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His research interests focus on studying how students learn complex engineering skills such as engineering design and interdisciplinary collaboration. He received his B.S. from Duke University and both his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

INTRODUCTIONOver the last 5 decades, the average engineering curriculum has largely been based on an "engineering science" model in which the analytical and mathematical elements of engineering are strictly of focus [1]. This implies that all challenges faced in engineering can be condensed and modeled as solvable math equations. This model, however, poses a threat to the current methods of engineering practice by giving the notion that all serious engineering is done in the language of mathematics [2]. While the engineering science model approach has a clear role in a design process, the model neglects to show that engineering also involves "working between technical and non-technical considerations … and managing trade-offs where solutions are judged by interdisciplinary criteria" [3]. Therefore, in instituting this model in engineering curricula, those factors that make engineering design as much of a social activity as a mathematical process are neglected [2]. Neglected factors include the "systems methodology" and "engineering design" related processes such as need identification, problem formulation, development of alternatives, and analysis and decision-making using prototypes and judgment. Also neglected are social aspects such as cultural and environmental influences and processes such as working with a group of individuals. All of these factors, plus many more, are what drive the demands of technology and product innovation today. These demands have evolved the current practice of engineering in such a way that there now exists disconnect between engineering education and engineering practice. This disconnect has resulted in today's engineering students lacking the key skills needed to be successful engineers [4] and resulted in many prominent calls to reduce the distance between engineering education and engineering practice. The most notable call is perhaps from the National Academy of Engineering's Engineer of 2020 project [5], [6] which calls for the inclusion of interdisciplinary knowledge and teamwork skills into engineering curricula. As a result, engineering education is starting to change.One major area of change in engineering education is in design. Although design is widely considered as the most distinguishing and fundamental activity of engineering [1], most curricula have it either isolated in the senior year or sometimes also in the first year. Now, as the engineering curriculum has progressed, first year design courses, known as the cornerstone engineering courses, and fourth year design courses, referred to as capstone courses, have seen increased development as well [1]. However, these capstone courses serve as the only standard opportunity across engineering education for undergraduate engineering students to showcase their engineering education. This traditional way of approaching engineering education does not compare to modern engineering practice in which interdisciplinary teamwork and design are centrally important. This disconnect between engineering education and The interdis...

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iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTSFirst, I would like to thank Professor Reid Bailey for introducing me to the research field of engineering education. Three years ago when I first began my graduate career at the University of Virginia, I was interested in expanding my knowledge of engineering and Professor Bailey provided the opportunity I was looking for through the creation of this research study. I would also like to thank my committee, Professor Peter Beling, Professor Nancy Deutsch and Professor Joanne Dugan for also helping turn my three years of graduate work on this research study into a truly meaningful learning experience.Lastly, I would like to thank my family, the driving source behind pursuing this degree, and friends for continuing to support and motivate me, from both near and far, as I tackled the challenges of graduate school. iv ABSTRACTWhile interdisciplinary teamwork and design are centrally important to modern engineering practice, many traditional engineering programs do not have interdisciplinary design collaboration built into their engineering curriculum. This gap in engineering curricula has caused disconnect between engineering education and current engineering practice. Efforts in engineering education to address this issue have resulted in the establishment of interdisciplinary engineering programs at many universities, including the Technology Leaders Program at the University of Virginia. This study aims to uncover insights into interdisciplinary collaboration and engineering design through research on undergraduate engineering students from this program, with the purpose of improving the understanding of how students become proficient at interdisciplinary design. To facilitate this goal, this study used the method of video analysis to observe both students from this program and their undergraduate engineering peers not in the program working in interdisciplinary teams on an engineering design activity.In this thesis, chapters 1 and 2 provide context for the motivation and purpose of this research by introducing the engineering education research area, presenting the research questions of interest and explaining relevant literature and prior works relating to this study. Chapters 3 through 5 present the methodology used in the gathering and preparation of data for analysis, and the engineering design framework used in developing a coding scheme for the assessment of data. Chapters 6 through 9 present the major findings of this study and their importance to the overall purpose of this research. This chapter also presents a rich description for what type of activities are involved in an engineering design activity and how they relate to the engineering design framework used in this study. The findings of this chapter are important to understanding the nature of interdisciplinary collaboration and engineering design in the context of this study.Chapter 7 builds on the findings of chapter 6 by evaluating how group composition affected the behavior of student teams in this study. Group composition re...