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Engineering colleges must be more effective and visible partners within the broader university community. This partnership should be enhanced for non-classroom activities as well as for formal research and education. Engineering colleges, their faculty and students have much to offer the broader campus community. For example, engineers can provide the real-world context to show non-engineering students the applications of the mathematical and scientific concepts they are learning. Engineering educators and their colleagues in science can also provide leadership in helping their campuses initiate computer networking and make effective use of the information super highway. Industry can help foster this cross-campus interaction by bringing multifaceted problems to the university that require the talents of several disciplines to solve. Industry representatives who sit on university advisory boards should also stress this approach in their recommendations to the institution.

Conversely, engineering education programs have much to gain from other disciplines. New insights can be provided, for example, by chemistry in developing environmentally friendly technologies, by political science in teaching the value of issues advocacy, by art in designing new consumer products, by business in aiding the understanding of international trade issues, and by law in treating intellectual property rights. Both engineering students and faculty would benefit from such interdisciplinary collaboration.

Engineers working with other colleagues across the university can also promote technological literacy for all students. Engineering colleges should accept responsibility for providing technical literacy programs to liberal arts students. Activities can include developing and teaching courses that provide laboratory or design experience for non-engineers, examine the history of science and technology, or discuss the interaction of technology and society.

At the same time, student participation in university-wide activities, such as student government, professional societies, athletics, and performing arts can help them develop the leadership and communications skills that are an important part of an engineering education.

Engineering deans should actively encourage their faculty members to participate in research, educational and leadership activities beyond the engineering college. Industrial advisory board members should stress cross-campus interaction in their recommendations to the college. Activities should include connections with such units as the schools of business, medicine, arts, sciences, and education.

Engineering deans and faculty should actively encourage students to participate in university-wide activities. These activities can include participation in student government, student professional societies, athletics, performing arts, debate, study abroad, and similar activities. The aim is to promote leadership and communications skills as well as a sense of the integration of engineering into the broader world.

Engineering deans should take responsibility for helping non-engineering majors on their campuses better understand the importance and relevance of technology in their lives, and seek to better equip those students to prosper in an increasingly technological world. Engineering schools may develop specific courses, seminars, guest lectureships, and cross-campus projects. Use payday loan for better loans management

Employment practices among major corporations are changing dramatically; few future engineers will experience lifelong employment with a single corporation or organization. Many may perform professional work as consultants or serve as contract employees on specific projects. To adapt to this new work environment, engineering graduates must understand that career-long learning is their own responsibility and must acquire the skills for self-learning. Although many engineering colleges offer continuing education, such programs are often degree-oriented and constrained by the academic-year cycle.

To be relevant to new graduates, as well as to practicing engineers at every stage of their careers, engineering colleges must re-think and repackage continuing education programs. They should focus their offerings on providing students with new capabilities, as well as degrees. Courses should take various forms ,with some targeted to business and financial management ,and be adaptable to the time constraints of working engineers. In this regard, it will be crucial that continuing education programs take full advantage of the evolving National Information Infrastructure (NII).

Industry should require and pay for engineering employees to take courses to sustain their technological and managerial competence, just as it pays to maintain its other assets.

Federal agencies that fund education should help universities and their industrial partners identify creative approaches to lifelong learning by funding pilot projects and experiments.

Engineering colleges should create innovative advanced degree programs, including practice-oriented degrees. Such degree programs might include course material on engineering systems; finance and accounting; and technology policy, management and decision-making. Courses should feature team-based activities and case studies. In some instances, engineering schools will develop such degree programs in collaboration with business schools and industry.

Engineering colleges, in collaboration with industry, should develop innovative ways of providing continuing education to practicing engineers by instituting non-degree, career-enhancing programs. This will be facilitated by new communications technologies.

