Study Calls for Improvements in Engineering Education
Science-centric curricula shouldn't detract from professional concerns
Charles J. Murray, Senior Technical Editor -- Design News, February 12, 2009
A new multi-year study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching takes engineering schools to task, saying they need to be more sympathetic to the concerns of the profession.
The book-length study, Educating Engineers: Designing for the Future of the Field, calls on engineering colleges to more effectively link theory with professional practice, enabling students to move from being passive viewers to creators within the field.
"There are many ways one could think about reducing the barriers between the academic engineer and the practicing engineer," says Sheri D. Sheppard, one of the four authors of the study and a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University. "We're advocating starting from a clean sheet and re-building the engineering curriculum."
The authors of the study propose a new model for engineering education that includes four basic building blocks: providing a professional spine; teaching key concepts for use and connection; integrating knowledge with practice and encouraging engineering students to draw connections to the greater world.
The study suggests that since the 1950s engineering curricula have been heavily influenced by certain academic traditions, particularly a move toward "science-centric engineering." And while the authors don't object to heavy doses of science, they say they don't want it to be done at the expense of professional considerations.
"We propose having a different framework in deciding what an engineering curriculum is," Sheppard says. "The central framework should really revolve around the core ideas of what it is to be a professional. And if you hold those tenets central, it makes it easier to decide what should be in and out."
Sheppard says engineering professors in general have not been unsympathetic to the needs of the profession, but says some walls between the two need to be broken down. "Maybe they are sympathetic but not empathetic," she says. "There's a certain tension when you've got faculty who have not rubbed elbows with, or been in the shoes of, practicing engineers. And there is a difference between how engineering is practiced at the academy, and how it is practiced by a design engineer at GM."
The authors believe students would benefit if schools would encourage professors to take sabbaticals in industry, or work in industry between earning M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, or to work in the profession after they've earned their Ph.D. degrees.
All such efforts would benefit the profession of engineering, Shepard says. Moreover, the study's authors believe by starting from scratch in the creation of a modern engineering curriculum, schools could integrate more of those professional concerns into courses, beginning at the freshman level and proceeding up through graduation and beyond.
"Learning to be a professional is a gradual process," Sheppard says. "It doesn't just happen your senior year when you take your capstone design course."
A downloadable summary of Educating Engineers is available on the Internet. The book can be purchased from Jossey Bass publishing.
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Take a sabbatical to gain experience? Your kidding right. Let's be frank. No professor is going to gain and understanding of the professional dynamics of being an engineer with a year or two in the ranks. There is an massive gulf in technology business today. The gulf is not technical prowess. The gulf is Leadership in management. Most managers in technical business or dare I say any business may have been outstanding at the staff level but have not a clue how to lead the bigger picture or even a end2end project in the area for which they excel. This, not cost, has driven these same people to outsourcing one of our greatest strengths, know-how. Fixing this means a broader base of professional skill out of school. If we don't fix it and think we can maintain dominance in the United States as big thinkers and project managers we are delusional.
Academia needs to get people who have been in the industry (15+ years) to develop and instruct on the professional dynamics of the engineering profession. The type of skills I mean are, negotiation and mediation, end2end development practices, root cause analysis, project management, written and verbal communication, and much more. These are NOT easy to learn and take years of practice. As such they should be mandatory skill training throughout higher education. The schools that do this well will gain significant competitive advantage.
I am a 20 year professional well versed in this area and very interested in a Professor of Practice role for any school genuinely serious about the topic. I can be reached at DPGUITARMAN@GMAIL.COM.
Regards,
Dan Pagano
dan pagano - 2009-27-2 15:01:03 EST -
As a recent graduate now working in industry I completely agree. In my role at the company I still interact with students and professors quite a bit, so it is interesting to me to see the gap between the way students look at problems and the way professionals do. This definitely needs to change, and I think it would help prevent so many students from switching out of engineering degrees early in their college careers.
Jacob Borgeson - 2009-27-2 09:21:54 EST
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