An Introduction to Engineering course at the University of Florida was converted from a lecture-based offering to a laboratory format in a project sponsored by the Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education (SUCCEED) (NSF Cooperative Agreement No. EID-9109853). The revised course rotates student groups through laboratories in each of the undergraduate engineering disciplines. Majors and non-majors receive a grade for this one credit course which meets three hours per week. The laboratories employ active learning and a smaller class size to achieve two objectives: 1) to better inform students about the nature of engineering and its specific disciplines and 2) to improve the retention of these students in engineering. The achievement of the first objective has been shown in our earlier work.1, 2 This paper focuses on the achievement of the latter objective, which is shown by a longitudinal study to be dramatically improved. The magnitude (a 17% improvement in retention for the general population and greater for women and minorities) is surprising for a single course, but reasons are suggested which might explain such a large effect.

The National Science Foundation has supported creation of eight engineering education coalitions: ECSEL, Synthesis, Gateway, SUCCEED, Foundation, Greenfield, Academy, and SCCME. One common area of work across the coalitions has been restructuring first‐year engineering curricula. Within some of the coalitions, schools have designed and implemented integrated first‐year curricula. The purpose of this paper is fourfold: 1) to review the different pilot projects that have been developed; 2) to abstract some design alternatives that can be explored by schools interested in developing an integrated first‐year curriculum; 3) to indicate some logistical challenges; and 4) to present brief descriptions of various curricula along with highlights of the assessment results that have been obtained.

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