Propelling Education: Introducing and Examining the “English-to-Engineering” Multi-Year Undergraduate Research Program

A student-led, industry-affiliated, extracurricular undergraduate program has been developed at Virginia Tech which is entering its third year. The program was developed with an umbrella theme of sustainability in aerospace propulsion under which the original students “auditioning” for the program proposed a range of research topics. The original program structure was focused on addressing some shortfalls observed both by academia and industry relative to traditional undergraduate engineering education over many years. Broadly speaking, these issues can be separated into topics related to encouraging earlier exposure to open ended problems and the ability to practice a wide range of teaming exercises earlier in the student’s career, both of which are of high value to industry. Discussion around these challenges has been ongoing, but often curriculum constraints have made incremental solutions hard to generate. The current incarnation of this program is as an extracurricular activity, focused on student-owned, multi-year projects. At the time of the program creation, it was not clear if such a program would be of interest to the students, or if industry and faculty could provide the required support. Three years into the program it is clear that this approach is widely accepted and valued by all parties, but most fully by the students. The program is addressing part of the needs outlined originally, but as the program enters its next phase, the ability to address the successes and challenges of the current system needs a more formal educational framework. This paper focuses on describing the current program, and some of the limitations that having a multi-year, student-owned project provides in frameworks such as Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning. This is important as the lessons of this experience are considered by other academic institutions with a goal of fully leveraging the student experiences and capabilities provided by this approach. Academic and industry perspectives are critical as the next phase of the program need to generate greater and different industry involvement and fuller integration into the existing curriculum to provide maximum value to the students, faculty, and industry.