Interdisciplinary core curriculum based on engineering systems

This work-in-progress report describes the development aid refinement of a triad of interdisciplinary engineering core courses based on systems analysis. Interdisciplinary courses in lumped and distributed systems, involving primarily electrical and mechanical systems with additional treatment of thermal and fluid systems, have had a long history in Dartmouth's engineering science curriculum. We are an interdisciplinary group of engineering and applied science faculty engaged in a curriculum development project to increase the multidisciplinary span of these courses to include chemical, computer, materials, and biological systems, approached from lumped, distributed and discrete systems viewpoints. This paper describes the challenges we have been experiencing in developing and teaching an introductory, interdisciplinary curriculum of this type, together with the perspectives of some of the Dartmouth students who learn engineering from a broad systems approach.