Impacts of Implementing General Education Core Requirements Into Aerospace Senior Design Project Courses II

Balancing the goals of providing a general, well-rounded education and the needed technical knowledge to meet the demands of modern engineering is an ongoing challenge of current aerospace engineering curriculum design. The aerospace program at Saint Louis University is implementing some requirements of a new set of Core curriculum demands through the senior design sequence. Two of these requirements, Collaborative Inquiry and Cura Personalis 3, were initially implemented for the fall 2024 semester and have been fully implemented in fall 2025. Two other core requirements, Creative Expression and Writing Intensive, were partially implemented in spring 2025 and will be fully implemented in spring 2026. The first year of implementation has revealed some synergistic aspects, as topics such as preparation for a career and how to conduct team-centered research and design are already essential aspects of senior capstone. However, other demands of the Core curriculum proved more challenging to include and questions remain on the effectiveness of how these topics are incorporated into the courses. Initial indicators are that the inclusion of Core materials has had a positive impact on class performance and synergy with ABET expectations but have come with an increased demand on both students and instructors.