Programs of Special Interest

Active Learning

The College of Engineering and Applied Science defines active learning as “enhancing knowledge, skills, and understanding through practical experience.” The college’s goal is to provide all students with the opportunity to participate in enrichment experiences and partnerships with individual faculty and professionals in discovery, service, and professional learning. Several programs are in place to financially support students engaged in undergraduate research or “discovery learning” with faculty, graduate students, and research sponsors. Students seeking professional learning experiences such as internships and co-op assignments with a participating employer also typically earn hourly wages, while those pursuing service learning opportunities in the college, community, or beyond could earn wages or course credit. Active learning encompasses domestic and international opportunities such as assisting developing communities through Engineers Without Borders, a national nonprofit organization started at CU-Boulder. For more information about active learning programs and opportunities, visit engineering.colorado.edu/activelearning.

In addition, the college offers First Year Engineering Projects courses as a general engineering elective, which provide students with collaborative, hands-on experience in designing and building engineering devices early in the engineering curriculum, and most undergraduate majors in the college require completion of a senior capstone design course.

Integrated Teaching and Learning Program

The award-winning Integrated Teaching and Learning (ITL) program provides opportunities for students to acquire hands-on, inquiry-based learning experiences throughout the engineering curriculum. The ITL Program encompasses college-wide curricular initiatives in a unique, supportive learning environment that mirrors the real world of engineering—the Integrated Teaching and Learning (ITL) Laboratory.

The internationally emulated ITL Laboratory is a 34,000 sq. ft. hands-on learning facility that features open and interactive laboratory plazas and supports hands-on experimentation, pervasive data acquisition and analysis capability, design studios, team work areas, active learning spaces, and state-of-the-art manufacturing and electronics fabrication capabilities. All CU engineering students are welcome to use its resources, including free, not-for-credit skill-building workshops on tools, machining, soldering, circuits, microcontrollers, strain gauges, laser cutters, LabVIEW, SolidWorks, etc. It is heavily used by engineering students of all disciplines and is supported by a dedicated team with an unwavering focus on outstanding customer service.

The ITL program features an innovative interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum that includes the retention-building First-Year Engineering Projects course that engages student teams to experience the design process in a hands-on way, culminating in an end-of-semester public design expo. The facility attracts students of all ages with a dozen hands-on science and engineering exhibits. The program is also home to a corps of engineering students who teach science and math through engineering in local public school classrooms. The nationally recognized K–12 ITL engineering program focuses on attracting and preparing more diverse and well-prepared youth to careers in engineering and technology. Visit itll.colorado.edu for more information.

BOLD Center

The college-wide BOLD (Broadening Opportunity through Leadership and Diversity) Center focuses the college’s inclusion–centered access, retention, and performance initiatives. The BOLD Center creates a vibrant and inclusive community of students from a wide range of backgrounds, preparing engineers with diverse perspectives to be innovative leaders in a global society. Through BOLD-inspired and -led initiatives, the college is dedicated to becoming a leader in attracting, preparing, and expanding opportunities for students historically underrepresented in engineering—including women, racial minorities, students from low-income families, and those who are the first in their family to attend college. The BOLD Center team focuses deeply on measurable outcomes to significantly improve upon historical student access, retention, and performance results.

BOLDly Moving Forward. The BOLD Center achieves breakthroughs in attracting, preparing, and expanding opportunities for historically underrepresented students in engineering through academic offerings that inspire and motivate student success. Building strong community among students who might otherwise feel isolated is also a BOLD key to student success. BOLD promotes student engagement, achievement, and retention in engineering through a focus on community building, leadership, and professional development activities, coupled with building strong academics and an expectation for achieving excellence.

Why be BOLD? Through the inclusive BOLD community, students meet and work with peers, connect with engineering student societies, tap into internships and mentoring opportunities, explore career services, acquire effective study habits, and pursue volunteer opportunities. The BOLD Center offers free tutoring for all engineering students in the Student Success Center. BOLD participation scholarships are available through an application process. Visit bold.colorado.edu.

Engineering Honors Program

As a Residential College (RC), the Engineering Honors Program provides an educational experience that transcends the classroom and is designed to match the unique abilities, needs, and ambitions of the college’s best students. The program is for students who want to belong to and contribute to an honors culture that cares more about learning than grades; more about maximizing their opportunities than meeting minimum requirements; more about being thoughtful, critical, engaged, and intentional than passively defined by the vague expectations of others. Central to fulfilling this mission is the Engineering Honors Program Residential College in Andrews Hall, which includes a residential faculty member, classrooms, special study spaces, and the highest percentage of upper-division students living on campus. 

Being part of the Engineering Honors Program will mean all of the following: 

• being part of a community of talented and dedicated students
• participating in special honors courses, including the basic Calculus through Differential Equations sequence in Andrews Hall
• living in Andrews Hall, at least during your first year
• having the opportunity to do advanced research
• having exposure to students involved in international development work 
• having greater access to internships 
• completing an Honors ePortfolio

There will be a combination of college-wide and department-specific honors experiences beginning in the student’s very first semester. Incoming first-year students are selected to participate in the Engineering Honors Program via an online application process. For more information regarding program requirements and access to the application, visit www.cuhonorsengineering.com.

Engineering Leadership Program

The Engineering Leadership Program (ELP) provides students with course work and active learning experiences to prepare them to be leaders in their chosen careers, whether it is in an engineering field or another field such as government service, law, medicine, etc. Students in the program have the opportunity to take specialized leadership courses through ELP and other CU programs, attend leadership seminars sponsored by the college, and learn from a mentor who has leadership experience relevant to their interests. ELP Students also design and undertake a leadership experience and must produce a portfolio for review prior to graduation. Students apply to the program in their first or second year. See www.colorado.edu/engineering/leadership for more information.

Engineering Management & Entrepreneurship

Engineering Management & Entrepreneurship offers two undergraduate certificates designed to equip young leaders in engineering and sciences with essential business skills.  Advantages in a competitive job market include:

• understanding the business context of engineering and technology;
• increasing job opportunities and accelerating career development;
• acquiring and developing leadership skills; and
• refining interpersonal skills and gaining expertise and confidence in working with others.

For more information, visit eme.colorado.edu.

Pre-Engineering Program

The Pre-Engineering Program is designed to facilitate the successful transition of first-year students in the College of Arts and Sciences into the College of Engineering and Applied Science. The program provides a structured pathway of CU-Boulder course work combined with academic advising support from both the College of Engineering and Applied Science and the College of Arts and Sciences.

The program serves first-time freshmen applicants who initially applied to the College of Engineering and Applied Science, but were alternatively offered admission to the College of Arts and Sciences. Additionally, arts and sciences freshmen can join the Pre-Engineering Program at new student orientation or during their first semester of study. Pre-Engineering students prepare for a transition to the engineering college by successfully completing specific math, science, and engineering courses. Through special registration access to select engineering courses, most students can complete engineering admission requirements in three semesters, while some may do so in as few as two semesters. The maximum length of time in the Pre-Engineering Program for any student is four semesters, at which point the student will either be admitted to engineering or will transition into an arts and sciences major. Pre-Engineering students receive dual support from advisors in both the College of Engineering and Appied Science and the College of Arts and Sciences. They are also encouraged to live on campus in engineering-affiliated living communities and actively engage in engineering student societies and organizations.  Specific program requirements and further details may be found at www.colorado.edu/engineering/students/first-year/pre-engineering. 

Colorado Space Grant Consortium

NASA’s Colorado Space Grant Consortium (also known as Space Grant) is part of a national program. CU Space Grant provides students with access to space through innovative courses and real-world, hands-on space hardware programs that include short and long-duration, high altitude balloon payloads, sounding rocket payloads, and low-Earth orbiting satellite missions.  

Space Grant students interact with engineers and scientists from NASA and industry to develop, test, and fly new space technologies. All missions are entirely student run—including students in the roles of team members, team leads, systems engineers, project managers, and mission operators. Students participate in programs that aid them in their future academic courses and careers. For more information, visit spacegrant.colorado.edu.

Herbst Program of Humanities

The Herbst Program of Humanities enriches and broadens the technical education of engineering students by bringing literature, philosophy, history, social issues, and the arts to College of Engineering and Applied Science undergraduates. 

Its seminar courses, HUEN 1010 and HUEN 3100, are limited to no more than 15 students; class time is devoted almost exclusively to roundtable discussion of original texts, primarily in literature and philosophy. Both courses include the arts: painting, architecture, music, or film. Students hone their critical thinking skills by reading, discussing, and exploring ideas in writing. Because of a heavy emphasis on writing, HUEN 3100 satisfies the college’s writing requirement. HUEN 1010 satisfies the writing requirement only when taken in a student’s freshman year. 

