 2002
ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Highlights
June 16-19, 2002
Montréal, Quebec, Canada
"Vive L’ingénieur!"
Main Plenary
ASEE Annual Conference Best Paper Awards -
2002
Main Plenary
Monday, June 17, 2002
8:15-10:15 a.m.
Palais Des Congrès de Montréal
John Brooks Slaughter
President and CEO, National Action Council for
Minorities in Engineering
 A
former director of the National Science Foundation,
President of Occidental College in Los Angeles,
and Chancellor at the University of Maryland,
College Park, Dr. Slaughter has a long and distinguished
background as a leader in the education, engineering,
and scientific communities. A member of the
National Academy of Engineering — where
he has served on the Committee on Minorities
in Engineering and chairs its Action Forum on
Engineering Workforce Diversity — he is
also a Fellow of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and
the Tau Beta Pi Honorary Engineering Society.
In 1993, Dr. Slaughter was named to the American
Society for Engineering Education Hall of Fame.
Dr. Slaughter began his professional career
as an electronics engineer at General Dynamics.
He has also been Professor of Electrical Engineering
at the University of Washington, Academic Vice
President and Provost at Washington State University,
and most recently, The Irving R. Melbo Professor
of Leadership in Education at the University
of Southern California.
He serves on the board of directors at IBM,
Northrop Grumman Corporation, and Solutia, Inc.
Dr. Slaughter earned a Ph.D. in engineering
science from the University of California, San
Diego, an M.S. in engineering from the University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a B.S.
in electrical engineering from Kansas State
University. He holds honorary degrees from more
than 20 institutions. Winner of the Martin Luther
King Jr. National Award in 1997 and UCLA's Medal
of Excellence in 1989, Dr. Slaughter was also
honored with the first U.S. Black Engineer of
the Year Award in 1987.
Engineering Education for the 21st Century
John Brooks Slaughter, President
and CEO
National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering
Thank you for the opportunity to be with you
here in Montreal to speak with you about engineering
education and to share some observations about
the subject from my perspective as the president
of a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing
the numbers of African Americans, Latinos and
American Indians in the field of engineering.
My views are, admittedly, highly colored by
my experiences as an engineer who is black and
who has had the good fortune of working in industry,
government and academe for more than 45 years.
I am particularly pleased to join my good friend
Bill WuIf as a plenary speaker at this conference
and to be a participant on an occasion where
I can be with your president Gerald Jakubowski
and your president-elect Gene DeLoatch, both
of whom for which I have the highest regard.
I also have the greatest respect for those
of you charged with the responsibility for educating
those young women and men who will be the engineers
who guide our nation's technological efforts
for the next several decades. Your responsibilities
are enormous and are among the most important
in higher education today. I applaud you for
the tremendous contributions you are making
to prepare our youth for the crucial tasks they
will soon be asked to perform.
I am sure that many of you, like myself, have
had the opportunity and pleasure of speaking
with high school students about the excitement
and opportunities that come with studying engineering.
I like the story of an engineer who visited
an inner city high school to talk with a group
of students about engineering. The engineer
opened his remarks by asking the students a
series of questions. He asked, "If a tree falls
in the forest and there is no one around, does
it make a sound?" The students sat stone-faced.
Then he asked, "If I drive my car at the speed
of light and I turn on the headlights would
you see them?" The students remained silent.
Finally he asked them, "If my mother's age is
the square of eight and she is twelve years
younger than my father, how old am I?" A young
man in the back of the auditorium threw up his
hand. "Yes", the engineer said, happy that he
had received a response, "do you know the answer."
"You're 44," the young man replied. "That's
right", the engineer replied, "How did you guess
the right answer." "Well", said the student,
"my brother is 22 and he is in the insane asylum
and you are twice as crazy as he is!"
First, a commercial! Let me tell you a little
bit about NACME. And if you are already acquainted
with the organization, let me tell you about
the "new" NACME---the one we believe is required
by the demands and realities of the early days
of the 21st century.
