Sharing innovation: the NSF Foundation Coalition

Summary form only given. The Foundation Coalition was funded in 1993 as the Fifth coalition in the National Science Foundation's Engineering Education Coalitions Program and is currently in the sixth year of a ten-year project. At the end of the first five-year funding period, the Coalition underwent some restructuring. A primary objective for the next five years is the sharing of Foundation Coalition-developed innovations with the rest of the engineering education community. In order to better reach the engineering education community at large, we will establish a Foundation Coalition "virtual repository". The repository will provide a database of specific information regarding Foundation Coalition activities. Users can use this repository to quickly and easily identify one or more contact people who are available to provide assistance, advice, and expertise on questions that they might have regarding a Foundation Coalition innovation or activity. We will track the use of the repository to see what questions people are asking in order to continuously improve our sharing mechanisms. In addition, we will focus on directed dissemination/sharing through an expanding network of Affiliate campuses, a concept new to the Foundation Coalition. Partner and Affiliate campuses will equally share the responsibility associated with the transfer of Foundation Coalition concepts and ideas. Affiliate campuses are interested in the directions the Foundation Coalition has established, but have not committed to a broad spectrum of curriculum restructuring activities and their institutionalization.