Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) is the world leader in aviation and aerospace higher education. Our mission is to teach the science, practice, and business of aviation and aerospace, preparing students for productive careers and leadership roles in business, government agencies, and the military. Our reputation as a leader in aviation and aerospace higher education is grounded in its aviation roots dating back to 1926.
Our Prescott campus focuses on undergraduate education that emphasizes problem-based discovery. We envision the College of Engineering as a community recognized by its inspiring faculty to graduate students who are driven to have a meaningful impact on society by being the preferred location for pursuit of aviation and aerospace knowledge and skills.
Why We're In KEEN
In our Strategic Plan for 2023-2028, we are “committed to providing a climate that facilitates the highest standards of academic achievement, innovation, and entrepreneurship in a culturally diverse community that support the unique needs of each individual.”
We believe we have a unique niche in exploring how might entrepreneurially minded learning be best manifested on our campus. The KEEN mission is a priority to our campus because it empowers our students to:
We realize the importance of focusing our collective efforts on (1) exchanging best practices, and (2) faculty development, in a way that provides us with a shared language—a framework to share our work and ideas.
KEEN provides this shared language and framework, especially in our collective discussions and collaborations. KEEN partners provide access to the best ideas in engineering education in the U.S.
Recent Work
Our Prescott campus focuses on undergraduate education that emphasizes problem-based discovery. We envision the College of Engineering as a community recognized by its inspiring faculty to graduate students who are driven to have a meaningful impact on society by being the preferred location for pursuit of aviation and aerospace knowledge and skills.
Why We're In KEEN
In our Strategic Plan for 2023-2028, we are “committed to providing a climate that facilitates the highest standards of academic achievement, innovation, and entrepreneurship in a culturally diverse community that support the unique needs of each individual.”
We believe we have a unique niche in exploring how might entrepreneurially minded learning be best manifested on our campus. The KEEN mission is a priority to our campus because it empowers our students to:
- Place legacy ideas of aerospace and aviation in new contexts,
- Engage with the rapidly changing landscape of government-industry interaction in aerospace and aviation, and
- Champion the need to seek opportunities and understand stakeholders in diverse contexts of a highly connected world where their work will have impact.
We realize the importance of focusing our collective efforts on (1) exchanging best practices, and (2) faculty development, in a way that provides us with a shared language—a framework to share our work and ideas.
KEEN provides this shared language and framework, especially in our collective discussions and collaborations. KEEN partners provide access to the best ideas in engineering education in the U.S.
Recent Work
- On April 16, 2023, a student team from our campus, Cygnus Suborbitals, successfully launched a liquid oxygen/kerosene rocket at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry site in Mojave, CA. Cygnus Suborbitals was a capstone team from our ME 431 Propulsion Detail Design class taught by both an Engineering faculty and a Humanities / Communications faculty. The flight vehicle, Deneb, reached an altitude of 47,000 feet, making it the highest liquid rocket flight by an amateur group in the United States. The effort was a culmination of work by this group of students for the past four years. Students from this team headed to full time jobs at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Firefly.
- Our students are actively engaged in national competitions such as AIAA Design-Build-Fly, SAE Aero West Design Competition Team, Redline Racing Division, and EagleSat (a student-led CubeSat project supported by the NASA Space Grant Program and ERAU).
- Our faculty are actively engaged in the regional and national technical and educational conferences, including ASEE, ASEE-PSW, AIAA, IEEE and ASME-IMECE.
- ERAU is regularly involved in multi-institutional projects such as the ASCEND! program.
- The Writing Matters QEP (Quality Enhancement Plan) aligns well with ERAU’s 2023-2028 Strategic Plan by helping students become adaptable writers capable of responding to discipline and industry-specific demands through rhetorical awareness and metacognition.
- This year, we worked on redesigning the Introduction to Engineering class, EGR101. This class is the landmark gateway for all our incoming freshmen and has design, programming, and communication components, largely in the context of robotics. The effort was co-lead by then Dean of Engineering, Dr. Ron Madler, and the Associate Dean, Dr. David Lanning, with full engagement from an instructional team of six other faculty members, affecting nine sections of the course. The process was equally enlightened by discussions with several faculty from KEEN partners, who provided us with their perspectives on successful freshman design sequences. Work on freshman design in our curriculum is ongoing.
Our membership in KEEN signifies a transformative step in our educational mission. Embracing the entrepreneurial mindset is about more than fostering innovation; it is about equipping our students with the tools to navigate and excel in a rapidly evolving world. By embedding this mindset into our curriculum, we cultivate graduates who think critically, act creatively, and lead courageously. This partnership highlights our commitment to developing engineers who are not only adept in their technical expertise but also visionary in their approach to solving real-world problems and driving progress.
