Engaging Engineering Students through Improved Teaching

National enrollment statistics show that engineering programs historically lose more than 55% of their entering students to attrition of some form 1 . Whether this attrition is to other academic programs or from college altogether it is clearly a problem that must be reversed if we are to attract and retain the best and brightest minds to the engineering profession for the future. While there are a wide variety of reasons for the poor retention of math , science and engineering students, Seymour and Hewitt, in their seminal work, “Talking about Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences” 2 , discovered that the number one concern of students at institutions across the country; was the quality of instruction they received. Of the numerous reasons cited for leaving Mathematics Science and Engineering, (MSE), programs, pedagogical concerns dominated the top ten categories. In an effort to improve the teaching of faculty in civil engineering programs across the US, the American Society of Civil Engineers has funded and promoted a teaching effectiveness workshop called the ExCEEd Teaching Workshop for the past six years. Ostensibly for new faculty, this workshop focuses on some “nut and bolts” type teaching tools that help faculty members in preparing for a class, in developing a well choreographed classroom presentation and in logically connecting in-class and out-of-class work. The key element that separates this workshop from others of similar description is that participants are required to prepare and present three lessons to a group of peers and mentors, incorporating teaching tools gained in the workshop,. They receive immediate feedback on the effectiveness of their class and suggestions for improving the next class. The focus of this paper is divided into two parts. First a brief description of the objectives and conduct of the workshop will be presented. Then some data, both numerical and anecdotal, will be presented and discussed regarding the perceived and real effectiveness of the workshop.