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Many of the National Academy of Engineering's grand challenges are related to environmental engineering. There is broad recognition that these challenges will require environmental engineers to integrate concepts from the natural and physical sciences, social sciences, business, and communications to find solutions at the individual, company, community, national and global levels. Montana State University is in the process of revolutionizing the curriculum and culture of its environmental engineering program to prepare and inspire a new generation of engineers through a project sponsored by the Revolutionizing Engineering Departments program at the National Science Foundation. At the core of the approach is transformation of the hierarchical, topic-focused course structure into a model of team taught, integrated, and projectbased learning courses grouped around the key knowledge threads of systems thinking, professionalism, and sustainability. Multi-disciplinary faculty developed specific and detailed program outcomes after review of ABET program outcomes; the Fundamentals of Engineering exam; Body of Knowledge documents from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers (AAEE), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM); the Engineering for One Planet report sponsored by the Lemelson Foundation; and the KEEN Framework on the Entrepreneurial Mindset. The resulting outcomes were organized into competency strands and competency domains. Currently, outcomes spanning the spectrum of content are being crafted into integrated and project-based courses in each year of the undergraduate curriculum. This paper reviews the lessons learned from the process of developing knowledge threads, competency strands and domains, and specific program outcomes with a multidisciplinary group of faculty, as well as the challenges of developing integrated and project-based courses within an established undergraduate curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that fundamental materials science principles transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, a grand opportunity exists to leverage materials science concepts to facilitate multidisciplinary teaching and learning. This paper presents the development and implementation of a three-phase teaching module designed to foster organic, cross-disciplinary discourse and learning among pre-collegiate engineering students. Thirty domestic and international high school students were selected for an introductory four-week summer course in engineering. The students were divided into two classes, either civil engineering or nuclear engineering, according to their disciplinary preferences. In Phase I of the interdisciplinary module, the students were taught fundamental discipline-specific concepts in separate classrooms by their respective instructor (e.g., static equilibrium, nuclear reactor physics) over the course of one week. In Phase II, a joint lecture on diffusion, a materials science topic of mutual importance to both disciplines, was given to all students and facilitated by both instructors. In Phase III, the students worked in mixed, interdisciplinary teams in a structured problem-solving session in which they were asked to apply their knowledge of static equilibrium, diffusion, and nuclear principles to solve engineering design problems regarding reactor pressure vessels and radioactive waste casks. The effectiveness of this collaborative module in promoting cross-disciplinary learning was assessed through an analysis of student responses to an anonymous survey. The results show that the module was effective in (a) teaching students the fundamental principles of diffusion, (b) fostering peer-to-peer teaching and learning, and (c) emphasizing the importance of teamwork and problem-solving across disciplines. The results also indicate that students developed a broader view regarding the applicability of their knowledge beyond their own disciplinary boundaries. Given its universality, this materials-focused teaching module has the potential to serve as an effective model to foster interdisciplinary teaching and learning between other engineering disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]