Democratizing engineering education: An online Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree

The College of Engineering & Applied Science at the University of Colorado Boulder proposes a low-cost, online, accredited Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) degree. The BSE will provide a pathway for community college (CC) students, or students with similar transfer credits, to complete a degree in engineering at a cost similar to attending CC. The educationally underserved communities across Colorado are often low-income, racially and ethnically diverse, and rural; the BSE's primary goal is to provide access to an engineering education for these students and, thus, open pathways to high-demand, high-wage careers. The BSE will reach an underserved population of learners who can stay in their local community while simultaneously pursuing an engineering education. A fully online, ABET-accredited engineering degree is surprisingly novel-only nine other online engineering degrees in the nation are accredited-but an R1-level university degree at a near-community-college cost is unprecedented. The BSE will invite the institution's best instructors to innovate in online education-virtual labs, team-based projects, flipped asynchronous discussions, and hybrid-learning activities. Student success support will include wrap-around advising to foster the development of the academic, affective, financial, and career support that students need to succeed in engineering. The BSE will utilize five administrative affordances: 1) success coaches to provide wrap-around support and guidance to students; 2) course facilitators who provide personalized support; 3) stackable credentials; 4) eight-week semesters, allowing students to quickly complete portions of their education; and 5) mentorship programming to foster community and to help students develop their (inter)disciplinary identity. The online BSE creates a new pathway for underserved students to matriculate to a flagship public research university for a degree in engineering. This work-in-progress outlines the proposed structure and characteristics of a pilot program for the BSE, and the authors invite feedback and discussion about the value and framework of such a program.