Page 142 - 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 125

work of design and innovation (Williams, 2004). Reform, in other
words, does not come easy.

REINVENTING THE WHEEL?

Given the difficulty of reform, I use the phrase “reinventing the
wheel” to characterize the history of engineering education. I do not
mean to say that history repeats itself. Social and political contexts
change, and the specific circumstances in which engineering schools,
faculties, and students find themselves have changed with new tech-
nologies and social developments that pose new challenges. Few engi-
neering deans before 1950 worried much about the relationship be-
tween undergraduate and graduate education—or about balancing
teaching and research. Fund-raising in its many all-consuming forms
looks very different now than it did 25 years ago. And even 10 years
ago, few engineering school administrators worried about the
outsourcing of U.S. engineering jobs to Asia.
Despite these changes, however, many of the challenges facing en-
gineering educators have remained remarkably consistent over time. The
questions of what to include in tight curricula, how long engineering
education should last, how much specialization there should be at the
undergraduate level, how to prepare students for careers that include
both technical and managerial tracks, and how to meet the needs and
expectations of society all seem timeless.
As a new round of inquiry and discussions begins, it may be useful
to remember that engineering educators have walked this path before
and that some of their ideas and solutions might be of value to us. Let
me close with a voice from the past—William Wickenden, who headed
the 1920s survey of engineering education and later became president
of Case Institute of Technology. In 1927, as he was completing that
massive study of engineering education in the United States, he wrote,
“Closer association between teaching, research, and the working out of
original engineering problems would be a potent tonic. What appears
to be most needed is an enriched conception of engineering and its
place in the social economy, a broader grounding in its principles and
methods, and a more general postponement of specialized training to
the graduate schools and to the stage of introductory experience which
marks the transition to active life” (Wickenden, 1927). Perhaps this
prescription still has some efficacy today.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.