A New MSE Curriculum
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A New MSE Curriculum David Roylance Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA 02139 U.S.A. ABSTRACT The MSE Department at MIT has developed a new undergraduate curriculum, and has implemented it for Sophomores in the 2003-2004 academic year. The Junior and Senior year curricula will be implemented as the current Sophomores advance. In addition to major core topic additions such as biomaterials and computational modeling, the new curriculum features a novel mixing of laboratory and lecture hours. This permits students to experience hands-on applications of materials in the laboratory immediately after covering the associated theory in lecture. The curriculum was developed in consultation with both students and our external community (Visiting Committee, ABET, alumni), and it required construction of substantial new laboratory facilities. It also required a novel approach to scheduling, in which some loss of flexibility was accepted to gain coherence and relevance of topics. DRIVING FORCES FOR CURRICULAR CHANGE The Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) at MIT began rolling out a totally revised undergraduate curriculum in Fall 2003, with new departmental Sophomores falling under the new system. While the DMSE faculty felt the previous curriculum was performing satisfactorily in introducing the essentials of the field to students, certain strains were becoming increasingly evident. Even though curriculum revision is a difficult and time-consuming task, several unavoidable driving forces for change had appeared: • The previous curriculum had been in place, changed in detail over the years but basically the same, for almost fifty years [1]. The faculty and student members of the Departmental Undergraduate Committee had a sense of its having become obsolete in many regards, and had already been leaning toward revision. • Student enrollment in DMSE had been steady or slightly declining for several years, and there had been continuing concern for the reasons for this and how to reverse it. Many factors, such as perception of eventual job opportunities after graduation, certainly influence a student’s choice of major. However, the student perception of the curriculum is vital. • Input from students through their advisors and also from various subject assessments seemed to indicate a growing dissatisfaction with the existing curriculum: it was felt to be much too theoretical, tedious and divorced from practical concerns. Students are generally attracted to MSE by their perception of the many opportunities in the field for exciting research and design innovation, and were displeased by having to work through several years of theory before seeing actual applications. • The Department underwent its first accreditation review under the new ABET 2000 system in 2001, and even though accreditation was granted the review seemed to highlight the diminishing excitement the staff and students felt for the curriculum. The Department Head, Prof. Subra Sur
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