Balancing capability, enthusiasm and methodology in a first-year design program

The Engage program is a successful new approach to first-year engineering s tudies that is being implemented at the University of Tennessee. This progr am develops the desired attributes of engineering graduates that are reques ted by industrial employers by introducing realistic design problems and ap proaches in parallel with introductory technical concepts. The resulting pr ogram integrates instruction in computer tools, graphics, statics and parti cle dynamics in two team-taught six-hour courses, each with parallel team d esign projects.