TriAD stands for Triple bottom-line Awareness in Design

In Fall 2005 we begin full implementation and research on our new curriculum, funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant#EEC-0530760). The broader goals of the new curriculum are to:

1. effect a greater awareness of engineers' professional responsibility to apply their knowledge to benefit society;
2. create a greater level of awareness of global challenges and design constraints that include ethical, social, political, health and safety, environmental, sustainability and manufacturing issues;
3. effect a shift in thinking towards that of holistic, systems approaches;
4. create learning communities that strengthen students' resilience in difficult academic times;
5. increase the retention rates of underrepresented individuals;
6. increase the retention rate of engineering freshman;
7. effectively reach students of all learning styles;
8. increase engineering students' valuation of related subject domains (science, math, communication); and
9. effect deeper learning in lower-level science, math and communication courses.

Plan is built on proven principles
The principles on which our TriAD curricular approach is built have been shown to be effective in achieving higher retention of underrepresented individuals in engineering and promoting deeper learning in the students:

• providing meaningful context (i.e., a “real world” application);
• integrating concepts from math, science and technology;
• emphasizing active learning and design;
• facilitating meaningful connections among students;
• promoting reflection and self-assessment of learning; and
• creating significant interaction between students and faculty, with faculty acting as coaches.

A majority of the learning in the major courses will take place around team projects, rather than lectures
Some of the courses that students take will look and feel more like hands-on workshops than engineering courses. For example, students will learn important aspects of transducing nano particles and electronic properties while building nano- crystalline photovoltaic cells. They may learn important thermodynamic, kinetic and mechanical properties my making a shape-memory alloy stent.
» Download a graphical summary of the new major courses
» Download a detailed description of the freshman-senior course experiences