With the launch of iFoundry in mid-August 2008, three major initiatives are underway for the Fall08 semester:

3SpaceStudios

3SpaceStudios is the digital-media arm of iFoundry. In Fall09, 14 faculty members are each producing 10-15, five-ten minute YouTube videos on underrepresented areas of the engineering curriculum. In addition, videos highlighting important knowledge and communications from the world of work as well as videos that underline engineering student life are being produced. These videos will combine the efforts of faculty, staff, alumni, employers, organizational friends, and students.

Additional information is available on the 3SpaceStudios page (here) or on the iFoundry YouTube Channel or the iFoundry SlideShare slidespace.

Operation Fresh

A critical effort early in the iFoundry initiative is to examine the freshmen engineering experience with input from students, faculty, corporate friends, alumni, and innovative programs outside of Illinois to work toward a realignment of the early years of engineering that (1) preserves or enhances Illinois engineer’s renowned technical prowess, and (2) enhances their business, communications, interpersonal, and organizational skills.

To this end, two efforts are underway:

1. A Workshop on the First Year in Engineering (WFYE).
2. Spring 09 pilot offerings of freshmen courses in 3Space (ThingSpace, ThinkSpace, and FolkSpace).

Each of these is described in turn.

WYFE

The Workshop on the First Year in Engineering will be held, Thursday, September 25, 2008 and will involve two keynote speakers (to be announced), Illinois faculty speakers, and a brainstorming session on the first year. Watch this web site for additional information.

Sp09 Pilot Courses

Planning is underway for pilot offerings of new courses or new sections of existing courses in each of the areas of 3Space. These courses will have limited availability for Spring 2009, but the pilot sections are expected to lead to larger offerings when the first class of iFoundry students is admitted in Fall 2009.

Return to the iFoundry website for additional information as it becomes available.

HAPI Themes & HAPI++

An underutilized resource in engineering education is the total of 18 hours of required humanities and social science courses (12 general education + 6 required by Engineering) in all engineering curricula. Students come to advising meetings seeking easy courses or courses that fit a schedule, but rarely do they come to meetings looking to accomplish a particular educational goal with a number of hours that represents 14% of an undergraduate engineering education.

Themes

In Fall 2009, engineering students will be encouraged to choose their own voluntary themes of humanities and social science courses to organize this coursework and direct it at the student’s own educational goals. These themes are called HAPI themes or Human Artifacts, Processes, and Interactions themes, and the idea for these themes was conceived by analogy to the secondary field program in the General Engineering curriculum. In the secondary field in GE, students can sign up for a preapproved set of courses or construct a custom-made set of courses under a student-selected rubric.

The original whitepaper for the HAPI themes may be found on the Reading page (here) or by clicking the following link (here).

HAPI ++

The six hours of College-required “humanities” and “social science” courses are a special resource in the curriculum in that they are not governed by campus general education requirements. This means that courses that are especially important to an engineer’s career success through the achievement of special personal, interpersonal, organizational, business, or communications skills could be applied to these credits, but for reasons of custom, this rarely occurs.

Under the HAPI++ initiative, lists of courses will be assembled that can count for these six hours, and efforts will be made to publicize those courses and to offer more courses that can satisfy these requirements. When possible, HAPI themes will be assembled that incorporate a mix of gen-ed and non gen-ed courses.

As lists for the themes and ++ courses become available, they will be posted on this web site, and distributed through normal advising channels.