In This Issue:

A SEAS Change in Educational Philosophy

Educational leaders Dean Morton Friedman and Jack McGourty

Remember what it was like to be a freshman at Columbia Engineering? Maybe, you didn’t even take an engineering course until the junior year. Maybe you never saw an engineering professor until then either, and when you did, it was always from afar. Did it seem as if you spent all your time in calculus, chemistry and physics recitations?

As a first-year engineering student now, some things are the same, but others have changed radically. There is still the concentration on math, chemistry and physics, but there are also five new dynamic components to the early academic training of engineers:

immediate immersion in designing community projects for real non-profit clients;
required pre-professional courses focused on engineering majors;
availability of 17 minors in liberal arts subjects;
encouragement to engage in faculty-driven research projects; and
participation in interdisciplinary subject areas.

For the past decade, the School has been adapting its curricula to prepare students for the new ways that engineers and applied scientists are now being asked to work. New courses and initiatives that teach the skills that its graduates need to succeed have been created and folded into the traditional curriculum.

These advances follow the strategic plan of Dean Zvi Galil, Vice Dean Morton B. Friedman and Jack McGourty, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies at the School, and echo the goals of many prominent engineering organizations, including the National Research Council and the National Science Foundation.

The most recent curricular change has been the evolution of the mandated first-year design course to one that requires all first-year students to work on projects for real clients in the local community.

Dr. McGourty changed the direction of the course from one that focused on projects created by the instructor to one that now teaches design in the context of actual community-based technical projects. The course has become a vehicle for community service learning, an approach that uses real projects for local non-profits, such as the Apollo Theater, HarlemLive and the Jackie Robinson Youth Center at the Harlem YMCA, to teach specific academic skills.

“All our students are involved in the community right away and are applying their skills and expertise in real-world settings. While the course immerses the student in the engineering design process, the service learning commitment develops a lifelong orientation toward social responsibility and fosters community service,” said Dr. McGourty. “For many of our students, it is an intense, transformative experience,” he said.
This semester, many projects are for groups that deal with such social issues as HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases, physical and cognitive disabilities, homelessness, problems of aging, urban planning and development, and educational disparities. Other non-profit clients include The Wildlife Conservation Society, representing New York City’s major zoos and aquarium, and Penny Harvest, which sponsors programs in New York City public schools.

“Our new Engineering curricula emphasize the development of students as emerging professionals and educated citizens, equally at home with societal concerns as with technical issues,” said Dean Friedman. “While still keeping our traditional, rigorous academic course requirements,” he said, “we are adding opportunities for our students to develop essential skills in teambuilding and communication so necessary in today’s workplace.” (See http://community.seas.columbia.edu.)
Concomitant with the real-world first-year design course, Columbia Engineering first-years must take one professional course taught by SEAS senior faculty. These courses are designed to introduce students to the rigors of engineering and applied science subject matter early in their undergraduate career.

Summer School students learn more about disabled children at P.S. 79

Each major has a course that reflects the complexity of its academic specialty—physics of the human body; introduction to computational mathematics and physics; engineering in medicine; molecular engineering and product design; design of buildings, bridges and spacecraft; earth resources and the environment; introduction to electrical engineering and laboratory in circuit design; engineering graphics; atomic scale engineering of new materials, and mechanical engineering: micromachines to jumbo jets.

Other hallmarks of the new engineering education already in place include the ever-expanding list of liberal arts minors offered in addition to a host of engineering minors. Engineering students can now minor in such diverse areas as architecture, economics, English and comparative literature, French or Spanish, history, music, philosophy, psychology or religion. Additional minors are under consideration.
Another major academic shift for the “new engineering education” provides opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research via a formalized program, open to all students, to work in the laboratories of both junior and senior faculty members. This year, the URIP (Undergraduate Research Involvement Program) has more than 85 opportunities for undergraduates to work with the professor of their choice.

The creation of the Urban Ecology Studios epitomizes the new SEAS educational philosophy. This course brings together students and faculty from SEAS and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) to tackle problems of sustainability and habitability in dense urban environments.

“This course is an excellent example of ‘technoscience,’ the integration of multiple disciplines where the projects, not the disciplines, drive the investigation and research,” said Dean Friedman. This semester, Engineering and GSAPP students are integrated in three urban ecology studios: investigating the redevelopment of nine acres of contaminated land along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn; looking at waste-to-energy solutions for waterfront revitalization in the South Bronx; and exploring mixed-use designs for Columbia’s proposed expansion into Manhattanville. All three studios are incorporating community service in the learning experience as the students interact with local interest groups.
The involvement of students at different learning stages in the same project is another innovation of the new venture that helps foster communication between the incoming and senior students. In these projects, three groups of first-years in the Gateway Lab course are working with senior and Masters level engineering students.