A flexible curriculum for a multi-disciplinary undergraduate engineering degree

This paper presents the curricular structure currently under development for the new undergraduate multidisciplinary engineering program at Arizona State University at the East campus. A founding faculty team is building the new engineering program from a clean slate. The 128-credit hour program is characterized by engaged learning, flexibility, and a focus on students as individual learners. The curricular structure includes an engineering foundation of required topics in the first two years and primary and secondary areas of concentration in the third and fourth years. Most of the engineering content of the foundation as well as some of the content in the concentration areas will be available as 1-credit hour computer-based modules. The curriculum includes large projects in every semester and pervasive problem-based learning. In the sophomore year and the primary concentration, engineering content is coupled to each project through a companion course that includes and contextualizes the content modules. This agile and flexible curricular structure provides a mechanism for constructing unique multidisciplinary degrees, for incubating emerging engineering topics, and for building more traditional depth focused degrees.