98-72505 Kukreti University of Oklahoma Sooner City - Design Across the Curriculum The School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science (CEES) at the University of Oklahoma (OU) is embarking on a curriculum reform project entitled Sooner City. The project is in response to the call for more design in the curriculum, a call being made by the engineering accrediting agency, by practitioners who are dissatisfied with the design skills of graduates, and by faculty who want to promote higher-level thinking skills and improve retention. For the project, incoming freshman will be given a plat of undeveloped land that, by the time they graduate, will turned into a blueprint for certain segments of the city (time constraints prevent the design of an entire city). Design tasks include all facets of the traditional civil engineering program, such as site planning and layout, sewer and water infrastructure, water supply, wastewater treatment, buildings, transportation systems, channel design, floodplain analysis, and geotechnical work. A common, four-year design project unifies the curriculum and allows material learned in early courses to carry forward, unlike the "traditional" paradigm wherein courses frequently stand as independent entities with no apparent connection. Also, the project allows students to develop a professional design portfolio that can be presented to perspective employers, be used as a valuable reference for future design tasks, or be used as part of CEES's outcomes-based assessment. Furthermore, Sooner City provides a natural forum for incorporating other pedagogical reform initiatives, such as just-in-time learning, collaborative learning, and laptop computing. The primary goal of the project is to produce graduates who can consistently think at a higher level, and who are thus capable of handling open-ended design projects that require creativity, exploring alternative solutions, self-analysis, and awareness of economic, social, and political issues. The e xtent to which we meet this goal is being assessed through formative and summative evaluations by an external reviewer. The project is unique in that it threads a common design theme throughout the curriculum, yet does so in a flexible, cost-effective manner that requires no change in the traditional sequencing of courses. Because it does not require major institutional support, nor lock faculty into a fixed syllabus, the approach should be attractive to many institutions and be portable to other disciplines. Reform details will be disseminated via the Web and CDROM, and through traditional outlets such as conferences, journal articles, and local and national media.
