Project Grant 2540006

The National Science Foundation Division of Undergraduate Education awarded Purdue University $750,000 on October 1, 2026, under the STEM Education program (CFDA 47.076) to develop curricula in conscientious design education focused on well-being engineering.

The project will design a spiral curriculum spanning 100-to-400 level courses in industrial engineering that integrates cognitive and psychological modeling principles with traditional physical modeling approaches. The curriculum development will incorporate state-of-the-art simulation and sensor technologies to prepare students for workforce demands in Industry 5.0, which emphasizes social value and human-centered design alongside traditional economic and performance metrics. The project addresses a documented gap in current engineering education, which predominantly neglects crucial well-being factors such as stress, positive emotions, autonomy, mastery, and social relationships in design and operations.

The award runs through September 30, 2029, with work performed at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The project will cultivate and assess students' ability to incorporate well-being considerations into engineering designs and will prepare future engineers to produce designs that balance social value and user well-being with conventional performance metrics. Industrial engineering serves as the testbed major for implementing these interventions due to its traditional focus on human work system design.