Innovations in Freshman Mechanical Engineering Curriculum at New Jersey Institute of Technology

This paper describes the Mechanical Engineering contents of a new inter-disciplinary, project-based freshman engineering curriculum at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The course, which was run as a pilot when this paper was written, is called Fundamentals of Engineering and has now been approved for the freshman engineering curriculum. The two case-study projects, which constitute the Mechanical Engineering component of the course curriculum, are the Lawn Sprinkler and 3.5-inch Floppy Disk Drive. In this course, the freshman engineering student is introduced to many aspects of engineering as an entire unit working together, with particular emphasis on the concept of teamwork in engineering research projects. Students are introduced to many computer-aided design tools available at NJIT which can be used not only to build models of the product to be manufactured but also for diagnostic analysis in order to solve potential manufacturing problems. The student is also introduced to the concept of communication among team members and the concept of technical report writing and oral presentation. The grading and course evaluation schemes are also discussed. A few samples of students' graphic communications are reproduced.