The current engineering educational system fails in two fundamentally critical ways. First, students who have the desire and aptitude to become accomplished and productive engineers are abandoning the discipline in startling numbers. Second, students who graduate are frequently not prepared for the realities of their chosen profession and are switching careers at alarming rates. A team of educators at Colorado State University propose a new organizational model that looks at the undergraduate electrical and computer engineering (ECE) degree as an integrated system, breaking down the barriers inherent in higher education structures and implementing novel pedagogical approaches that allow students of all backgrounds to see the utility of their knowledge and connections to professional practice. At the pedagogical level, the new approach combines rigor and flexibility in engineering education to improve student efficacy and content knowledge integration through building communities of learning and practice. At the organizational level, the transformational approach aims to energize faculty to collaboratively weave important knowledge and application threads throughout the curriculum, while utilizing a new learning model that connects disparate anchoring concepts. Whether demonstrating the relevance of content through research, labs, or hands-on projects, the ECE faculty will work as a multifaceted team, ensuring that every educational component gives consideration to the big picture, while simultaneously instilling a deep knowledge of the discipline. Colorado State's approach is expected to reverse the attrition trend in engineering education and fill the engineering pathway with motivated students of diverse backgrounds. These students will have the mastery of fundamental engineering knowledge, while being ready and excited to apply their knowledge to real-world applications. The pedagogical and organizational innovations provide a broad framework for transformative and sustainable changes in engineering departments, which are necessary to produce professional engineers of the future. Moreover, the approach builds a community of universities, community colleges, and industry partners for wide participation of effective teaching and learning. CSU's approach will propel a new engineering workforce that generates superior ideas, products, and services, ultimately contributing to the nation's economic vitality and global competitiveness.

Colorado State's proposed model incorporates transformative innovation in engineering education that yields an inclusive environment that is characterized by rigor and flexibility. The new approach utilizes learning studios with modules that build on the concept of "nanocourses" and emphasizes knowledge integration - which is a learning model that is well grounded in pedagogy and supported by education research. CSU's efforts will span the entire undergraduate electrical and computer engineering experience, with special attention to the critical technical core of the middle two years. While area-specific learning modules have been in existence for years, such modules are usually supplements to the core curriculum and do not typically cover fundamental subjects vital to comprehending abstract topics; nor do they stitch together anchoring concepts to lay the groundwork for real-world applications. Key to the new approach is its: latitudinal knowledge integration, which will be used to link fundamental concepts and illustrate the utility of topics using applications students are familiar with (e.g., the smartphone, digital camera, and high-speed internet), consonant with research recommendations from the cognitive sciences. Furthermore, the pedagogical innovation of the new approach is accompanied by organizational redefinition of roles within an engineering department - based on established behavioral science principles coupled with rigorous evaluations and research methods specifically developed for this project. The research findings will advance theoretical development of engineering education and organizational development frameworks, while also providing practical case-study examples of change interventions for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Furthermore, successful porting of organizational science principles to higher education may provide validity evidence that higher education can be compared to other organizations, such as those found in private industry.