Page 140 - 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

HISTORY OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION REFORM 123

the humanistic stem. For example, during the 1920s, the wave of tech-
nical changes symbolized by Henry Ford’s assembly line prompted a
significant social interest in efficiency, as well as social acceptance of big
business. Engineering schools therefore placed slightly less emphasis on
cultural improvement for gentlemen and slightly more emphasis on pre-
paring students for a business environment with accounting and man-
agement courses. The economic catastrophe of the Great Depression
and talk of technological unemployment, however, undermined some
of the enthusiasm for technology and big corporations. As a defensive
measure of sorts, engineering curricula placed additional emphasis on
economics and other courses that might help explain the Depression
(Carey, 1940; Lescohier, 1933; Topping, 1934).
In 1936, at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, for ex-
ample, new president Robert E. Doherty responded to the challenges of
the Great Depression with the Carnegie Plan, a revamped curriculum
that strengthened humanities and social science content. Doherty prom-
ised that Carnegie Tech graduates would gain “a clear historical under-
standing of the parallel growth of science and engineering, on the one
hand, and social customs, relations, and institutions, on the other, and
of how these have reacted on each other.” This social-relations program
included a required first-year course entitled “Origins and Develop-
ment of the Technological Age,” which examined the historical devel-
opment of Western and American civilization, including the role of tech-
nology (Boarts and Hodges, 1946; Doherty, 1950a,b).
The logic behind the Carnegie Plan was that students needed to
understand and defend the continued development of new technology.
But by the late 1930s and continuing into the early 1950s, new prob-
lems led to new emphases. World War II and the Cold War encouraged
engineering schools to direct students’ attention to the nature of gov-
ernment, above all to the differences between democracy and totalitari-
anism. To inoculate engineering students against the siren song of com-
munism, the humanist stem was significantly strengthened (Green,
1945; Rhys, 1946; Smith, 1945; Wickenden, 1945).
The social activism of the 1960s was felt in engineering schools in
several ways. Many engineering schools remained uniquely calm, even
hostile, to student antiwar activism; at Michigan Tech, for example,
Dow recruiters were received with open arms! But engineering cur-
ricula and outlooks did not escape the tumult of the 1960s, although
the consequences became visible only over the next two decades.

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