General Engineering Plus: Creating Community in a Flexible yet Technical Engineering Degree

Abstract

is the Engineering Master Teacher for the General Engineering Plus program at the University of Colorado Boulder. A former high school and middle school science and math teacher, she has advanced degrees in teaching secondary science from the Johns Hopkins University and in civil engineering from CU-Boulder. Dr. Zarske teaches engineering design in First-Year Engineering Projects and Engineering Projects for the Community, a sophomore-level course focusing on humanitarian engineering. In addition, she teaches STEP 1 and STEP 2 education courses through CU Teach Engineering, a new General Engineering Plus program specifically designed to prepare students to earn a secondary math or science teacher licensure through engineering. She manages and mentors graduate and undergraduate engineering Fellows who teach in local K-12 classrooms through the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program's TEAMS initiative, is on the development team for the TeachEngineering digital library, and is faculty advisor for CU-Boulder's Society of Women Engineers (SWE).

Undergraduate Engineers and Teachers: Can Students Be Both?

“…In previous research, we found that e+ students have a lot of pride in their major choice (Zarske et al, 2015). Realizing that the CU Teach Engineering concentration students participate most often in e+ community-building events, the authors began the fall 2015 survey by querying the strengths of that pathway to teacher licensure.…”

“…In fall 2013, the University of Colorado Boulder's College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) initiated a new Bachelor of Science ''Engineering Plus'' (or e+) degree program (Forbes, Bielefeldt, & Sullivan, 2015;Zarske, Cunitz, Forbes, & Sullivan, 2015). The multifaceted e+ degree program provides students with a flexible, yet technical, career pathway that includes completion of (1) a design-rich engineering core, (2) a disciplinary emphasis in aerospace, mechanical, architectural, civil, electrical or environmental engineering, and (3) a purposeful sequence of customizable electives either within or external to engineering (hence the ''+'').…”

Undergraduate Engineers and Teachers: Can Students Be Both?

“…11,12 The multifaceted e+ degree program provides students with a flexible, yet technical, career pathway that includes completion of 1) a design-rich engineering core, 2) a disciplinary emphasis in aerospace, mechanical, architectural, civil, electrical or environmental engineering, and 3) a purposeful sequence of customizable electives either within or external to engineering (hence the "+").…”

“…These descriptions extend the previous fall 2014 focus group discussion by e+ students (not necessarily + teaching), adding that they feel themselves to be "different" from their non-e+ engineering peers and possess a shared experience of the difficulty of self-identifying as part of a new, unconventional engineering degree program. 11 The CU Teach Engineering students not only navigate the new Engineering Plus degree pathway, but also negotiate both the engineering and education environments during their undergraduate years-campus entities that are physically and culturally different from each other.…”

Exploring Student Impressions of and Navigations through a Flexible and Customizable Multidisciplinary Engineering Program

“…These focus groups were also explored in a previous paper on creating community in a flexible yet technical engineering program. 9 The six main focus group questions are included in Appendix A; in some cases, clarifying and/or follow-up questions were also asked. Two of the 10 focus group participants were female.…”