Today’s engineering students face information overload from the moment they set foot in a college classroom. Exponential advances in technology have created an equally dramatic increase in the amount of information this generation’s engineers must learn – all in the same four years of undergraduate education.

“Engineering is already a curriculum that requires a lot of courses and credit hours, so one of our challenges is how do we give those students those skills without having them take more courses,” Dr. Donald Leo, dean of the University of Georgia’s College Engineering told Georgia Trend in the magazine’s February 2015 edition.  “What that’s required us to do is be more creative.”

As Georgia Trend points out, UGA’s College of Engineering addresses this challenge by introducing both the engineering design process and the professional working world of engineering to students early in their education, starting in their first semester of classes.

“We are trying, in that first semester, to not only get them immersed in the foundational disciplines, but also give them a taste of what it’s like to be a practicing engineer (and the) different types of engineering professions,” says Leo.

The full article is available online via Georgia Trend.