EA. EDC.
These five little letters make many McCormick freshmen cringe, while at the same time filling instructors’ hearts with pride.
Engineering Analysis and Engineering Design and Communications classes make up the freshman sequence of the Engineering First initiative, created five years ago at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering.
According to the McCormick Web site, the program “gives Northwestern engineering students the fundamentals of a successful engineering education, and lets them experience more real engineering early in their undergraduate careers.”
McCormick started the program in 1996 to address several problems facing engineering students, including the “overemphasis on scientific analysis at the expense of creative design,” according to the Web site. The site also explained that students had sought more exposure to engineering applications.
As a solution, the faculty created the EA and EDC courses, which include traditional scientific analysis material but emphasize application and creative design.
“Freshmen now get to experience engineering education based on application instead of theory,” said Alan V. Sahakian, professor of electrical, computer, and biomedical engineering. “Anything that needed to be changed has already been changed within the (Engineering First) program.”
Faculty members feel strongly that the program has been a success.
“All in all, we have a better program than the system that was used before,” said Joseph Holtgreive, associate dean of engineering. “Students have an opportunity to take classes with some of the best engineering faculty during their freshman year.”
But many students see flaws. Arjun Venkatesh, a Weinberg sophomore who transferred out of McCormick last year, said Engineering First does not cater to the vast array of incoming McCormick freshmen.
“Those that are already proficient in programming are not challenged for a quarter, while those that have yet to turn on a computer are left with jet fighters flying over their heads,” Venkatesh said, referring to the first quarter of EA, which deals heavily with the MATLAB programming language.
Few current McCormick students express enthusiasm about the program.
“EA sucks! There is no way to determine who really did the work and who didn’t,” said Daniel Jackson, a McCormick freshman. “EDC does too, because there is no personal accountability. And members of an EDC group can slack and leave it up to the rest of their group’s members to do all the work.”
Jackson also said the problem sets in the classes are so difficult that it is nearly impossible for students to complete them on their own.
Other students said the course sequence is a problem.
“Forcing students from every Tech major to go through every single EA concept is ridiculous,” said Aaron Gooze, a McCormick freshman. “There is no point in teaching springs and dampers to a computer science major.”
Although faculty recognize that the freshman curriculum is challenging, they focus on the value of a scientific background and the meaning it adds to a McCormick degree.
“Even computer science majors are earning a bachelor of science degree, so we do expect them to learn some fundamentals,” Holtgreive said.
While he said the Office of Undergraduate Engineering is open and willing to work with students, Holtgreive maintains that he doesn’t seem to have any major problems with McCormick freshmen.
“Most of the students I work with seem to do just fine,” he said.
