A little help from their friends

TEACHING

ON CAMPUS

SO YOU'VE BEEN ACCEPTED AT YOUR FIRST PICK FOR engineering school. You've moved your stuff to campus, paid the tuition, signed up for your courses, changed roommates, and unpacked your bags. Now, where are you gonna go for a real submarine sandwich at 1 o'clock in the morning? And how in the world are you ever going to find someone to talk to about what you're doing here?

Lucky, lucky you. You're at the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, and you have Engineering 100. This required first-year course gives each of its 1,100 Urbana-Champaign freshmen a road map of academic, social, and personal routes through the next four years of university life. And it's not taught by faculty, who may or may not be plugged into the reality of undergraduate travails. Two students codirect Engineering 100, supervising the 40 other students known as ELAs, or Engineering Learning Assistants. If you need to know how to create a Web site, write a resume, or ponder the pitfalls of fake IDs for liquor purchase, you can get the skinny from somebody who's been there, done that.

Chosen for their enthusiasm, involvement in college and campus activities, and ability to relate to first-year students, the ELAs complete 30 hours of training and prepare lesson plans that broadly cover computing, work opportunities, campus services, academic resources, and extracurricular activities. They're paid $7 an hour for training time and for up to 5 hours a week to cover class time, preparation time, and a weekly office hour.

Meeting once a week for six weeks in the fall, each class has 10 to 25 students, with grades limited to satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Accordingly, the classroom topics are projects like "5minute tower" in which small groups are given 5 minutes to build the tallest tower they can using only materials they brought with them to class, or a "scavenger hunt" scramble across campus to find items listed in their textbooks.

The ability to work in a team and to network, critical during engineering school, is honed with activities called "Ice Breakers." "Two Truths and a Lie"-in which each student shares three "facts" about him or herself and the class has to guess the falsehood-is a quick path to building relationships. Another is "Human Knot," where students are put in a circle and told to reach across and grasp hands and then untangle themselves without letting go.

Backing up the personalized attention in class is the extended reach of the ELAs, many of whom have set up their own Web sites as an easy introduction tool. Amee Green talks about all the engineers in her family and about the "scary" process of beginning the search for a full-time job. Scott Zimmer, a senior aeronautical and astronautical engineering major, describes his devotion to the Chicago Cubs and generously offers guidance to students who might be interested in campus research projects. ELA Jacqueline Sara Kubilus, a senior majoring in general engineering, alerts her students to careeroriented opportunities she's discovered, like her involvement in the Society of Women Engineers.

Since students have assumed the role of teachers for this course six years ago, senior Jonathan Dolle and general engineering professor Ray Price, authors of a course overview, say that the program has "dramatically improved the experiences of first-year students," an assessment reflected in student evaluation forms.

The challenge ahead is to keep the program in the hands of students with continued financial support by the university. "The assistance to first-year students and the leadership opportunities for upperclassmen has been so successful that we hope other colleges might replicate it," says Dolle, who is majoring in both general engineering and philosophy. For freshmen, it could be the best engineering feat of the year.

Linda Creighton is a freelance writer living in Arlington, Va.

Copyright American Society for Engineering Education Feb 2001
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