History
The Interdisciplinary Engineering Studies (IDES) and Multidisciplinary Engineering (MDE) programs reside within the School of Engineering Education.
The Department of Engineering Education (est. 2004) was recognized as a School four years later by combining it's pioneering graduate program with undergraduate offering that would serve as innovative and informed ecosystem of excellence based on scholarly research and inquiry. In addition to offering a Ph.D. in Engineering Education, the School shepherded and enhanced two existing undergradate programs: Department of Freshman Engineering (now First-Year Engineering) and the Division of Interdisciplinary Engineering Studies.
Freshman Engineering at Purdue was established in 1953 as a first-of-its-kind program. Its aim was to distinctively educate an entire cohort of incoming engineering students, providing them with a uniform and solid foundation on which to choose and build their disciplinary education. In 1969, Purdue set out to serve an emergent and unique body of students whose interest in STEM existed alongside a wide-ranging view of how and where the skills, values, and attributes of an engineer could be put to use. In the words of program founder Dick Grace, IDES was created “… in response to student faculty, and industrial needs for engineers more broadly educated than ever before.”
In 2003, IDES Director Phil Wankat was tasked with re-envisioning how to best serve the demands of students who sought alternative engineering pathways. The first path attracted students who wanted an engineering education background but aspired to take that background into pre-professional schools (e.g. pre-med or pre-law); or who perhaps did not ultimately desire to practice engineering, but valued the engineering foundation of their education. The second path attracted students with a clear interest in the profession of engineering and, perhaps, an interest in becoming a registered professional engineer.
While the first pathway was served by the existing IDES divison, which became the the School's first undergraduate program, a second path was needed for students who professed a clear interest in the profession of engineering and, perhaps, an interest in becoming a registered professional engineer. Most states require candidates who desire to become professional engineers to graduate from a program accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET. Therefore, a Multidisciplinary Engineering (MDE) program was developed from 2004 to 2005 with the first student to graduate in 2006. MDE became an ABET-accredited program under the School of Engineering Education in 2007.
The School confers a Bachelor of Science degree (BS) on students who graduate from the IDES program, and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) degree on students who graduate from the MDE program.
Shown in picture: Drs. Phil Wankat, Mary Pilotte, and Dick Grace (circa 2015)
Updated: March 3, 2025