Gateway Lab to undergo major changes

Columbia’s flagship introductory course for freshman engineers is getting a makeover, with dramatic changes to Gateway Lab expected to be implemented in the fall.

The changes have not yet been finalized, but according to chemical engineering professor Michael Hill, a member of the School of Engineering and Applied Science committee reviewing Gateway, the restructured course will probably incorporate the involvement of many professors from different engineering departments.

It’s also likely that the semester-long project that Gateway groups work on will be eliminated, Hill said, although there will still be some hands-on projects. One possibility is to shorten the team project to take up less of the semester, and to give groups a choice of project from different disciplines, Hill said.

Additionally, Hill noted that SEAS Associate Dean Jack McGourty and professor Promiti Dutta will no longer teach the course. It will now be headed up by electrical engineering professor David Vallancourt and mechanical engineering professor Fred Stolfi as well as several other as-yet undetermined professors, Hill said.

Hill, who attended SEAS as an undergraduate, said a main goal of the changes is to expose freshmen engineers to a wider range of engineering material.

“Back in the day, you didn’t really get a flavor of what you would do as an engineer until you got to be a junior, and even then it was sketchy ... but the concept now is even as a freshman, you actually get a flavor of what an engineer actually does, and if possible, across the range of disciplines in engineering,” Hill said.

Chemical engineering department chair Sanat K. Kumar praised the current course for preparing first-years for engineering work in general, but said the changes are meant to better prepare engineers for the majors they choose down the road.

“The good part of it [the current course] is clearly the ability to do something hands-on, the ability to work in a group, because these are things you do as an engineering major,” Kumar said. “What we’re trying to add to it is something actually more related to what you will actually do as part of the major. … That’s what’s missing.”

Kumar added that the decision to give the course new leadership was not a reflection on McGourty, who has been teaching it for many years and who Kumar said has done a great job. He said the change reflects a decision to run the courses out of the engineering departments rather than the dean’s office.

Hill emphasized that the changes have not yet been finalized, and that many details still need to be worked out. The committee, which is composed of representatives from all the engineering departments, will work over the summer to finalize its recommendations, which will then need to be approved by SEAS Dean Feniosky Peña-Mora. The goal, Hill said, is to have a new Gateway course ready for the fall semester.

Peña-Mora said in a statement on Tuesday that as part of the Engineering School’s regular process of evaluation for every class, faculty have been looking at the Gateway class, assessing input from students who have taken Gateway and from faculty, to “ensure the course curriculum fits the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s engineers and is consistent with our educational philosophy.”

“As we refine the course content to meet these needs, we will build on the pillars of Gateway, its socially responsible engineering and applied science projects and rigorous pedagogy integrating the engineering fundamentals with a project-based, hands-on experience that will enable our students to lead the way in developing solutions to the challenges society will ask them to address in their career,” Peña-Mora wrote.

SEAS Class of 2014 President Akshay Shah said that the Engineering Student Council has solicited student opinions on Gateway this year, and that he and two other ESC members given recommendations on how to change the course to an undergraduate academic review committee chaired by Yannis Tsividis, the undergraduate curriculum advisor to Peña-Mora.

According to Shah, he and the other ESC members recommended splitting Gateway from one three-hour meeting per week—its current format—to two one and-a-half hour meetings per week. One of the meetings would focus on design, and the other would focus on the group projects.

They also recommended having all students take Gateway second semester and all preprofessional courses first semester—as many first-semester freshmen go into Gateway without the necessary engineering skills—and creating a program in which each first-year in Gateway receives one-on-one mentorship from a senior.

Shah noted that no changes have been finalized, but said he believes that Tsividis took the recommendations seriously, and that the course will be changed for the better.

“I’m pretty confident [that] Professor Tsividis was actually very, very open to all our recommendations,” Shah said. “And he asked us to be very frank, and we really, really appreciate that.”

Members of the SEAS class of 2015, who, upon arriving at Columbia in the fall, will be the first to take the new Gateway class, were cautiously optimistic about the news.

“I’m not sure how I really feel about the Gateway change,” Shaun Ang, SEAS ’15, said. “On the one hand, I’ve always thought of it as one of those iconic SEAS classes that you don’t mess with—one that fits in with the school’s mantra about educating socially conscious engineers.”

But Ang added that he is “hopeful” the changes will only improve Gateway.

“I’m hoping that the new course structure will allow for ‘actual’ engineering knowledge and skills to be imparted to us pre-frosh, even if it now seems like another generic introduction to engineering course,” Ang said.

Sandya Sankarram, SEAS ’15, said she thinks the new Gateway will be “a great way for the engineers to wet their paws” in the different types of engineering without having to make any commitments.

“Before, if I were interested in biomedical engineering, I would have to take a course in it, and if I found that I disliked the material, I would be stuck in the class for an entire semester,” Sankarram said. “This survey course would let us figure out what subjects inspire us and which ones just ... don’t. Sort of like a sampling platter for engineering classes, if you will.”

Shah said that he is pleased with one of the only confirmed changes—that Vallancourt will be involved with the new class.

“Frankly, he’s an awesome professor, and at the very least he gets all of his students engaged in what he’s teaching. … He seems to be a good fit for what you would like to see in a Gateway professor,” Shah said.
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Correction: A previous version of this article misquoted Akshay Shah. Spectator regrets the error.