, all engineering faculty interested in curriculum reform, and engineering education researchers, including graduate students pursuing this field of study. Finally, given our space limitations, we admittedly take a narrow view in focusing primarily on work in the United States.