Classroom-wide Student-led Undergraduate Research Experience for the Introductory Materials Science Course

Abstract

Of the fourteen grand challenges for engineering identified by the National Academy of Engineering, at least half require design and development of new materials. Since materials are critical technology enablers, introductory materials science courses are fundamentally important for all engineering majors. Therefore, two mechanical engineering faculty members at Texas A&M University have significantly restructured the introductory materials science course to emphasize undergraduate student research projects. These research projects ask student teams to pose a research question to be addressed, develop a methodology for addressing the question, prepare a proposal for their research, carry out the research, and provide written and oral reports at the end of the semester. Radically different from approaches that emphasize coverage of a large collection of facts and concepts about the behavior of matter of topics, this process offers an alternative for introductory material science courses. The paper reviews the rationale for the change, describes how the process was implemented, and presents the preliminary results that have been obtained to date.