Campus Re-engineered: Tackling problems close to home to promote interest in the field of Materials Science and Engineering for non-majors

Everyone is a materials scientist. We all use materials in different ways in our day-to-day lives, so we each have a unique intuition that guides us when we approach materials selection challenges. However, students may not immediately realize the relevance of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) to their own lives – especially non-MSE engineering majors. As a result, one of the ever-present challenges in teaching a required introductory MSE course to a broad engineering audience is creating student buy-in. We posit that this barrier can be overcome by situating materials selection within the context of a college campus. In this study, we implement a final project in an undergraduate Intro to Materials Science course which requires students to weave together technical knowledge from the course with their own life experience to solve a problem on campus. Through a student survey, we seek to understand the sources of knowledge students leverage in order to identify and address an on-campus materials-related challenge. We further explore the impact of this project and the MSE course as a whole on students' attitudes towards the following: sense of belonging in MSE, relevance of MSE to the student's major, and relevance of MSE in addressing challenges in students' communities.