Posts Tagged ‘ability’

Given the national importance of engineering education and the major changes taking place in higher education and society, it is no surprise that in recent years engineering education has stimulated a variety of thoughtful reports. For example, in the late 1980s ASEE published the major study, “Quality of Engineering Education,” and the ASEE Engineering Deans Council produced specific reports on the supply of engineering faculty and students.

In 1991, the National Academies’ National Research Council (NRC) created a Board on Engineering Education, which has conducted a wide-ranging study of the future of engineering education. The Board’s work has included a series of hearings throughout the country and has had a valuable influence on this project.

Those studying engineering education have proposed many ways to make engineering programs more relevant and cost-effective for all students, as well as more attractive to historically underrepresented groups. Their recommendations have created an environment for change and experimentation.

The Action Plan

The aim of this project is to evaluate recommendations of previous studies, combine them with the recommendations of the workshop conducted as part of the present study, and then develop key action items based on a series of policy statements. Because certain key changes in engineering education will be most effective if implemented with the aid of all sectors of the community, this project focuses on action items that require partnerships. Some of the action items are short-term, others longer-term; none is necessarily easy to accomplish. Over the next few years, this project will further refine the action items, assess the accomplishments of engineering colleges toward those goals, and establish a series of milestones for measuring future progress within the engineering education community.

In today’s world and in the future, engineering education programs must not only teach the fundamentals of engineering theory, experimentation and practice, but be RELEVANT, ATTRACTIVE and CONNECTED:

RELEVANT to the lives and careers of students, preparing them for a broad range of careers, as well as for lifelong learning involving both formal programs and hands-on experience;

ATTRACTIVE so that the excitement and intellectual content of engineering will attract highly talented students with a wider variety of backgrounds and career interests, particularly women, underrepresented minorities and the disabled, and will empower them to succeed; and

CONNECTED to the needs and issues of the broader community through integrated activities with other parts of the educational system, industry and government.

Engineering colleges’ ability to make their programs both relevant and attractive will depend, to a large extent, on how well they connect their programs to all community sectors, that is, on how well they build partnerships.

Focusing On Partnerships

While engineering deans are principally responsible for leading engineering education, they work in partnership with their faculties, presidents, senior university administrators, and often, with industry representatives. Such partnerships must also extend to elementary and secondary schools, the broader university, the local community, government and other engineering colleges, and build even closer ties to industry. These sectors make up the broad constituency of engineering education. Collaboration with these groups ensures the vitality and relevance of engineering programs, and enables the sharing of resources in a fiscally-constrained era. Ultimately, engineering colleges ,like their successful counterparts in industry ,must be part of a seamless system that links all of their constituents in education, industry, and the broad public community.

We live in a time of revolutionary change. Not only is the world relying increasingly on technology for economic growth and job development, but the nation is making the difficult transition of refocusing a significant amount of its technology investment from national security to international economic competitiveness. At the same time, we view technology as important in helping solve many difficult societal problems, from creating environmentally-sustainable development and improving communications, to devising more effective and cost-efficient health care systems. Communications developments alone are leading to profound redefinitions of such concepts as “community,” “library,” “corporation,” and even “university.”

Within this technological context, engineers play an ever more significant role. They develop new manufacturing processes and products; create and manage energy, transportation and communications systems; prevent new and redress old environmental problems; create pioneering health care devices; and, in general, make technology work. Through these activities, engineers create a huge potential for the private sector to develop national wealth. As noted by Richard Morrow, past chairman of the National Academy of Engineering, “the nation with the best engineering talent is in possession of the core ingredient of comparative economic and industrial advantage.”

And just as important as their specific technical skills, engineers receive valuable preparation for a host of other careers in such areas as finance, medicine, law and management. These professions require analytical, integrative and problem-solving abilities, all of which are part of an engineering education. Thus, engineering is an ideal undergraduate education for living and working in the technologically-dependent society of the twenty-first century.

Responding to Changing Needs

One of the strengths of engineering education in the United States is the broad spectrum of engineering colleges whose development has been unconstrained by a single, centrally-prescribed mission. The more than 300 colleges of engineering range from highly research-intensive institutions to those that focus largely on undergraduate education, with many variations in between. Even with the considerable differences in missions, undergraduate engineering education programs maintain universal core curriculum content and minimum standards through the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), a national partnership between academics and practicing engineers. Additionally, most engineering schools have forged close relationships with industry and benefit from annual assessments of their programs by external advisory boards that have strong industry participation.

While U.S. engineering education has served the nation well, there is broad recognition that it must change to meet new challenges. This is fully in keeping with its history of changing to be consistent with national needs. Today, engineering colleges must not only provide their graduates with intellectual development and superb technical capabilities, but following industry’s lead, those colleges must educate their students to work as part of teams, communicate well, and understand the economic, social, environmental and international context of their professional activities. These changes are vital to the nation’s industrial strength and to the ability of engineers to serve as technology and policy decision makers.

Most important, engineering education programs must attract an ethnic and social diversity of students that better reflects the diversity of the U.S. and takes full advantage of the nation’s talents. Not only does the engineering profession require a spectrum of skills and backgrounds, but it should preserve its historical role as a profession of upward mobility.

In response to these needs, engineering colleges throughout the country are experimenting with new approaches to curricula, rethinking traditional teaching modes, and developing innovative ways to recruit and retain students from underrepresented groups. The largest and potentially most revolutionary effort is led by the consortia of colleges funded by the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Education Coalitions program. These national engineering college consortia each include a variety of schools ranging from predominantly undergraduate institutions to the most research intensive. The consortia are working to redesign curricula and improve teaching methodologies, each offering a different perspective and strategy.

While it is too early to gauge the success of the coalitions, they exemplify the engineering education community’s leadership and willingness to adjust to change. We applaud and encourage these efforts, but also stress the importance of including partnerships with industry and government in reformulating engineering education.

Many students consider engineering careers because they’re good at math and science and receive encouragement to enter the field from their parents, teachers, and guidance counselors. “I think that’s a reasonable thing to do,” said Professor Gary S. May, ECE department chair at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). “It doesn’t mean that it’s the only career that’s available to you, or you’d be a perfect engineer because of that. But I think it’s a reasonable thing to tell students that engineering is an option for you because you have this aptitude.”

An aptitude for math and science is certainly a requirement for an engineering career, but is it enough? Not according to Professor Richard Vaz of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Vaz, who is associate dean of the Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division at WPI, said that the best engineers also have a passion for solving problems.

UCSB Professor Steve Long also cited “the willingness to do critical thinking” that makes good engineers. He argued that engineers are naturally curious and they want to know about something that’s not necessarily in a textbook.

Not everyone, though, has a clear reason for studying engineering. “When I ask students why they want to study engineering, very rarely can they articulate a reason,” said Vaz. “If they can, it usually doesn’t line up well with what engineers really do, which is solve problems and make the world a better place.” Some people, we learned, go into engineering because of the prospect of earning a decent living with just a bachelor’s degree. “That [belief] won’t get you very far,” added Long. He also cited “pushy parents” as another wrong reason that some young people study engineering.

While some people study engineering who might have been better at something else, many people who could make good engineers miss the opportunity because they don’t know what engineers do. “We don’t see enough of the brightest people coming into engineering because early in their educational paths, they get advice that essentially blocks their way,” said Moshe Kam, professor of ECE at Drexel University and VP of the IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB). “There is a feeling that we won’t have enough people, we won’t have the right people, and because of that, we won’t have enough innovation,” he added.

Kam based his conclusions on meetings with representatives from 53 companies that hire electrical engineers. He also found that high school guidance counselors may unconsciously steer women with the ability and prerequisites for studying engineering into other fields because, “It’s not something that women do, and that’s a myth that we need to shatter.”

Georgia Tech’s May noted that some of the issues that divert women away from engineering also apply to minorities. “We have to show that engineers are normal people with normal lives with the same sorts of concerns as everyone,” he said. “This also affects our ability to recruit minority students. I say that from experience.”

What is engineering? What is an engineer?? Although it is a very old activity or trade, engineering is a relatively young academic discipline or profession. Only in recent years has it reached a stage of maturity where some of its defining details and differentiating characteristics can be articulated. Engineering is the endeavor that creates, maintains, develops, and applies technology for societies’ needs and desires. Its origins go back to the very beginning of human civilization where tools were first created and developed. Indeed, a good case can be made for the defining of humans as those animals that create, develop, and understand the significance of technology.

Over time, the part of technology that acts as an extension of human capabilities became the purview of engineering. One can view bicycles, cars, and trains as extensions of walking and running. Airplanes are an extension and application of a bird’s ability to fly transferred to humans. The telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and the internet are extensions of talking, hearing, and seeing. The microscope, telescope, and medical x-ray are also extensions of human sight and vision. Writing, books, libraries and computer data-bases are extensions of human memory and the computer itself is an extension of the human’s brain in doing arithmetic and carrying out logical arguments and procedures. Indeed, looking around your environment in almost any setting, will illustrate just how pervasive technology is. In almost any home or office, there is very little that is truly “natural”; i.e., little that is not created or manipulated by technology. The food that you eat, the utensils that you eat with, the table that you eat off of, the house that you are in, the clothes that you wear, the book that you read, the television that you watch, the telephone that you communicate with, the car that you travel in — these are all technologies created by human cleverness to satisfy human needs. This process of creation is engineering and those who do the creating are practicing engineering, whether they call themselves engineers or not.

Not only is much of the inanimate world created by engineering, part of the living world is also. Almost all crops and agriculturally produced food stuff are “engineered” through selective breeding. The same is true of domestic animals such as pets and animals raised for food or sport. Certainly the dogs, cats, and cattle have not “naturally” evolved to their current state. They have been “created” or “designed” to satisfy human desires or needs. The slow and less exact methods of controlled breeding are being replaced by genetic engineering, tissue engineering, and applications of nanotechnology. We humans have the cleverness to do that. It is the development of the tools, theories, and methods and the understanding of the appropriate sciences and mathematics for that process that is engineering. It is a central part of the history of humanity.

Not only has engineering made our lives easier and longer, it has sometimes made them more terrible and shorter through improving our ability to kill and harm when we wage war. Indeed, military and defense needs have been a historic driver of technological advancement. One of the earliest categorizations of engineering was into military and civilian (or civil) engineering.

Because technology enables and causes change, it and its creators, the engineers, are viewed with mixed feelings. This is especially true in modern (perhaps post-modern) times when the negative side effects (“unintended consequences”) of technology must be addressed.

This note is an attempt to address the question of what engineering is and then that of what an engineer is. It is intended for the general public to better understand just what this thing that has such a profound effect on our individual and collective lives is. The note is intended for the student who is considering becoming an engineer and, therefore, it is for parents and high school and college counselors as well. It is for the university engineering student and professor and for the university administrator. It is for the state and federal governments who fund engineering education and research and the investor who invests in technology. It is for the husband, wife, parent, or child who wants to better understand their spouse, child, or parent. It is for everyone who accepts the argument that a human is a technological animal and that technology has a pervasive effect on our lives.

An important part of this note is the list of references. This collection of short essays is intended to open many topics and ideas, not develop them. A rather long list of references is given to allow the reader to pursue any of the many ideas further.

When deciding on a particular degree course, many students are unaware of the vast opportunities that lie in the broad area of engineering. This problem arises since most people are unable to define exactly what type of work an engineer performs.

The engineering profession is not well understood by the general public, even in the United Kingdom, who tend to associate an engineer with somebody who services their car or mends their washing machine! However, this type of work is rarely performed by graduate engineers. A professional engineer lives in a high-tech, fast moving world where the competition is fierce and the stakes are high.

With a degree in engineering, you are far more likely to be involved in the research, design and development of new products and services. Engineers have designed and created most of the world in which we now live. The subject is fairly creative and aims to solve everyday problems in a cost effective and practical manner. While many see engineering as a very technical subject, in reality many engineers will develop considerable management experience and the ability to communicate well and motivate individuals is an important skill.

The financial realities of studying for a degree cannot be ignored. Engineering is one of the few University subjects where companies are actively looking to sponsor students throughout their degree programme. If sponsored, the company will normally give you money during the university terms, and this can help to make life a bit easier!. Most companies will also offer paid work experience during the long summer holidays, and this is a very useful way of experiencing the type of work opportunities engineering has to offer. Sponsorship also offers the chance of a job offer after you graduate.

Job prospects for graduates with a degree in electrical and electronic engineering have never been so exciting. The huge growth in areas such as telecommunications has resulted in a large demand for suitably qualified students. In the past, many students have not realised how many opportunities lie in engineering, and this had led to companies finding it extremely difficult to attract people with the skills and experience they require. In general, engineering offers very rewarding work, as well as the potential for personal development, world-wide travel and good pay.

An Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree opens the door on many possible careers. Whether you want to be a manager or a technical expert, a sales person or a computer programmer, most electronics companies will need and value your skills. If at the end of your degree you decide that your future does not lie in engineering, then your degree can still be used to apply for a wide range of alternative employment opportunities.

In conclusion, a good degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from a university with strong research in growth areas such as telecommunications, as well as strong links to the industry, is an excellent and flexible foundation for future success.