The Engineering Studies program is perhaps one of the most unique majors at Lafayette. It is rare for a liberal arts school to offer engineering programs, and Lafayette is among one of those pioneers, along with peer schools such as Smith College, Harvey Mudd College, and Bucknell University. While many people might not associate liberal arts colleges with engineering, these schools can offer an ideal environment for prospective engineering students. Liberal arts colleges offer smaller classes and supportive environments, while encouraging students to build a diverse set of knowledge. Engineering students are challenged with numerous difficult prerequisites such as calculus, physics, and chemistry. Smaller classes allow for more one-on-one interaction between students and faculty, make it easier for students to ask questions, and encourage a deeper exploration of topics.
Another benefit of getting an engineering degree from a liberal arts college is that it produces more well-rounded engineers than those from professional programs. In addition to technical skills, students from liberal arts colleges have developed the problem-solving and critical-thinking skills that make them valuable collaborators. The ability to clearly communicate their thoughts and ideas, write papers, and prepare presentations also allows them to more easily adapt to professional life. Schools like Lafayette are also ideal for students not ready to fully commit to pursuing an engineering degree. If, after the first year or two of college, a student discovers that engineering isn’t the path they want to follow, it’s simply easier to switch majors while attending a liberal arts college than it is if enrolled in an engineering program at a large university. This can be seen at Lafayette where many students enter as engineering majors in their first year, and almost half switch out to other majors or ease into Engineering Studies if they want to still be involved in engineering.
According to the Lafayette Engineering Studies website, the major “provides students with a platform to develop engineering habits of mind, such as problem-solving skills, analytical thinking, and an understanding of the design process”. This distinctive bachelor of arts in engineering could be considered the ultimate liberal arts degree because it requires students to delve more deeply into each of the four divisions on campus (humanities, engineering, science, and social sciences) than any other degree offered at Lafayette. The curriculum empowers students to meet society’s current and emerging complex, multi-disciplinary challenges. The degree is designed for students who want both specific engagement with an engineering discipline and a broad knowledge base that will help them in our technologically-driven world. Traditional engineering programs in other comparable schools and universities do not typically offer such a unique opportunity.
Being the sole engineering degree at Lafayette that offers a Bachelor of Arts, the major requires substantial coursework in engineering and the liberal arts, as well as science and math, and prepares graduates to be technological integrators in fields like engineering, business, education, public policy, law, and medicine. Students develop engineering habits of mind, gaining knowledge on the design process, approaches to problem solving and design, and analytical skills. They learn to think like engineers, to understand the engineering approach and methods, and to apply these techniques and to employ this way of thinking in whatever career path they choose.
However, this education isn’t limited to only engineering students. Students who are non-engineering majors, but who take Engineering Studies courses, find links to their own fields. They develop an understanding of how engineering can inform and connect to a number of other disciplines and address contemporary issues in energy, economics, systems analysis, public policy, environmental management, and other areas. For example, the course Environmental Justice (EGRS 230) explores the “intersection of social justice and environmental stewardship in an attempt to understand the various dimensions of the environmental justice movement and how it affects modern society” (Lafayette College, EGRS 230). This is one of many courses that exposes students to social sciences, humanities, and environmental science/engineering aspects relevant to the topic.
In order to make the most of the Engineering Studies education, students get involved in many different ways through projects and research to apply what they have learned in their classes. In the Sustainable Solutions (EGRS 480) class in the fall of 2015, a group of nine students from various majors designed a musical playground in the Karl Stirner Arts Trail for members of the Easton community to enjoy. After three years of work, three sets of musical chimes were installed, with a total cost that amounted to $100,000 (https://karlstirnerartstrail.org/musicalpath/). The playground appeals to the environmental aesthetics of the arts trail, while keeping with the trail’s artistic theme. Only local, durable, and eco-friendly materials were used to build it. This project is an example of how art, music, economics, environmental studies, and engineering were combined to create such a successful result.
Another example that showcases what Engineering Studies students do is a project from the Sustainable Solutions course once again where a team of five Engineering Studies students developed Lafayette Gardens. Initially inspired by previous Engineering Studies capstone projects, Lafayette Gardens is a unique and memorable space designed to facilitate education, recreation, and place-making opportunities on campus. It consists of a living wall and an adjacent communal garden space that will be located on the northeast side of Acopian Engineering Center and occupying the 0.08-acre area that extends toward Markle Hall. By incorporating environmental, technological, and artistic aspects into the design, the team created a welcoming place for all members of the Lafayette College community. This project is an example of incorporating design that would best suit our own Lafayette community, considering the importance of sustainability and inclusion that Lafayette prides itself on.
Many Engineering Studies Capstone projects utilize the same interdisciplinary approach in design. EGRS 451 Senior Capstone projects in the fall of 2018 varied in topics from bringing biogenic fuels to Lafayette, an assessment of Brick + Mortar Art Gallery and Design Studio’s energy in the Simon Silk Mill, green roofs in Easton, creation of a geothermal root cellar at LaFarm, and a microgrid across campus. One project focused on Lafayette’s engineering department and the implementation of community-centric education within Lafayette’s borders. The project, led by Ava Shore ’19, Paige Ferrell ’19, and Fanessa De La Rosa ’19, proposed the design of a 200-level engineering course that can better prepare students for the non-technical components of engineering professions. The course’s curriculum aims to show students the importance, relevance, and value of a community-centered skill set while actively integrating it into their problem-solving strategies. It is primarily geared towards Engineering Studies students, but is ideally open to all engineering students as an engineering elective. The course is designed to be literature and seminar based, as to sufficiently educate students in sustainable community development and engineering ethics.