NACME was born in the National Academy of Engineering
as the National Advisory Committee on Minorities
in Engineering. As a result of joining forces
in 1974 with several other organizations with
similar goals, NACME became an independent non-profit
entity with the same acronym but a new name,
the National Action Council for Minorities in
Engineering. The primary purpose of the organization
was to provide scholarships to promising minority
students in engineering. And it was successful
in what it did. We estimate that 17,000 minority
students have received financial help from NAGME
throughout its 28-year existence, approximately
15% of the 116,000 minority engineering graduates
in that period.
NACME wishes that all we had to do today and
in the future would be to give scholarships
to promising young engineering students in order
to achieve parity in graduation rates. But we
know that the pace has to be quickened and that
despite our best efforts we are reaching too
few young people to reach our goal. African
Americans, Latinos and American Indians, our
target populations, comprise 30% of the college-age
cohort and, today, constitute 11% of the engineering
graduates. That disparity represents the hill
to be climbed. It is an ever-expanding challenge
since the proportion of minorities in college
is expected to be closer to 40% by the year
2020.
NACME is responding by adopting a new set of
middle school to workplace activities, which
we refer to as our "M-W" strategies. We have
launched a new website, www.guidemenacme.org,
which is designed to reach students as young
as 13 years of age, their parents, teachers
and counselors and provide them with information
about preparation for engineering education
and careers. We are formulating a broader scholarship
support strategy that will provide funding support
for more baccalaureate students and we are now
managing the Sloan Foundation minority Ph.D.
fellowship program in engineering and working
to increase the numbers of minorities entering
doctoral study in engineering. We are also providing
diversity training for industry, governmental
agencies, and educational institutions to help
them adapt to the opportunities extant in the
new and dynamic demographics of America. A recent
activity has been the forging of partnerships
with groups, many of which have a presence on
your campuses, including NSBE, SECME, MESA,
AISES, and NAMEPA.
These new efforts are undertaken because we
have committed ourselves to the objective of
graduating 250,000 new minority engineers over
the next decade, more than doubling the output
of the past 30 years. That's NACME!
I want to speak with you about three issues
this morning. They are all interrelated and
they are all ones that I believe are germane
to the subject of engineering education for
the foreseeable future. The first of these is
the matter of diversity, or more accurately,
the lack of diversity in the field of engineering.
The second concerns the issue of encouraging
more young people to consider engineering as
a career. And the third has to do with the content
of the curriculum that we require students to
study. Each of these is, in my opinion, an important
topic for any discussion of engineering education.
Let me set the stage by sharing with you a
real story that touches on each of these subjects.
Many years ago, a young black student, entering
high school, declared to all who were within
earshot that he wished to become an electrical
engineer. Nearly everyone, including those who
cared about him, laughed at this audacious assertion.
His friends and associates laughed, not with
derision, but because they had never heard of
a black engineer based upon their experiences
in the small midwestern city in which they had
all grown up. His teachers and counselors responded
by channeling the young man into vocational
classes where he learned to repair radios and
TV sets. Neither he nor his parents realized
that the track he had been directed to follow
would not lead to his goal.
Upon graduation from high school with good
grades in his vocational studies, the young
man applied for entry into the two universities
in his state that offered engineering. In each
case he was denied admission because he had
not taken the requisite math and sciences courses.
Disappointed but undeterred, the young man enrolled
in a local liberal arts college to take the
remedial classes in those subjects that he had
not studied in high school. There, he also took
classes in speech, history, economics, and the
history of English literature, courses that
would prove invaluable to him later in life.
Two years later he was finally able to enroll
in an engineering program where he found himself
to be the only minority student in the engineering
school. He was astonished to learn that his
classmates, all of whom were further along than
he was in math, science and the principles and
fundamentals of engineering, were far behind
him in the understanding of the humanities and
the social sciences, in the ability to communicate
orally and by written expression, and in the
appreciation of these assets for a full and
productive life.
In addition, unlike his classmates who were
afforded summer internships and employment in
engineering-related activities, the young black
student performed custodial work and washed
cars during the summer and vacation periods.
Only much later did he realize that he had never
been informed about or awarded opportunities
for internships or summer employment in engineering.
Upon graduation, as one of the 0.5% of that
year's engineering graduates-who-were-black,-nationlwide,--the-newly-minted
electrical engineer began his career with an
aerospace firm, only one year after that large
corporation had hired its first black engineer
ever.
Fast forward to the year 2002. Many years have
passed since this saga began. The same engineer,
now much, much older visits his alma mater to
which he has been invited to deliver an address
in commemoration of the Martin Luther King,
Jr. holiday. He is astonished and very pleased
to learn that there are now 75 black engineering
students at the university, many of whom he
had an opportunity to meet and talk with on
his visit to the campus. Many of them, perhaps
even a majority of them, were women in contrast
to the sole woman in engineering when he was
a student there. The students he spoke with
were excited about their studies, the opportunities
they had for internships and meaningful summer
employment and the support structures the university
had put into place to ensure their success to
graduation. Regrettably, many of them also shared
tales of discouragement and disparagement from
teachers and counselors throughout their middle
school and high school years. The fact that
this behavior took place 50 years ago is a sad
commentary on the history of our public schools;
the fact that it is still occurring today is
criminal.
What is the moral behind this story? Clearly,
progress has been made. Enrollments, graduation
rates, internships, employment opportunities,
and career choices are significantly greater
today than they were decades ago. But much more
needs to be done if America is to benefit from
the immense potential resident in the large
numbers of underrepresented persons in science
and engineering. Parity remains a distant and
elusive target. The story I have related is
not at all unlike the story of thousands of
young persons who continue to suffer from poor
public school preparation, limited opportunities
and the imposition of low expectations for their
future. This, unfortunately, is particularly
true in our field of engineering.
I contend that the engineering profession as
a whole has not given much thought to the issue
of diversity. For many years now, the NAE and
many of the engineering societies have had programs
in pace that focus on issues of diversity but
their joint efforts have been like those achieved
by trying to push a boulder with a wet noodle.
And while I argue for the need to increase
the number of minority engineering students,
I feel equally strongly about increasing the
number of minority engineering faculty in our
nation's colleges and universities. The two
goals are inextricably intertwined. Minority
students suffer from the absence of minority
role models in the classroom. But two few minority
students are encouraged and guided into graduate
education so that they can ultimately become
faculty members who can inspire and educate
even more minority students.
ASEE's 2001 fall survey of teaching faculty
reveals that just over 1,000 Latino, African
American and American Indian faculty members
are among the 25,000 persons who make up the
engineering faculty in our schools and colleges
of engineering, almost exactly 4%. If we were
to eliminate from consideration those who teach
at HBCUs and HSls we would discover that the
percentage of minority faculty members who teach
in our nation's predominantly white engineering
programs would drop precariously close to 1%.
This should be a clear indication of the need
we have to move far beyond the excuses that
we have adopted for so long and begin to address
this matter. And it is those of you in this
room who are on the front line. Look around
you in this hall and you will understand the
reality the numbers represent.
Last year approximately 1,000 women and 200
minorities received Ph.D.s in engineering in
the U.S. And while the numbers are small they
are large enough to begin to make a difference
in the composition of our faculties. We know
that our colleges and universities have the
capacity to begin to diversify their faculties;
we hope they have the will.
Let us now consider the second point, the need
to encourage more young people to study engineering.
We find ourselves at this point in history
with the number of engineering graduates at
one of the lowest levels of the past twenty
years. And this is occurring at the time when
the demand for persons prepared to provide the
skills needed by America's high technology industries
has never been higher. The engineering profession
itself must share much of the blame by not conveying
to young people the excitement, satisfaction
and rewards to be found in engineering and by
not providing in some comprehensive manner the
outreach that will encourage and inspire more
youth to prepare themselves for the opportunity
to become engineers.
We have failed in many ways to tell the story
about engineering and, as a result, engineers
trail scientists, physicians, ministers, teachers
and policemen in prestige in the eyes of the
public.
It is a sad reality that over the past several
years fewer young people, both minority and
non-minority, are choosing to get on the pathway
to engineering as a career pursuit. Sadder still
is the fact that many of them are robbed of
the option to even consider entering the field
before they have left middle school. For example,
more than a half-million minority students graduate
from high school each year, but only 32,000
of them have completed the necessary science
and math courses to even be considered for entry
into engineering study About 21,000 are qualified
for admission and fewer than 15,000 of them
actually enroll. While the picture for non-minority
students is considerably brighter, their numbers
are also well below the level necessary to meet
the current and future demands.
