A new class for freshmen is bolstering the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s aerospace engineering program, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. The new offering, Introduction to Mechanics and Aerospace, helps introduce engineering students to their majors earlier in their college career, when they might previously have had to wait until they began taking elective courses in junior and senior year.
The class also aims to boost engineering’s retention of female and minority students and to meet industry demand. Before the new course was introduced, engineering mechanics students did not have any aerospace-specific options in their first year, and Jennifer Franck, the professor of mechanical engineering who started the class, said because students were so scattered, they were never able to form a cohort until they became upper classmen.
The current group of UW-Madison freshmen participating in the class recently demonstrated a wind tunnel, the culmination of a series of projects that built upon one another, at the annual Engineering Expo.
