Page 32 - 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 PAST AS PROLOGUE 15

and of developing scenarios of the possible contexts in which
the engineer of 2020 will pursue his or her profession;
• a vision that an engineering degree has the potential to become
a liberal arts degree for the twenty-first century;
• a realization that the present advocates are perhaps the first gen-
eration of reformers to take seriously the opportunity for fash-
ioning a wider portal for engineering, viewing engineering edu-
cation as concerned with more than the graduation of
practicing engineers;
• an undercurrent of awareness that current complexities are so
daunting that tinkering at the edges—reforming one course,
one program, one department at a time, developing isolated
instances of success here and there—is no longer a viable re-
sponse if we are to build the kind of robust programs in re-
search and education now needed to strengthen the U.S. engi-
neering community by 2020; and
• a recognition that today’s concerns extend beyond undergradu-
ate engineering per se, to the interplay of the engineering pro-
fession, the practice of engineering, and engineering education
as a system.

It is our belief that many, if not all, of these factors are presently in
play, which yields a sense of optimism that meaningful reengineering of
engineering education can occur in the near future to allow effective
preparation of engineering graduates who will be in the most produc-
tive phase of their careers in 2020.

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