Research Sessions
During the first year, each of the three week sessions begins with the students performing research on a given engineering subject via the internet. The students are provided with a research packet that includes information that is both idealist and realist when it comes to educational philosophy. The Realist questions focus on the hard science behind any given engineering discipline. The Idealist questions are Socratic in nature and push a student to perform deeper analysis of the data that they find to provide an answer that is their own. A fringe benefit of this research period is that it allows the students to strengthen their research skills under the supervision of a university faculty member. Students continue doing research session in the years that follow, but to a lesser extent since the scope of whtat they are doing begins to broaden. The research emphasis is there just as strong, but performed in a different manner such as in papers.