Engineering education cannot expect to meet the demands of a global, diverse, knowledge-society without addressing a well-established issue of student recruitment and retention. The dropout rate for engineering students is around 40% as shown in various studies of a national scope. This retention issue is particularly prevalent for freshman students, such as in general chemistry. Indicators suggest that lower-division engineering curriculum is not based upon the authentic practice of engineers, thus, not representative of the profession and not attractive to the widest possible population of students. To address this issue, the University of Florida is conducting a project to transform the freshman chemistry curriculum for engineering students to a more contextually relevant and engaging experience with rich context of workplace engineering (Transforming Chemistry with Cognitive Apprenticeship for Engineers - ChANgE Chem). This transformed curriculum situates energy and environmental as fundamental organi...