Building international experiences into an engineering curriculum – a design project-based approach

Abstract

This paper is a descriptive account of how short-term international and multicultural experiences can be integrated into early design experiences in an aerospace engineering curriculum. Such approaches are considered as important not only in fostering a student's interest in the engineering curriculum, but also exposing them to a multicultural setting that they are likely to encounter in their professional careers. In the broader sense, this programme is described as a model that can be duplicated in other engineering disciplines as a first-year experience. In this study, undergraduate students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and Universidad del Turabo (UT) in Puerto Rico collaborated on a substantial design project consisting of designing, fabricating, and flight-testing radio-controlled model aircraft as a capstone experience in a semester-long course on Fundamentals of Flight. The two-week long experience in Puerto Rico was organised into academic and cultural components designed with the following objectives: (i) to integrate students in a multicultural team-based academic and social environment, (ii) to practise team-building skills and develop students’ critical thinking and analytical skills, and finally (iii) to excite students about their engineering major through practical applications of aeronautics and help them decide if it is a right fit for them.

Keywords:

• study abroad
• engineering curriculum
• multicultural
• design project

Additional information

About the author

Victor Maldonado is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Texas Tech University. He received his PhD in Aeronautical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in August of 2012. He also received his BS and MS in Aeronautical and Mechanical engineering from RPI in 2004 and 2006, respectively. His current research is in determining the role of turbulence and flow control techniques on the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine blades.

Luciano Castillo is the Don-Kay-Clay Cash Distinguished Engineering Chair in Wind Energy and the Executive Director/President of the National Wind Resource Center (NWRC) at Texas Tech University. After spending 12 years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute he joined the summer of 2011 in the ME department at Texas Tech University. His research in turbulence using experimental techniques, direct numerical simulations and multi-scale asymptotic analysis has injected new ideas in turbulent boundary layers and our understanding of initial conditions on large scale turbulence, particularly on wind energy.

Gerardo Carbajal received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY, in December of 2006. Currently, he is working as an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering at the Universidad del Turabo, Puerto Rico. His major expertise is in the area of heat pipe design, analysis and simulation; thermal and water analysis in proton exchange membrane fuel cells, two-phase flow and heat transfer, and nanofluids applications for heat transfer enhancement.

Prabhat Hajela is Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education at Rensselaer. He received a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford in July 1982. Before joining Rensselaer, he worked as a research fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles for a year, and was on the faculty at the University of Florida for seven years. In 2003, Hajela served as a Congressional Fellow responsible for Science and Technology Policy in the Office of US Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT).