Page 119 - Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century

Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11338.html

102 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

the fundamentals of business and entrepreneurship, a strong interna-
tional component, a vigorous co-curricular component which makes
good use of strengths in humanities and social sciences at nearby col-
leges, and an emphasis on student service to society and a lifestyle of
philanthropy.
The project will be addressed in four sequential stages. For brev-
ity, these stages will be referred to as (1) discovery, (2) invention, (3)
development, and (4) test. The general nature of the activities in-
tended to occur during each phase is as follows. During the discovery
phase, research into “best practices” at other institutions will take
place. Deliberate efforts will be made to visit other campuses, host
visitors from other campuses, obtain advice from knowledgeable con-
sultants, and obtain broad knowledge of the various successful ap-
proaches in use today. During the invention phase, knowledge of
best practices will be applied in a creative way to the problem of
inventing an overall vision of the four-year educational experience.
This will begin with a fundamental evaluation of educational goals
and objectives and end with a comprehensive concept for obtaining
balance in the overall curriculum. During the development phase,
further refinement of the newly invented curriculum will take place
in which the needed detail for the freshman year experience will be
developed. This will result in a set of specific courses or educational
experiences for teaching the freshmen in Fall 2002, as well as text-
books, laboratory experiments, reading materials, etc. Finally, during
the test phase, the specific educational materials will be tested with
the help of a small group of student “partners” who will be recruited
specifically for this purpose and will help with INVENTION 2000
as part of a unique one-year experience at Olin College. Each of these
stages will take from four to eight months, with the first (discovery)
beginning in Fall 2000 and the last (test) ending in Summer 2002.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE CURRICULUM
The Invention 2000 plan for curriculum development was initially
executed primarily by faculty teams assigned to various activities. Fac-
ulty groups of two or three visited 31 colleges and universities and stud-
ied and reported on curricula at a wide range of institutions. They also
visited (or hosted) more than 23 corporations and government agencies
to explore corporate learning models and assess corporate values and

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