Page 141 - 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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124 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

For example, the environmentalism of Earth Day has become institu-
tionalized in departments of civil and environmental engineering. In-
deed, sustainability has become a buzzword among engineering faculty
members.
In addition, engineering colleges attempted to recruit more diverse
student bodies—especially more women and minority students. The
Society for Women Engineers (SWE) had been organized in the late
1940s, just about the time that Cornell’s Dean of Engineering Solomon
Cady Hollister had commented that women who venture into engi-
neering “must either think and act like men, or they must surrender a
considerable amount of their feminine characteristics in the normal pur-
suance of the professional work” (Alden, 1974; Cornell Engineer, 1952;
Durchholz, 1977; Hacker, 1983; Oldenziel, 1997; Sproule, 1976). By
the 1960s, however, SWE slowly grew into a national organization in
the wake of the civil rights and feminist movements. The National Ac-
tion Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) was organized in
1974 (Browne, 1980; Engineering News-Record, 1965; Fisher, 1971; Gib-
bons, 1971; Hartford, 1978; IEEE Spectrum, 1975; NACME, 2005).
Although some efforts were made to prepare and recruit racial mi-
norities for engineering careers, neither women nor other minority stu-
dents are well represented in engineering today. By the late 1990s, how-
ever, everyone involved in engineering education—educators and
colleges, corporate supporters, and governmental research sponsors—
seemed genuinely committed to ensuring that engineering no longer be
the most-white, most-male profession.
Diversity is the most obvious way social factors continue to influ-
ence efforts to reform engineering education. Such changes are not easy,
however. The internal historical logic of engineering seems deeply rooted
in a male-oriented past that celebrated virtues such as toughness and
strength shown by taming nature for the benefit of society. Such identi-
ties die hard.
Although it is now exceedingly rare for women students to encoun-
ter faculty members who believe that women should not try to become
engineers, Rosalind Williams, a historian of technology and former dean
of students at MIT, recently reported that student design teams on her
campus position men and women differently. The emerging division of
labor suggests that women undertake the “soft” tasks of team building,
communication, and contextual preparation and that men do the “real”

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