Through its accreditation process, the U.S. engineering education system has continually reexamined and re-energized the engineering curricula. Engineering fundamentals have been and will continue to be the core of the engineering curriculum. But because engineers now operate in a world where their accomplishments are often more limited by societal considerations than by technical capabilities, they are engaging in a wider range of activities throughout their professional lives. Thus, engineering education must take into account the social, economic, and political contexts of engineering practice; help students develop teamwork and communication skills; and motivate them to acquire new knowledge and capabilities on their own. Because many modern engineering projects require a combination of several disciplines, students also need exposure to the integrative field of systems engineering.

In essence, an engineering education today aims to prepare an engineer to be successful in the changing workplace. It aims to equip students with technical knowledge and capabilities, flexibility and an understanding of the societal context of engineering.

Engineering schools should not seek to develop these contextual and process skills through separate courses, but by incorporating them into existing curricula and through non-classroom activities. Coursework should feature multidisciplinary, collaborative, active learning; and take into account students’ varied learning styles.

One factor that will promote development of students’ “process” skills is widespread use of multimedia, worldwide information networks. Using this resource, students can access new information and coursework, as well as interact with other students, researchers, practicing engineers in industry and government, and experts from around the world. These changes in the teaching and learning environment will make engineering education more attractive to both students and faculty, if faculty are given the opportunity to stay up-to-date.

Finally, all engineering colleges must address the issue of ethics. While ethics is a complex and difficult topic, engineering administrators and faculty must help students understand that throughout their careers they will encounter ethical issues which they will need to recognize and deal with rationally. Whether engineers are conducting engineering research, managing a company, or building bridges and office buildings, their decisions affect the lives and property of the greater community. Students must understand the importance of upholding that public trust.

While recognizing and encouraging diverse institutional missions and changing industry needs, colleges of engineering must re-examine their curricula and programs to ensure they prepare their students for the broadened world of engineering work. This process has begun among most engineering colleges and must be accelerated with the aim to incorporate:

• team skills, including collaborative, active learning;
• communication skills;
• leadership;
• a systems perspective;
• an understanding and appreciation of the diversity of students, faculty, and staff;
• an appreciation of different cultures and business practices, and the understanding that the practice of engineering is now global;
• integration of knowledge throughout the curriculum;
• a multi-disciplinary perspective;
• a commitment to quality, timeliness and continuous improvement;
• undergraduate research and engineering work experience;
• understanding of the societal, economic and environmental impacts of engineering decisions;
• and ethics.

Indeed, a degree in electrical engineering can open many doors, in part because electrical engineering is so broad. Electrical engineers have taken on many tasks that you might expect people with other technical degrees to do. Semiconductor processing, for example, is highly populated by electrical engineers, but its basis is in physics and chemistry. Other areas include optics (as applied to communications), aerospace engineering, and even life sciences. “A lot of people don’t realize that a lot of biomedical devices are actually electrical devices,” noted Georgia Tech’s May.

Engineering jobs also cut across technical disciplines. More and more, mechanical, chemical, and biomedical engineers use electronics to measure a product’s performance. “Who says you’re not going to do test and measurement on a chemical process for drug manufacturing?” asked Looft. “That’s a huge area. And you better know a little bit about chemical processing when you go into that job.”

Some people with engineering degrees move out of engineering jobs but stay in their respective industries by moving into sales, marketing, and management (a few even become editors covering the industries from which they came). Others move into fields such as law and medicine. Law firms, looking for patent lawyers with technical backgrounds, may hire engineers or engineering graduates and pay for law school.

Those who choose to enter the engineering work force may find that they need skills beyond math, science, engineering basics, and problem solving. We asked the participants what additional skills employers now look for in engineering graduates. While we received some differing answers, everyone agreed that communications skills sit atop the list.

No longer is it enough to design circuits and get test results. You must communicate those results through written reports and presentations. Georgia Tech’s Williams noted that the university has integrated writing of technical documents into several courses, which UCSB’s Long echoed. WPI has even created an interdisciplinary major or double major in technical writing.

While schools have responded to employers looking for better communications skills, some in academia remain skeptical. One such person is Professor John Orr of WPI. “The standard example is if you hear an after dinner speech from the VP of company xyz, [he or she] will describe that employers need graduates with good communications skills, good teamwork skills, and some global experience. But when hiring managers come to campus, they look for skills such as experience with the latest Cadence software release. They’re looking for engineers who can be productive from day one.”