The Herbst Program offers other courses on a rotating basis. HUEN 1850 The History of Engineering studies technological change and its consequences through time. HUEN 2020 The Meaning of Information Technology considers the impacts and ethics of emerging communication technologies. HUEN 2100, 2120, and 2130 together survey science and technology from the Stone Age to the 20th century. HUEN 2210 Engineering, Science, and Society explores the ethics and social implications of engineering practice. A variety of Special Topics courses are occasionally offered, either as HUEN 2843 or as HUEN 3843; these address subjects as varied as Leadership in Literature, Leonardo da Vinci, The History of Medicine, and The Ethics of Bioengineering. The Herbst Program offers summer term, study abroad, and Maymester courses. See www.colorado.edu/engineering/herbst for more information.

Initially funded by an endowment established by Clarence Herbst in 1989, the program is sustained by the generous support of a variety of donors, including Linda Vitti Herbst, the Price Foundation, and the College of Engineering and Applied Science. 

Study Abroad

In today’s global environment, engineers frequently travel internationally and work in multilingual and multicultural teams. Therefore, it is essential that engineering students familiarize themselves with foreign cultures by selecting appropriate courses or by studying abroad. CU-Boulder has nearly 400 study abroad programs in 70 countries that allow engineering students to complete degree requirements abroad. These programs include a faculty-led Maymester Global Seminar in China, a semester exchange in Germany, and industry internships in Chile, among many other options. Careful planning is required to ensure that the courses taken abroad meet degree requirements and that participants stay on track for graduation. All participants in CU-approved study abroad programs remain enrolled at the university and receive in-residence credit; the pass/fail grade option is used by this college for course work taken during study abroad (but is exempt from college and major department pass/fail limitations). Financial aid from the university can be applied to the program costs in many cases, and special study abroad scholarships may be available for program participants. For more information, contact the Office of International Education, University of Colorado Boulder, 123 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0123, 303-492-7741, e-mail studyabroad@colorado.edu, or visit studyabroad.colorado.edu.

Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities

Engineering for Developing Communities (EDC) is an innovative educational program dedicated to transforming the understanding, application, and evaluation of engineering in the global environment and implementing that change across the entire engineering curriculum. Managed by the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities (MCEDC), the program combines classroom work, research and development, and real world, on-the-ground experience to train engineers to work in partnership with organizations in developing communities worldwide. Our goal is to educate engineers who will meet the needs of a rapidly growing human population while preserving Earth’s biodiversity, its delicate ecosystems, and its rich cultural heritages.

More information about the Mortenson Center is available online at mcedc.colorado.edu or by calling 303-735-6708.

Undergraduate Program. The Mortenson Center led the development of the Undergraduate Certificate in Global Engineering for degree-seeking engineering students. The Undergraduate Certificate in Global Engineering expands students' understanding of how to operate in an international context from an engineering perspective. This translates to the capacity to work in either an international team from within an office located domestically or internationally. These work environments necessitate that students understand multinational contexts as well as local office and nongovernmental agency contexts. For more details about the undergraduate certificate in global engineering, please see mcedc.colorado.edu/education/undergraduate-certificate-global-engineering.

Graduate Programs. The Mortenson Center offers a 12-credit Graduate Certificate in Engineering for Developing Communities that is open to engineering graduate students in any major within the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Students who meet admission requirements for the MS or PhD degree in Civil Engineering have two additional options. A courses-only, 30-credit Professional Master’s Degree Program in Engineering for Developing Communities (PMP-EDC) is now available for individuals who are primarily interested in becoming competitive candidates for employment in the field of engineering for development.  Alternatively, those who are interested in conducting EDC-related research during their graduate program can apply to enroll in an EDC track within the Building Systems, Construction Engineering and Management, Civil Systems, or Environmental engineering areas. The EDC degree and certificate programs are recognized Western Regional Graduate Programs (WRGP) that offer residents of eligible WICHE-participating states a tuition benefit. For more information about the WICHE WRGP, please see www.wiche.edu/wrgp.

Student Organizations

Information about student organizations in the college may be found at www.colorado.edu/engineering/academics/student-organizations.

Residential Communities

The Engineering Honors Program, the Global Engineering Residential Academic Program, Sustainable by Design Residential Academic Program, and the Quadrangle Engineering and Science Living and Learning Community, are popular community-building options for engineering students. See housing.colorado.edu/residences/residential-academic-communities for information.

Professional Registration

The need for professional registration depends on the field of engineering and the nature of practice in that field. Engineers in private professional practice generally need to be registered. Currently, registration is required in all states for the legal right to practice professional engineering. Although there are variations in state laws, graduation from an accredited curriculum in engineering, subscription to a code of ethics, and four years of qualifying experience are minimum requirements for registration. Two days of examinations covering the engineering sciences and the applicant’s practical experience are also required in most states and territories. A student begins this professional registration process by taking the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) six-hour examination during senior year in this college.