Download 8-year annual report: PDF version During its first seven years, the Foundation Coalition (FC) focused on developing, testing, and institutionalizing new curricula, educational structures, and pedagogies affecting all aspects of undergraduate engineering education on our own campuses. In Year 7, we began a shift away from an internal focus to one that focuses on the entire engineering education community. To help us make the shift, we worked intensely with a Raytheon Six-Sigma Consultant to develop an aggressive plan that would facilitate our outreach efforts. Year 8 saw the implementation of that plan.

The change we have made in how we disseminate our work and accomplishments is analogous to the shift we have made in the classroom from lecturing to active learning. Our audience, which is now well defined and targeted, is no longer a collection of passive recipients of the information we decide to give but will be actively involved in a process that focuses on their needs. We have established a hierarchy of communication objectives, the appropriateness of each depending on the audience. And we are making an array of products designed to move faculty and administrators through a series of stages, from simply being aware of the FC to actually making changes along the lines espoused by the FC.

No single document, CD, or testimonial will be sufficient. Our array of products will:

• Introduce the FC and its accomplishments, moving individuals from preawareness to awareness;
• Present information, data, and curriculum models that generate interest in someone who is aware of the FC;
• Present further supporting documentation, workshops, testimonials, and visits that will help an interested individual to decide that the FC changes are worth significant investigation; and
• Provide additional support to help these individuals as they take action on their own campuses to establish and institutionalize curriculum reforms.

The FC has a great deal of experience and expertise to offer to others and has taken on the role of change agent in engineering education. Year 8 provided us the opportunity to develop: