Posts Tagged ‘policy’

Given the changing direction and magnitude of support for research sponsored by the federal government and industry, coupled with the increased competition from federal laboratories and international groups, engineering colleges must look for new opportunities to establish collaborative research alliances. Some alliances may be local or regional; others will be “virtual,” that is, national or international alliances established through the emerging global information superhighway.

Regional consortia of engineering colleges, for example, may share research facilities, teaching laboratories and faculty. Faculty tenure might even reside with a consortium and not with the individual institutions. Other types of consortia could combine the resources of universities and industry, universities and federal facilities – such as national laboratories – or a combination of all three. The aim is not to create new bureaucracies and expense, but to facilitate high-quality research and teaching that is both effective and efficient.

The National Science Foundation has taken the lead in funding experiments in research and education resource-sharing, and in creation of virtual research and education teams. Such experiments also should be encouraged through the Engineering Research Center (ERC) and Science and Technology Center (STC) programs. Lessons learned by the NSF Engineering Education Coalitions in creating “virtual” research and education teams should be applied to these experiments.

To ensure high-quality research and education, federal funding for science and technology must be distributed through open competition, based on peer review. To enhance technology transfer and industry-university research partnerships, universities, corporations and federal agencies should ensure they have flexible and negotiable policies governing intellectual property rights.

Federal agencies that fund research and education should explore ways of encouraging educational institutions, research organizations, federal laboratories, and industry to share resources. They should provide special consideration for funding projects that are developed by consortia of institutions.

Federal funding for science and technology should be allocated in open competition, based on peer review.

To enhance technology transfer and industry-university research partnerships, universities, industries, and federal agencies should develop flexible and negotiable policies governing intellectual property rights.

Engineering education today is adapting to the changing context of engineering practice, but more can be done to speed and improve the process. A crucial means of accomplishing needed change is through partnerships with industry, government, and the broader educational communities. The policy statements and action items developed in this project are intended to help ensure that engineering education will be RELEVANT, ATTRACTIVE and CONNECTED well into the next century.

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.

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.

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.