Page 131 - 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

Patterns in the History of Engineering
Education Reform: A Brief Essay

Bruce E. Seely
Michigan Technological University

Engineering education has been the subject of more studies and
reviews, formal and informal, than any other domain of professional
education. Indeed, one might argue that engineering education has un-
dergone continuous reform since college classrooms challenged appren-
ticeships and hands-on training in the last third of the nineteenth cen-
tury. In the pages of the Journal of Engineering Education, which was
launched by the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education in
1893, one can track the ongoing debates about the nature and shape of
engineering education. In addition, regular reports were issued on the
state of the field at intervals of 10 to 15 years beginning with the Mann
Report of 1918, which initiated the self-study process (ASEE, 1968;
Grinter, 1956; Hammond, 1940; Jackson, 1939b; Mann, 1918; MIT
Center for Policy Alternatives, 1975; NRC, 1986, 1989; SPEE, 1930,
1934).
The present meeting sponsored by the National Academy of Engi-
neering is the most recent addition to the process. This history suggests
that there is more self-awareness in the engineering community than in
most other professional communities about the educational enterprise
that prepares new members to enter the profession. The continuous
conversations among engineering faculty members, professional and
practicing engineers (especially in leading societies, such as the Ameri-
can Society of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the

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