Page 135 - Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century

Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
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118 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

(ABET, 2005; Covert, 1992; Curry, 1991; Dixon, 1991; Kerr and Pipes,
1987; Masi, 1995).
The proper balance between science, engineering science, and de-
sign is only one of the issues engineers and engineering educators have
debated at length over the last 125 years. Other issues focused on the
content of engineering curricula, such as how long an engineering edu-
cation ought to last. Early on, the basic question of how long an engi-
neer needed to go to school had attracted significant attention. The
outcome was largely settled by adopting the pattern of four years of
schooling that had become firmly entrenched at most American col-
leges. The weak preparation of many incoming students, however, forced
some variations from the norm. For example, Cornell, the leading
American engineering school by the 1880s, was determined to maintain
high standards. To that end, Cornell established a preparatory academy
for students who lacked solid backgrounds in math or science.
The pressures posed by new technologies also kept the length-of-
study issue alive. After 1900, the problem became fitting the required
material for all of the new fields and topics into existing curricula. The
division of engineering into a large number of fields with specialized
subdisciplines was one way to keep up with rapid technological change.
New areas of study included industrial engineering, and subfields
emerged in automotive, aeronautical, highway, radio, and municipal
engineering and so forth.
Even these adjustments, however, did not eliminate the sense that a
well-rounded, well-educated engineer had to know more and more. The
slow acceptance of engineering science was one factor in the growing
logjam, because fundamentals were given less emphasis than detailed
knowledge of the undergraduate’s specialty field. As new technologies
burst onto the scene, each requiring new courses, engineering faculties
almost continuously debated what to leave in and what to remove from
the curriculum (Baker, 1900; Landreth, 1906).
Another potential solution was to add a year of course work. This
idea was regularly discussed after 1900 as faculty members attempted to
keep their particular courses in the educational program (Derleth, 1909;
Fletcher, 1909; Humphries, 1913; Magruder, 1909; Marburg, 1902;
Marvin, 1901; Swain, 1913; Turneaure, 1909).
After World War II, however, pressures on the curriculum reached a
new level of intensity. The emergence of new military technologies, such
as radar and atomic bombs, had resulted in kudos for physicists, leading

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