This paper presents evidence-based practice in required first-year engineering curriculum at Northeastern University. It will outline the motivation to redesign the curriculum, and include review of engineering education practice that inspired and directed the change, along with evidence and assessment of the effectiveness of the new approach. In 2012, after a comprehensive curriculum review by a faculty committee at Northeastern University, the firstyear engineering program decided to adopt the "cornerstone to capstone" curriculum design. The overarching goal of the cornerstone was the integration of design, programming, graphical communication, and engineering analysis through real world, hands-on design projects previously taught in two separate courses. This goal directly supports the interdisciplinary, student-centered approach recommended by the National Academy of Engineering's Educating the Engineer of 2020 report. 13Additional motivation for the cornerstone approach came from three areas; student feedback, the changing profile of first year students, and increased access to affordable technologies such as programmable microcontroller kits and 3D printing. Today's students are entering the university with more advanced placement credit and an increased level of experience with hands-on projects and technologies, such as electronics. This cohort of students are looking for more depth in exploring engineering and a sense of real world problems along with taking courses at an accelerated pace.First pilots of the cornerstone course included a 14-week, 400-minutes per week course. Several measures were reviewed to evaluate success of the cornerstone. In comparing course content artifacts from the previous courses to similar ones from cornerstone, the cornerstone students of similar entrance skills did as well as the previous students on tests, projects, quizzes and presentations. Cornerstone students also reported similar positive outcomes for learning in the new course compared to students in the traditional courses, and even reported how they couldn't imagine the courses not integrated. This paper will report on the motivations and lessons learned at Northeastern University in implementing a cornerstone approach. It will present evidence-based practice in required firstyear engineering curriculum at Northeastern University and will outline the motivation to redesign the curriculum. It will include review of engineering education practice that inspired and directed the change, along with evidence and assessment of the effectiveness of the new approach.

in Boston, MA and is Associate Director of First-year Engineering. The mission of the First-year Engineering team is to provide a reliable, wide-ranging, and constructive educational experience that endorses the student-centered and professionally-oriented mission of the University. He also teaches specialty courses in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Northeastern and has published and presented papers on approaches and techniques in engineering education. He has won multiple Outstanding Teaching Awards at Northeastern and numerous Best Paper and Best Presentation Awards with fellow First-year faculty coauthors at ASEE.

and a member of the first-year engineering team. The focus of this team is on providing a consistent, comprehensive, and constructive educational experience that endorses the student-centered, professional and practiceoriented mission of Northeastern University. She teaches the Cornerstone of Engineering courses to firstyear students as well as courses within the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. She is a recent recipient of the Outstanding Teacher of First-Year Students Award and is interested in research that compliments and informs her teaching.

It is increasingly important that engineers learn how to design for sustainability, while also having the attitudes that encourage activation of their sustainable engineering knowledge. Design for sustainability may also encompass related attitudes, such as interdisciplinarity, consideration of others, and a predisposition to work globally. This study spanned multiple institutions and explored the impacts of different educational models that were aimed at impacting both students' sustainability knowledge and the related attitudes. The research questions were: (1) To what extent do first and second-year students vary across institutions based on their motivation toward sustainable engineering, appreciation for interdisciplinary skills, consideration of others in the context of engineering, and interest in global work? (2) How do different educational models impact first and second-year students' attitudes on these issues? We did not find large differences between the sustainability attitudes of incoming first year students across three institutions, while at one institution the environmental engineering students had higher sustainability affect as compared to civil engineering students and students who enrolled in a sustainability focused living-learning cohort. Interdisciplinary value, concern for others and global work interests were initially quite similar across institutions. Across the semester, all five course models increased students' confidence in their sustainability knowledge; the largest gains occurred in a sustainability-focused seminar course and the smallest gains were in an introductory environmental engineering course that had a single lecture focused on sustainability. Other attitude changes were generally minor, although in some cases decreased. Students' attitudes around sustainability may be resilient to change, particularly in formal learning environments.

is an assistant teaching professor in the First-Year Engineering group at Northeastern University. His undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering came from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2006. He then worked for Kollmorgen Electro/Optical as a mechanical engineer developing periscopes and optronic masts. In 2011, he returned to academia at Tufts University, earning his MS and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering for his work with low-cost educational technologies and his development and use of technologies to aid usage tracking in makerspaces to examine them as interactive learning environments.