Page 19 - 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

2 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

the marketplace and in the social and economic infrastructure. Many of
the most hi-tech companies have been spun off from university research.
The end of the Cold War and the shift from defense work has put
pressure on university research to accept funding from industry for
shorter term product- or process-oriented research. Meanwhile, indus-
try has decreased its own in-house fundamental engineering research,
making it even more important that universities conduct advanced ba-
sic research. Thus, this is a part of the engineering education infrastruc-
ture that must be preserved, but, at the same time, it must not lead to
the neglect of the undergraduate engineering education experience. In-
deed, if domestic engineering students are energized by their under-
graduate education experience, it will enhance the possibility that they
will be retained and graduate as engineers and aspire to advanced de-
grees through the academic engineering research enterprise.
In response to the issues facing undergraduate engineering educa-
tion, the committee presents a suite of recommendations in this report,
including the following:

• The B.S. degree should be considered as a preengineering or
“engineer in training” degree.
• Engineering programs should be accredited at both the B.S.
and M.S. levels, so that the M.S. degree can be recognized as
the engineering “professional” degree.
• Institutions should take advantage of the flexibility inherent in
the EC2000 accreditation criteria of ABET, Incorporated (pre-
viously known as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and
Technology) in developing curricula, and students should be
introduced to the “essence” of engineering early in their under-
graduate careers.
• Colleges and universities should endorse research in engineer-
ing education as a valued and rewarded activity for engineering
faculty and should develop new standards for faculty
qualifications.
• In addition to producing engineers who have been taught the
advances in core knowledge and are capable of defining and
solving problems in the short term, institutions must teach stu-
dents how to be lifelong learners.
• Engineering educators should introduce interdisciplinary learn-

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