The "VECTOR:Engineering a Trajectory of Success" project addresses a critical challenge in engineering education by developing open-source interactive visualizations for Statics, Dynamics, and Mechanics of Materials courses, where students often struggle to connect mathematical principles with spatial concepts. Our consortium of Colorado institutions (CSU-FC, CSU-Pueblo and CSM) is creating multi-dimensional, animated, and interactive computational models that bridge engineering theory with diverse real-world applications, while also producing 2D resources to teach students how to visualize in 3D and communicate in 2D. With guidance from an advisory board of industry partners and educational institutions, we're designing these open educational resources to be inclusive, promote student success across simple to complex concepts, and strengthen the culture of open resources in engineering education. This collaboration aims to fill significant gaps in available engineering materials and support a broader range of learners, including neurodivergent students who face additional challenges with spatial visualization. The project is part of the OpenTextbook federal grant program from the Department of Education and funding is over $2M over three years. In the first phase of the project, we brought together faculty who teach these courses in the region to identify the most important things to be addressed in the project and will be employing students to help with development. We will share out plans and roadmap for the project and show examples of visualizations.
