Engineering education faces significant challenges due to rapid technological advances, the continuous evolution of base knowledge, and rapid changes in the way students perceive and process information. This environment motivates the continuous development of the engineering curriculum and teaching methods. One difficulty arising from the traditional instruction methods is that courses are taught independently by different instructors, with little effort to underline the relationships and commonalities between disciplines. Another concern is related to the limited access to hands-on activities and project-based learning in most colleges. This project will introduce several curricular changes supported by a radical change of teaching methods and culture from an individualistic approach to a more comprehensive, collaborative teaching method, with connections between disciplines being continuously established and project-based learning becoming the norm. This is expected to lead to a significant enhancement of the student experience, increased student-teacher interaction, increased student retention and development of student skills needed to expand our nation's technical lead and innovation infrastructure.

This project aims to change the culture in the Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering (MANE) Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) from a traditional engineering siloed approach to an integrated and collaborative approach. The central research questions addressed in this project are: 1) how student learning outcomes and learning experience are impacted by the transformation of the department culture in relationship to pedagogy; and 2) how successful is the replication of a pedagogical model developed in a single-program department of a large public university when applied to a multi-program department of a smaller private college. These research questions will be addressed by replicating the successful implementation of Colorado State University (CSU) NSF-supported project "Revolutionizing Roles to Reimagine Integrated Systems of Engineering Formation". This program transformed engineering education by enabling students to better understand how different disciplines are coming together and course topics are applied in practical engineering problems. Important components of this program include nanocourses (or "just in time" knowledge delivery), knowledge integration activities between disciplines within the curriculum, and vertically integrated and open-ended projects. We will follow a multi-method research approach to understand the implementation of the CSU program in our department. We will use a natural quasi-experimental design with mixed-methods (observation, focus groups, interviews, surveys, secondary data analysis) over a period of four years, across all levels of education, for assessing the impact of the implementation. Our primary expected outcomes over the short term are a changed pedagogical culture among faculty, an increase in student engagement and learning, and a better student understanding of seemingly disparate disciplines. Over the long term, we anticipate an increase in retention of engineering students, especially underrepresented minority students. Should the RPI experiment be as successful as the CSU one, it will be a demonstration that the model is viable to be implemented more broadly.