Foundation Coalition - An Agent of Change

The goal of the EEC's Engineering Education Coalitions Program was to design, implement, evaluate, and disseminate new curricula, delivery systems, and educational tools for undergraduate engineering education. Founded in 1993, the Foundation Coalition (FC) is the fifth coalition. The theoretical hypothesis underlying FC activities is that specific pedagogical theories, when implemented throughout an engineering curriculum, result in an increase in both the quality of engineering education and the number of degrees awarded in engineering, especially for women and underrepresented minorities. Based on research on learning and teaching, the FC has based its innovations on seven pedagogical theories. The FC has created significant curricular and faculty change on each of its partner campuses. Now, the challenge is to take these conversations across the partner institutions and throughout the entire engineering education community. Stimulating meaningful conversations and improvements across the entire community is a daunting challenge. The FC is pursuing several different approaches to create tools that will provoke interchange among engineering educators and create forums that facilitate meaningful exchange. Examples of some of our efforts are listed below.