The BUILD Program summary

The Better Utilization of Interdisciplinary Learning and Development Program (The BUILD Program) aims to revolutionize engineering departments across the nation by supplementing the important theoretical aspects of a traditional engineering program with practical engineering concepts sought by 21st century employers.

Spanning Kindergarten through post retirement contribution, the BUILD Program aims to create an unprecedentedly talented and passionate workforce. The educational program centers around trade school and engineering school educational programs and comprises experiential learning, collaborative team-oriented environments, cross-discipline experience, and immersion in hands-on engineering. One team-based hands-on experiential class is taken each year led by industry mentors in coordination with traditional courses. The students design, build, test, and refine projects that will thread into other courses throughout their academic career, improving the continuity of education. For example, electrical engineers will learn to make printed circuit boards during their freshman year exposing them to design concepts and principles. Professors can then give assignments to sophomores and juniors to make robust prototypes relevant to what they are learning in class. The advantages of combining experiential and traditional learning compounded over multiple design courses are significant.

The four sequential “building” courses put students in a professional engineering environment threaded through all four undergraduate years. Although students may be physically at school, in spirit they are working at a small startup company solving real-world problems under guidance of their mentor, who is presumably a senior engineer at a startup company. They will be working in multi-discipline engineering teams and interacting with team members continuously, encouraging collaboration and network building. They will learn how to make their design manufacturable by manufacturing them as part of the program.

Interactive design reviews attended by upper and lower classmen and current industry engineers expose students to new thoughts and ideas, further solidifying the learning objectives. These design reviews are a key component of this learning environment. The design reviews teach how engineers work best in networks of cooperative multidisciplinary teams.

Certified mentors are at the center of the program. They have personally completed the projects in their entirety three times – once working with instructors during their intensive mentor training course, once on their own at the training facility, and once independently at their home training site using their tools, components, and infrastructure. They are given non-working systems to diagnose with a variety of issues spanning electrical, software, mechanical, and other problems such as cracked solder joints, defective components, broken/shorted traces, broken linkages, excessive backlash, and software issues. They will teach the art of diagnosis, debugging, and repair. The mentor cadre can facilitate all parts of this project to success.

We propose to use national funds to develop the program. In the long term, maintaining and sustaining this program will require significant sustainable resources which we do not feel should be federally funded. We propose to transition to corporate sponsorship after the five-year development phase. Sponsors would provide mentorship training, tools, and components for the projects in all four courses. Sponsors would be incentivized by top-tier talent recruitment, integration into their internship programs, access to top-tier teams for capstone projects, introducing students to components and trade tools to carry into their workplace, and top-notch mentor training.

The culmination of the BUILD program is a sustained path for highly capable engineers at universities, sponsor facilities, and industry.

Summary: What’s in this for you?

If you go through the BUILD program you will be a full performance engineer upon graduation fully contributing on engineering teams.