Work in progress: A holistic approach to ReEngineering the freshmen engineering course

Engineering schools must strive to evolve a new paradigm for undergraduate education that recognizes the evolution of the skills and learning styles of its incoming students and prepares them to tackle society's grand challenges of the future, while at the same time increases the probability of their success in their chosen engineering program. Most researchers and experts in the field agree on some basic tenants of retention [1-3], which include developing community amongst freshmen, creating connections for freshmen through meaningful interactions with returning students and faculty, engaging freshmen in active learning environments, helping freshmen understand and internalize the vision and mission of the school, and assisting freshmen to develop a personal identity as an Engineer. This paper describes the creation of new freshmen engineering courses, taught in a new learning environment with a new instructional model that addresses all of these important tenants of retention.