I was reading about a “new” program being started at Lehigh University and Delaware. This program lets students pursue their own projects with no set curriculum for some of their education. Lehigh is calling their program “Mountaintop”, where the students request equipment and advice- but get to choose the concept they wish to devote a term or two to achieve. The underlying premise is that research, work experience, and independent long-term projects tend to foster innovation, collaboration, persistence- and amplify the knowledge the students have acquired in previous classes.
Most universities have such programs- but they are for their graduate students, not their undergraduates. But, most of those programs are devoted to the interest of the professors, who either corral students or (heaven-forbid) force them to work on these various projects as a condition to obtain their degrees.
I guess I was lucky to have gone to Brooklyn Poly. Because we had just such freedom more than 40 years ago. I remember working with Marc R and Ferris L on a pyrolysis plant design. Yes, indeed, it was of great interest to one of our professors, but he did not interfere. (I do believe he did profit from our design, but that’s a horse of a different color.) Marc, Ferris, and I spent many, many hours conceiving designs, testing concepts, and determining just what the results would be for each change we made. (Given that the facility was built some 5 years later, one can presume the results were positive
.)
Or, the Sloan Foundation grant for which a different group of us worked. This time, we weren’t all Chem E’s. EE’s, mechanical, metallurgy students were part of this group effort. And, given that someone was a little pushy, the various projects were all related to hemodialysis. Some of us worked on a method to automatically determine how much water was removed from patients (ultrafiltration is used to remove water from patients; a function normal kidneys perform)- using “waterbed” type chairs and pressure monitors; and some of us worked on in-line analysis system of the components of the dialysate to discern how many toxins were removed from the blood; among other efforts. This wasn’t just one term, but transpired over the course of an entire calendar year (including the summer).
I clearly knew that these projects insured that we learned our stuff- and could use it in almost any situation. From economics and finance to mass balance to control theory to transport phenomena, we managed to build upon what we learned in class- well.
We weren’t alone in those kind of efforts, either. When I arrived at MIT for grad school, there was a full-blown program that still obtains today- UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program). As a graduate student, I didn’t participate, but those in the undergraduate program certainly did. 
So, I hope these experiments continue, thrive, and are brought to all the universities in the US and the world. Because the lines between class and practice, between lab and real life need to be erased. To insure that every student is ready and able to help spur America- and the world- to develop the best processes and products we can.