It is evident that students who major in Engineering Studies have a variety of curricular and co-curricular opportunities available to them on campus, but off campus as well. These include paid research assistant positions and internships, interdisciplinary and internship courses for credit, and other activities. Students at all levels are encouraged by faculty to serve summer internships, which are typically paid and do not have an academic credit associated with them. In addition, juniors in Engineering Studies are especially encouraged to take internships with local businesses or public sector agencies. A student spends one day a week throughout the semester at an internship, which is arranged and supervised by faculty in the Engineering Studies Program. These opportunities allow students to use the knowledge gained through coursework to help solve engineering management or policy-related problems faced by the organization sponsoring the internship (https://es.lafayette.edu/opportunities/). The perceived value of such experiential programs is validated by engineering education research indicating that students see extracurricular experiences such as co-ops and internships as more representative of what it means to be an engineer than their in-class experiences, and they report a steep learning curve in their first job when this element is missing from their education (Ambrose et al., 21). Therefore, experiential learning not only strengthens and deepens what students already know and can do, but also provides an expanded platform for future learning.
Internship sponsors have included the City of Easton, Air Products, Mallinckrodt Baker, Turner Construction, Victaulic, Spillman Farmer Architects, PPL, Wildlands Conservancy, JPMorgan Chase, Pentamation, Flowserv, and Lehigh Valley Hospital, among others. Problems addressed in these internships have included the use of an intranet to facilitate training at an electrical utility; development of a spreadsheet-based cost estimating system for a construction company; introduction of an electronic data interchange system for purchasing at an industrial firm; and analysis of quality management procedures at a manufacturing firm (https://es.lafayette.edu/opportunities/). By exposing students to real-world problems and solutions, these learning opportunities outside of the classroom, combined with the formal academic setting in the classroom, can inform and complement each other.
Once Engineering Studies students graduate from Lafayette, many enter fields similar to the internships above, move on to graduate school, or do something completely different from engineering. One of the most common career paths among students at Lafayette is construction management which is a professional service that uses specialized project management techniques to oversee the planning, design, and construction of a project from its beginning to end. The Lafayette engineering education prepares students extremely well for this field with classes such as Civil Engineering Project Management (CE 331), Engineering Economics and Management (EGRS 261), Construction Management (CE 431), Introduction to Architectural Engineering (EGRS 271), and a few others.
Aided by our strong connections with Lafayette alumni who work in the industry, many recruit students to provide internships and full-time positions after graduation. Some of the most notable companies include Clark Construction, Whiting-Turner Contracting, Gilbane Building, Turner Construction, and CBG Building, among many others. Given that Lafayette has a strong reputation and connection with this field, it encourages most Engineering Studies students to take advantage of and follow this path. We recognize the strength and influence of this as it has provided numerous students like us to gain such incredible opportunities. However, we want to bring up a problem that arises from this as well, as it reduces the image of the diversity of career paths for students majoring in Engineering Studies figuring out what they want to do after completing their degree. Life after Engineering Studies at Lafayette is more than just construction management– it can range from technical sales, finance, information systems, environmental consulting, to technology start-ups.
2020 is a critical point in Lafayette Engineering Studies history as it celebrates fifty years since the creation of the program. The degree was established at Lafayette in 1970 during an important point in engineering history when technology and society struggled to conform with one another. Lafayette, like many other colleges and universities, took the initiative and developed a hybrid engineering degree to combat these issues. Thus, the Bachelor of Arts in Engineering was born, and ultimately became a degree that would “produce graduates who could bridge the gap between engineering and the liberal arts; its current mission is to engage students in engineering as a liberal art, recognizing the increasingly complex challenges of sociotechnical systems and examining these systems through multi disciplinary perspectives” (Sanford & Rossmann, 2).
Now at the half century mark, the Lafayette Engineering Studies degree is at a new crossroads in the technological world of engineering. As the world ages, so do issues, and some issues disappear while new ones arise. The initial design of the major does not necessarily have to face the same challenges it faced fifty years ago, and as a result the dynamics of the degree have to change. Thus, Lafayette reconstructed the degree in 1990 and went through a major overhaul in focus and curriculum in 2007 to conform more towards the standards and issues of its time. The world today is faced with new challenges like climate change, data/privacy protection, disinformation, and technological racial bias. The development of the new Engineering Studies curriculum will be successful solutions that combat these new engineering issues and will allow for more students to understand the various opportunities this hybrid degree has to offer.
The main purpose in our proposed adjustment to the Engineering Studies degree is to establish a critical path system that easily allows students to comprehend the classes needed to optimize the degree and fully prepare them for the real world workforce. Once reforming the degree, it will help combat one of the persistent problems which is the lack of incoming first years initially enrolling. It will provide streamlined guidance to critical paths and naturally increase the incoming enrollment to the degree will increase. The reform alongside the increasing demand for hybrid interdisciplinary socio-technical engineers in the job market will prove to be beneficial to Lafayette College and its future.
The next section will dive deeper into the technical aspects of the Critical Path Personality Test (CPPT) and explain how it will help guide students to a specific concentration that leads to their desirable career path. There will be diagrams displaying possible paths students can take and a detailed breakdown of each potential path, serving as a sort of sample curricula. We will also explain the context and background of this idea that was inspired by methods used in other departments at Lafayette as well as trends noticed by the directions Engineering Studies students take.
Click below to learn about the critical path curriculum outline of the project.