WHY Lab: Discovering Engineering

The intention of the WHY Lab is to foster a scientific approach to acquiring knowledge by encouraging students to observe the world around them. We are proposing an Introduction to Engineering course that will lead the prospective engineering students to discover their engineering vocation based on experiments representative of the engineering applications. To instill the idea that engineering is about "doing" and not just learning "equations, heuristics and theories". The Lab’s approach fosters a student confidence to design experiments and observe the outcomes. The new experiments become part of the catalogue of explorations. The new experiments focus on issues relevant to the student interests and keep the lab’s mission current.The internet and the pedagogy of engineering education has led to a system of accepted principles from which you could deduce an explanation for what you observed. Engineering program’s reliance on testing and homework results in codifying mathematics and scientific principles. Further, student reliance on the Internet to find facts, solutions, and generalizations, avoids the need for critical thinking or the use of an experimental approach. These factors lead to a rigid system with very little room for innovation or new thought.