Engineering up-front includes hands-on engineering laboratories and design, the integration of the mathematical and scientific foundations with the technical topics of Engineering, and the integration/coordination of the Humanities in a parallel continuum rather than the traditional layered serial approach.

This program is student centered, addressing how we teach as well as what we teach, teaming, communications, and professional development. Emphasis is placed on an undergraduate program that is a set of interlinked parts that should work synergistically rather than a mere collection of independent courses.

Students are involved in learning and experimenting with fundamental engineering principles integrated with the basic sciences and engineering sciences rather than in the traditional sequential mode. This provides an integrated complex in which the students are increasingly addressing engineering intellectual issues as the basis for their educational program, beginning with their freshman year. Together with the extensive freshman design program from computer model to the physical model, the engineering laboratory up-front, and the integration of curricular components, the Coalition's program provides an extensive structural, educational culture, and content model change. A primary state in this model is the recognition that an undergraduate program is a set of interlinked parts that must work synergistically. This focus has had significant support at our institutions. The degree of evolution of this change ranges from parts of the freshman curriculum, forward to the subsequent years, to the implementation of a fully changed curriculum at some. Common throughout is freshman design which serves as both a motivator and a vehicle by which students gain expertise in engineering principles, the design process, statistical analysis, use of CAI tools, model fabrication, as well as the important non-technical issues such as teamwork, time management, leadership, the personal issues in engineering practice, and writing and the humanities in relation to their engineering interests.