Educating the Engineer of 2020 Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century (2005) / Chapter Skim
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3 Getting to 2020: Guiding Strategies
3 Getting to 2020: Guiding Strategies
Pages 17-32
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From page 17... ...
This will require that action be taken by key stakeholders, particularly engineering faculty and the engineering professional societies. ENGAGE IN A COMPREHENSIVE EFFORT Too many efforts at reform attempt to look at single elements of complex interconnected systems.
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From page 18... ...
18 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020 · engagement of the engineer and professionals from different disciplines in team-based problem-solving processes; · the tools used by the engineer and other technical professionals; · interaction of the engineer with the customer and engineering managers to set agreed-upon goals; and · the economic, political, ethical, and social constraints as bound ary conditions that define the possible range of solutions for engineering problems and demand the interaction of engineers with the public. Similarly, one must consider the several elements of the engineering education system, to include: · the teaching, learning, and assessment processes that move a student from one state of knowledge and professional prepara tion to another state; · students and teachers/faculty as the primary actors within the learning process; · curricula, laboratories, instructional technologies, and other tools for teaching and learning; · the goals and objectives of teachers/faculty, departments, colleges, accreditors, employers, and other stakeholders of en gineering education; · the external environment that shapes the overall demand for engineering education (e.g., the business cycle and technologi cal progress)
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From page 19... ...
. The desired outcomes should include an enhanced educational experience for engineering students, opportunities to pursue engineering as a liberal education, and, in the systems context, program changes and/or efforts by engineering educators that engage and support K-12 faculty, enhance public understanding of engineering, foster technological literacy of the public, and elevate the stature of the profession.
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From page 20... ...
of the engineering profession and individual engineers. In thinking about changes in engineering education, one should think about optimization in a systems sense, to include, for example, how the changes can enhance the stature of the profession.
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Industry representatives point to this disconnect as the reason that engineering students are not adequately prepared, in their view, to enter today's workforce. It is noteworthy that, for over a century, engineering has adhered to the notion that four years of education is all that is needed to become an engineer.
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From page 22... ...
It is unreasonable to expect that corporations will require more than a four-year engineering degree for entry-level employment, and thus it is unreasonable to expect that engineering schools will only graduate five-year (or more) degree students.
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From page 23... ...
To effect such changes, one must engage engineering faculty leaders, including deans, department chairs, and individual faculty in consideration of how to reward attention to and excellence in such activities. The other major players in the engineering education system are, of course, the students, who are the "consumers" seeking preparation to enter the profession and, in some sense, are the "products" of the educational system.
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From page 24... ...
In addition to engaging these "direct" levers for change, the impact of the Engineer of 2020 initiative will also depend on how well it engages the perspectives, imagination, and energies of the broader spectrum of persons who can help in designing, implementing, and assessing systemic change to create an American engineering enterprise in 2020 that will truly serve the interests of society. These include young people who are the rising engineering leaders; those responsible for career development in industry and government; practitioners from multiple disciplines and fields of inquiry beyond engineering; experts in learning theory and colleagues from the learning sciences; those with professional expertise in fields of ethics, communication, and leadership theory; iconoclasts within and beyond engineering, skeptical about the potential of technologies; and those pioneers already mounting programs to change the profession, the practice of engineering, and the environment in which students discover the essence of engineering and are motivated to become engineers.
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and nascent efforts exist in the engineering community (see, e.g., description of a seminar sponsored by the University of Western Australia Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics3 and Auyang [2004]
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From page 26... ...
Engineering educators should be guided by these findings in order to design and conduct educational research to address critical issues related to broadening participation, improving retention of majors, creating courses for non-majors, and designing an alternative engineering degree for those students interested in careers and public service opportunities outside traditional engineering employment. By focusing on research on learning, we will be able to understand: · how to serve students with different learning styles; · why specific approaches and pedagogies work, for example, how research as undergraduates serves learning goals such as per sonal development, knowledge synthesis, development of skills such as data collection and interpretation, design and hypoth esizing, information literacy/computer literacy, and teamwork; · how to help students clarify, refine, and confirm their career goals and enhance their preparation for career/graduate school, if appropriate; · how to help them become responsible lifelong learners; · how information technology can support student learning; and
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From page 27... ...
Communications at both levels must be enhanced as a key element in promoting systemic change of engineering education. Surveys of precollege students have consistently shown great interest in meaningful career fields tied to "helping others" (Taylor Research & Consulting Group, 2004)
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From page 28... ...
The value of a broad engineering education, to include, for example, business and communications expertise, for those who aspire to management can be deduced from the NSF data in Figure 3-2, which show that, "among master's-level engineering graduates in the private for-profit sector (where most engineering graduates work) , those who have combined their engineering degree(s)
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From page 29... ...
Engineering education options open to students are thus expanding, and communicating the nature of those options is essential to attracting the most talented students.
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From page 30... ...
Presented at the 2003 American Educational Research Association convention. Available online at http://www.cedanet.com/meta/Beyond% 20Scholarship.pdf.
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From page 31... ...
Pp. 49-58 in Proceedings of the Third National Education Congress, Civil Engineering Education Issues, D
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