Regardless of whether communication courses are included, it’s becoming virtually impossible for schools to provide all of the required engineering skills at the undergraduate level. In fact, some people have begun to question if you should be able to enter the engineering work force with just a bachelor’s degree. Employers are looking more and more for graduates with master’s degrees, and the number of master’s degrees relative to bachelor’s degrees has risen in the past 30 years (Figure 1). (continued)

At the same time, the number of PhDs has remained relatively flat. During the last business downturn, companies may have scaled back their research budgets, relying on universities to do the work. “There’s a lot less research going on in industry than there used to be,” said UCSB’s Long. “Most companies have decimated their research labs.” Long argued that companies are looking for fewer PhDs than they did 10 or 15 years ago because they don’t have the facilities and don’t want to pay the higher salaries.

In recent years, industry has become more involved with academia. That’s good for the most part, as long as industry lets the teachers teach. Often, companies sponsor student projects or contribute to the funding of research labs. Students benefit from having worked on real-world projects and by making industry contacts, which can lead to employment upon graduation. Employers benefit because they can hire graduates with practical experience.

Overall, industry involvement in projects is welcome, because the companies provide equipment, materials, and sometimes funds for student projects. “If they’re paying for a project, then they should have the say over the project,” said WPI’s Looft. “But it can get too involved. I have companies that want to tell us what we’re going to do, educationally.”

Drexel’s Kam doesn’t agree. “I’m sure that there are horror stories here and there of companies who donated the equipment and wanted to control the curriculum,” he said. “But I wouldn’t call it a trend nor would I say this is widespread.” Georgia Tech’s May agreed that a few companies want too much involvement, but he doesn’t think it’s excessive. Companies are, after all, stakeholders in the graduates that these universities produce.

Looft said that companies go over the line when they say “you didn’t get it done” meaning that a student project didn’t produce a marketable product. When that occurs, he reminds companies that a student project is an educational endeavor that may not produce a working product.

Kam takes a different approach. He argued that companies need to get more involved in the educational process. “Industry is absent from the accreditation process,” he said. He wants to see greater participation from industry so universities can produce the engineers best qualified to keep companies competitive.

Whether you think the world has too many or too few electrical engineers, you’ll probably agree that engineers make an impact on people’s lives every day. Engineering has proven to be a satisfying career for many. Your work makes a difference in the world. Now, go out and tell someone how engineers contribute to society. I am sure many engineers proud to wear lanyards around their neck about their company.

In early times, the practice of engineering was that of a trade or craft with training occurring through some form of apprenticeship. As it developed into a profession and more recently as an academic discipline, it took on the shape of other academic disciplines, with preparation being an education rather than a training. An important turning point in the Unites States was the land grant college act (Morrill act) of 1862 which established an institution for the teaching of agriculture and the mechanical arts (engineering) in each state. This officially legitimated engineering in higher education although it still had the form of training. Interestingly, this act came into being during the American Civil War and was signed by Abraham Lincoln.

World-War II was the second turning point when it was discovered that many of the technical innovations necessary for that effort came from scientists, mathematicians, and theoretically educated engineers rather than traditionally trained engineers. Most engineers prior to that time had been trained to develop and apply ideas already in existence, not to create new solutions to new problems. After WWII, the university curricula in engineering became much more scientific and mathematical. It took on more elements of an education rather than a training. It slowly became a real academic discipline in its own right rather than only an application of other disciplines. However, it retains the integrating role of applying the physical and life sciences using some of the tools of the social sciences, law, and policy and the values derived from the humanities, letters, arts, and business.

We are now going through a third transition in engineering in response to many factors in society and in technology itself. In the larger picture, society went through the agricultural phase, the industrial phase, and now the information phase. These three phases of civilization created and were created by the most powerful and applicable technologies of the time. Engineering is and will be the creative element in the information age as it has been in preceding ages.

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