The Gateway Engineering Education Coalition
A Ten-year Project Supported by the National Science Foundation

The Gateway Engineering Education Coalition is a collaborative program of seven institutions supported by the Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation.* Headquartered at Drexel University and representing a diversity of institutional cultures, the Coalition opens new “gateways” for learning by shifting the focus from “teaching” to “learning,” from the theoretical to the experiential and from a piecewise to an integrated approach to the engineering curriculum while maintaining the traditional rigorous treatment of the subject matter.

The emphasis is on bringing engineering “up-front,” and using design as the thread weaving together the supportive analytical and experiential knowledge. This integrative process is facilitated to a large extent through multidisciplinary projects and the use of instructional technologies in cross-institutional programs. This has led to a lowering of traditional barriers among institutions as well as within institutions.

*List of Gateway Engineering Education Coalition Schools:
Columbia University
Cooper Union
Drexel University
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Ohio State University
Polytechnic University
University of South Carolina