Page 182 - 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

EDUCATING ENGINEERS FOR 2020 AND BEYOND 165

Another pivotal moment in MIT’s history occurred half a century
ago when a faculty commission (headed by Warren K. Lewis) consider-
ing the nature of our educational programs told us that to be a great
engineering school in the future we would have to develop strong pro-
grams in the humanities and social sciences. Perhaps that set us on a
path to the evolving twenty-first-century view of engineering systems,
which surely are not based solely on physics and chemistry. Indisput-
ably, engineers of today and tomorrow must conceive and direct projects
of enormous complexity that require a new, highly integrative view of
engineering systems.
Academics led the way in engineering science, but I don’t think we
have led the way in what we now call “systems engineering.” In fact, as
we observe developments in industry, government, and society, we are
asking ourselves what in the world we should teach our students. Al-
though this is a valuable exercise, it is not enough. We need to establish
a proper intellectual framework within which to study, understand, and
develop large, complex engineered systems. As Bill Wulf [president of
the National Academy of Engineering] has eloquently warned us, we
work every day with systems whose complexity is so great that we can-
not possibly know all of their possible end states. Under those circum-
stances, how can we ensure that they are safe, reliable, and resilient? In
other words, how can we practice engineering?
Something exciting is happening, however, and it comes none too
soon. The worlds of biology and neuroscience are suddenly rediscover-
ing the full glory and immense complexity of even the simplest living
systems. Engineers and computer scientists are suddenly as indispens-
able to research in the life sciences as the most brilliant reductionist
biologists. The language is about circuits, networks, and pathways.
It is fascinating to participate in discussions of the role of science
and biology—of research and development—in homeland security, or
more generally in antiterrorism. I think of this as the “Mother of All
Systems Problems.” Designing systematic strategies to protect against
terrorism has about as much in common with our experience of pro-
tecting ourselves from the Soviet threat of just a few years ago as it does
with strategizing against eighteenth-century British troops marching
toward us in orderly file.
Consider what IBM’s vice president for research, Paul Horn, is
thinking about these days. His company and his industry, which pro-
duce the ultimate fruit of the engineering science revolution (i.e., com-

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