Page 167 - 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

150 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

with local organizations and international allies; and by making institu-
tions more attractive to students and faculty from diverse backgrounds.
The engineering profession will be more likely to capture the imagi-
nations of young people, thus moving engineering to the forefront as
educational institutions rethink and redesign undergraduate education.
Engineering graduates will be among the most creative, energetic, and
dynamic young professionals in the world.

CONCLUSION

In this brief summary, I have outlined where I think engineering
education should be going and some of the steps we must take to move
from a curriculum focused on courses to a curriculum focused on col-
laborative, interdisciplinary projects. Individual institutions can do a
lot; multi-institutional alliances can do much more. Catalyzing the re-
sults of experiments in the pragmatics of educational transformation
would be very useful. For the health of the system as a whole, we should
maintain institutional diversity in “flavors” and approaches.
The University of Washington has taken some steps in the direction
I have described. Through an initiative I led called UW Worldwide, the
university is bringing together faculty and students not just in engineer-
ing, but also from a wide variety of other colleges and schools, to work
with partner universities around the world on multinational, project-
based education. Our flagship project is a joint, four-year, research-based
undergraduate curriculum with Sichuan University focusing on chal-
lenges to the environment in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and southwest
China. This program combines research in water quality and wastewa-
ter treatment, eco-materials, forest ecology, and biodiversity with exten-
sive language and cultural studies and a reciprocal year-long exchange.
This is just a beginning, though. Our hope is that this initiative will be
a model for networks of projects and institutions working together to
transform the curriculum to focus on participation in large-scale, team-
based research challenges.

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