Monday Welcome and Keynote Address
Richard Petty Ballroom, The Shores Resort and Spa

Keynote description: "You're good at math. Engineering is math and science. You should be an engineer."" Engineering has been around for decades, and surely we can describe engineering as more than math and science, especially to aspiring engineers before they select a college major. Students who enter our engineering programs come from the world of K12, where messages about engineering are mixed at best. High school students become first-year students, bringing misconceptions with them. Toward this end, many universities have established 'Introduction to Engineering' courses, meant to transition students into engineering. An examination of these courses showed great variability among programs – and in some cases, among sections in a program. Are our students introduced to engineering effectively?

We will take a brief tour of engineering in K-12 to understand where our students have been, and introduce a novel program with the potential to truly transform engineering within K-12. As our students transition into college, we will transition and examine the meaning of "Introduction to Engineering." A tool developed to quantify and categorize these courses will be introduced and we will discuss some potential uses of the First-Year Engineering Classification Scheme. Finally, we will attempt to answer our question “What Does 'Introduction to Engineering' Mean?"

Kenneth Reid is the Assistant Department Head for Undergraduate Programs in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He has taught in the graduate and undergraduate program, but focuses his attention on administration and teaching in Virginia Tech’s first-year program.

Ken was a member of the first cohort in Engineering Education at Purdue University and earned his Ph.D. in 2009 from Purdue. He previously earned his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rose Hulman Institute of Technology and B.S. in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Purdue.

He and his coauthors were awarded the William Elgin Wickenden award for 2014, recognizing the best paper in the Journal of Engineering Education and awarded Best Paper, ERM Division of ASEE in 2014. He was awarded an IEEE-USA Professional Achievement Award in 2013 for designing the nation's first B.S. degree in Engineering Education. He was named NETI Faculty Fellow for 2013-2014, and the Herbert F. Alter Chair of Engineering (Ohio Northern University) in 2010. The Tsunami Model Eliciting Activity, co-designed by Reid and implemented in an Indianapolis area middle school, was named the Middle School Curriculum of the Year for 2009 by the Engineering Education Service Center. He has received multiple teaching awards, including the Outstanding Teaching Award for the IL/IN section of ASEE. His research interests include success in first-year engineering, engineering in K-12, and international service and engineering. He is active in engineering within K-12, serving on the Technology Student Association (TSA) Board of Directors, and engineering international service learning, serving on the Board of Directors of Solid Rock International. He has written four textbooks (with another soon to be released), including texts recommended for the Project Lead the Way Digital Electronics course. First

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