Many different universities have incorporated service learning into their curriculums to address the contextual, motivational, and multi-disciplinary team needs. Purdue University created the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program in 1995. Under this program, freshman to senior undergraduate engineering students form multi-disciplinary teams to meet community needs. Students earn a variable number of credit hours based on their year in school and related contribution to the project. At Purdue, the service projects are long-term and students earn up to seven semesters worth of credit working on the service project. The program began with 40 students on 5 teams but has quickly grown to 400 students on 24 teams.
The EPICS program at Purdue as well as service learning programs at other universities, have succeeded in offering students practical experience, context, and motivation for engineering. Seventy seven percent of the students who were able to come back to the EPICS program stayed for additional semesters. On student evaluations, 70% of students indicated that the program positively impacted their decision to stay in engineering; of the 30% that responded differently, several indicated they had previously decided to stay in the engineering before the program and thus, the program did not affect their decision to stay in engineering. Student responses also returned favorable results for the educational objectives. The table below summarizes the responses:
On evaluation comments, students also expressed that EPICS had completely changed their view of engineering, giving them both meaning and direction in all of their engineering studies.
Penn State University has created a certificate program entitled 'Community Service Engineering'. The emphasis of the program is on relationship building - and are not simply project-driven exercises. Long-term, sustainable, collaborative partnerships are formed with host universities. This enables development of outreach programs at the universities reaching into local communities. The program is vertically integrated across the four-year engineering program allowing students to form these long-term relationships with the host communities. This method allows for greater understanding of the cultural aspects of engineering design and its impact, as well as development of technical proficiency. There is also a very strong emphasis on entrepreneurship in the program. Engineering design solutions are developed and students are encouraged to develop business plans and implement them in the host community.