Faculty Reactions to Teaching Engineering Design to First Year Students

In 1993, as part of a major revision of our first year curriculum, the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia introduced a new course on Engineering Design. In this paper, we will briefly describe this course, its purpose, goals, content, and methods. However, our primary purpose is to describe the reactions to this course among the faculty who have been called upon to teach it. We observed a high turnover rate among the faculty for this course and wanted to determine the reasons for it. A survey was distributed to all current and past instructors. The attitudes and backgrounds of these faculty influence their evaluations of this course and their willingness to teach it again.