Work in Progress: Restructuring a Cornerstone Course with Limited Resources

Over the past ten or so years a number of universities have restructured their freshmen engineering cornerstone course to move away from a straight lecture format toward a more engaging, hands-on, real-life approach. While this has often involved a major commitment of funds and faculty time, much can be achieved with a more moderate use of financial and human resources. With the support of a NSF Department Level Reform grant, the Engineering 1 cornerstone course at Santa Clara University was recently restructured. This paper describes the course restructuring, its impact on students, as measured through surveys and other student-based evaluations, and changes planned for the next offering of the course