Page 176 - 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

THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMICS 159

college. The challenge, I repeat, is not just to put the human in the
engineer, but also to put the engineer in all humans. In this respect,
engineering departments have failed miserably. They have not implanted
the mind-set of the engineer in liberal arts students. Why is there a one-
way street—we have to take their classes, and they make fun of us? We
must reciprocate. Call it the revenge of the nerds.
In Bruce Seely’s excellent review of engineering education reform,
he closed with a passage from William Wickenden, a 1920s president of
Case Institute of Technology. Wickenden wrote, “What appears to be
the most needed is an enriched conception of engineering and its place
in the social economy, a broader grounding in its principles and meth-
ods, and a more general postponement of specialized training to gradu-
ate schools”—and I paraphrase here—to entry-level jobs. Like Seely, I
recommend this pithy summary, which seems to address some of the
issues I have just raised.
As a closing note from the perspective of industry, let me say that in
business we learn that whatever gets measured gets managed; the ob-
verse is mostly true, too. My favorable impression of the work of the
task force as represented in the Engineer of 2020 report was under-
mined by the paucity of specific, numerical goals. I urge you to quantify
objectives, to set targets and milestones, and to develop a system of
accountability and reward around achieving them. You must also be
very careful to set goals for the right outcomes, because you might just
get them in ways that make no sense. In fact, I wouldn’t be above sug-
gesting soliciting award funding from industry.
A related point is that engineering departments should not eschew
industry relations but should embrace those connections, unabashedly
and much more broadly and formally than they do today. Do not be
concerned that you will be co-opted by mere commercial priorities,
because they can never overcome the instinct for learning and discovery
that is so strong in the engineering community. Look at funds as impor-
tant market signals of how to allocate resources to problems that prom-
ise the biggest and most immediate “bang for the buck.” I’d even like to
get monetary incentives into faculty pay, but that is a topic for another
day.
I know I’ve thrown out some tough challenges for you as tenured
academics, but you owe it to yourselves and the future of engineering to
rise to them. I earnestly thank you for hearing out this has-been engi-
neer. And I close by imploring you to be generous when you grade my
presentation. Thanks, again.

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