ASEE Best Paper Award recognizes Stevens' promotion of systems concepts

Stevens pioneers push for integration of systems-engineering thinking

HOBOKEN, N.J. ¯ A group of faculty from Stevens Institute of Technology has won first-place recognition for “Best Paper” delivered recently at the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Zone 1 Conference held at the US Military Academy at West Point. ASEE Zone 1 covers the entire north eastern portion of the US and Canada.

The paper, titled, “Promoting Systems Thinking in Engineering and Pre-Engineering Students,” co-authored by Dr. Rashmi Jain, Dr. Keith Sheppard, Elisabeth McGrath and Dr. Bernard Gallois, is based on a number of linked educational initiatives.

“The context of engineering is one dominated by systems,” said Dr. Sheppard. “In order to better prepare graduates with a systems perspective and the competencies to be effective in system design, we discuss initiatives to promote the development of systems thinking, both in undergraduate engineering and even earlier within high school programs that are engaging students to learn about engineering.

“The paper describes integrated curriculum innovation, in which graduate-level coursework, in response to the significance that has been placed on this area by industry, led to efforts to embed systems concepts into the core engineering design sequence for undergraduates at Stevens starting in their Freshman year. These efforts have also prompted educational research at Stevens to develop the academic underpinnings and effective pedagogical approaches for teaching in the context of the relatively under-developed scholarly foundations of systems engineering.”

Stevens’ Center for Innovation in Engineering & Science Education (CIESE), funded by a $500,000 grant from the Edison Venture Fund, has a program to go an important step earlier in the educational path by training high school teachers to include systems concepts and global perspective in their curriculum development aimed at encouraging interest in engineering.