Against the backdrop of emerging engineering education, deeply integrating value shaping, competence cultivation, and knowledge transfer has become central to the teaching reform of foundational professional courses. In response to the limited guidance of engineering perspectives and the often-forced incorporation of ideological-political education in the Soil Mechanics course at a 211 university in western China, this paper proposes a curriculum reform approach that centers on cultivating an “engineering philosophy” mindset. Guided by the principle of “fostering virtue through education,” the reform establishes an engineering value system denoted as “1~0…”, with “engineering systems thinking and innovation capability” as the core (“1”), extending to multiple dimensions (“0”) such as engineering safety and ethics, sustainable development, ecological civilization, humanistic concern, and social responsibility. By deeply integrating ideological-political elements, introducing innovative teaching methods like “comparative cases + engineering problem chains,” implementing a four-dimensional immersive pedagogy spanning “technology, ethics, culture, and strategy,” and adopting a diversified process-based assessment mechanism, this reform achieves an organic blend of professional training and ideological-political education. Teaching practice shows that the reform effectively enhances students’ engineering literacy, critical thinking, sense of national identity, and professional responsibility. The study offers a referential framework for implementing ideological-political education in foundational engineering courses within the context of emerging engineering disciplines.