Page 97 - 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

80 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

FIGURE 5 Focus: HOPE candidates working in the Center for Advanced Technologies.

opportunity to support a new approach to manufacturing education in
which real-world manufacturing applications would drive learning,
rather than the more traditional academic approach of theory looking
for an application. A key tenet of the Greenfield Coalition’s proposal to
the National Science Foundation was the integration of production ex-
periences with the work activities of the candidates at the Focus: HOPE
Center for Advanced Technologies (see Figure 5).
The framers of the Greenfield Coalition proposal envisaged an edu-
cational experience in which candidates would work and study in the
same facility. They would experience the functional operations involved
in production, and they would be exposed to flexible manufacturing
system architectures, manufacturing systems design, and process and
quality control. Candidates would rotate through positions in produc-
tion and manufacturing engineering and learn through their experi-
ences. At the same time, they would be guided by a combination of
mentors/teachers, including functional supervisors in the Center for
Advanced Technologies, vendor trainers, faculty from coalition univer-
sities, and industry experts. Learning would be modular and would pro-
vide fundamental skills and understanding to support a progression of
work experiences. Thus, the work environment and the learning experi-
ence would be mutually supportive. The ultimate goal would be to pro-

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