Undergraduates master core concepts while working on team-based design projects.Undergraduate Study / Core CurriculumEngineering First® Program
The Engineering First curriculum:
- provides first year students with engineering experiences immediately
- integrates data analytics and probabilistic reasoning, and programming
- emphasizes design and the process of “design thinking” for problem solving
- trains students how to communicate their ideas to partners and stakeholders
Engineering First consists of five courses in two sequences: Engineering Foundations and Design Thinking and Communication (DTC).
Engineering Foundations
Engineering Foundations is a set of three courses integrating math, data science, and programming. The specific areas covered are:
- linear algebra
- probability and statistics
- Python-based programming
These courses focus on data analytics and probabilistic reasoning, equipping students to build discipline-specific applications, reason under uncertainty, and model complex systems.
Design Thinking and Communication (DTC)
Design Thinking and Communication (DTC) is a two-course sequence that puts all first-year Northwestern Engineering students to work immediately on real design problems submitted by both individual and organizational community partners. DTC introduces students to the human-centered design process and technical and professional communication as a way to develop innovative solutions to open-ended problems, resulting in proof-of-concept prototypes and full technical reports. In small classes of sixteen students and two instructors, student teams engage with relevant stakeholders to define their design problem, identify requirements, brainstorm ideas, and iteratively evaluate their solutions, all while documenting their work in actionable deliverables.
As part of the Engineering-First curriculum, DTC empowers students to begin their engineering education with a foundational understanding of human-centered design, effective communication, teamwork, and engineering ethics that will be built on throughout their time in McCormick. DTC satisfies design and writing credits required for all engineering degrees.
