Auburn University integrated preengineering curriculum (IPEC): a half-time report

Summary form only given. In recent years, a number of US universities have made major changes in their undergraduate engineering curricula. Many of these curriculum changes represent the collective efforts of several national engineering education coalitions. Many of these new curriculum models are predicated on prerequisite materials appearing in the curriculum on an "as needed" or "just in time" schedule. In the Fall term of 1996, Auburn University\´s College of Engineering, in close conjunction with its College of Mathematics and Science, began a new curriculum model for a pilot group of incoming freshman engineering students. This curriculum for this pilot group is built on a solid mathematical foundation of vector calculus. Freshman engineering physics and introductory engineering courses such as engineering statics and dynamics, thermodynamics and introductory electrical circuits are taught alongside vector calculus to serve as motivating and illuminating examples of the applications of the vector calculus.