It is estimated that more than a half million
engineers will be needed over the next decade
to replace those who retire and that at least
that many new engineers will be needed to fill
the demand that will exist at the end of that
period. We find ourselves importing talent and
exporting jobs simply because we do not produce
enough native-born, well-qualified scientists
and engineers in our nation's universities.
American industry has developed a habit of asking
Congress each year to increase the number of
visas for foreign workers with advanced technology
training. Companies fill all the positions that
have been authorized; yet the demand for additional
workers from foreign countries continues to
rise. This untenable policy will not remain
in place forever for many reasons.
We must ask ourselves why we cannot produce
adequate numbers of people with the highly developed
analytical and quantitative skills necessary
for the technology-intensive jobs that are going
unfilled in this country. Part of the reason
is due to the poor preparation and lack of encouragement
many of them encounter in our public schools.
It is a sad fact that teachers without the appropriate
college major or minor are teaching a quarter
of all students in mathematics and more than
a half of all students in physical science in
grades 7 to 12. And it is an equally sad fact
that even well meaning teachers and counselors
are woefully ignorant about the engineering
profession and, therefore, unable to guide students
in any meaningful way toward such a career.
But our engineering education programs must
share some of the responsibility. Perhaps you
saw the recent Wall Street Journal article in
which Bill WuIf and the former chair of the
NACME board, Nick Donofrio, were quoted. The
article reflected on the fact that students
already in engineering were leaving the study
of engineering or were threatening to leave
because they were not receiving a sense of meaningfulness
in their education or not being led to an understanding
of how engineering will help them make a contribution
to society. The drudgery of the early courses
in math and science masked the potential of
enjoyment and satisfaction they hoped to receive
from their career choice. The extent to which
this is a widespread problem could be a major
contributor to the high level of attrition in
our engineering programs. This is a matter that
we must address.
This leads me to my last point.
When the African American chemist, Percy Lavon
Julian----the discoverer of synthetic hormones
such as physostigmine and many others----received
an honor scroll from the American Institute
of Chemists, he chose to quote, in his acceptance
speech, from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The poem begins:
"Where should the scholar live?
In solitude or in society!"
As both scientist and humanist, Dr. Julian's
answer was, "In society!" "My prime concern,"
he said, "is that the scientist...recognizes
the magnitude of the responsibility resting
on his shoulders, when the nation entrusts so
much of its wealth in his hands."
Julian's words have tremendous consequences
for engineering education. They require us to
do more than simply provide students with the
best math, science and engineering curricula,
laboratories and instrumentation. It means re-examining
what and how we teach them as well as re-thinking
our expectations for them and for ourselves
as their mentors.
There are indeed many potential conflicts between
science and technology and society and, consequently,
there is a profound need for an in-depth appreciation
for social responsibility in scientific and
technological endeavors I contend that this
appreciation is not to be found in most courses
in science and technology. Those courses must
be offered in concert with material that exposes
students to the study of ethical principles
and human values. Without this grounding, the
engineer is much like a machine that dispassionately
and methodically crunches numbers and produces
answers to complex and perplexing problems.
But a socially responsible engineer can interpret
as well as investigate, evaluate as well as
analyze, reflect as well as create. The engineer
who cannot make value judgments and who cannot
see beyond the facts is a potential danger to
society.
As a professional engineer who spent eleven
years as a liberal arts college president, I
fully believe that engineering students must
be broadly educated in mathematics, the sciences,
literature and the arts so that they can make
the connections between these fields of learning.
They need to study, in my opinion, both Bach
and botany, both Carlyle and chemistry, both
Dickinson and differential equations, both Giovanni
and geometry, both Isaiah and isotopes, both
Milton and molecules, both Picasso and picofarads.
They need to understand well the insight of
Percy Lavon Julian who said of the sciences
and the humanities, "The goal of both is to
enrich and ennoble the good life of man."
These are the challenges before engineering
education and engineering educators as we enter
this new century. To a large extent the future
of our global society depends upon how soon
and how well we address them.
 William
A. Wulf
President, National Academy of Engineering
William A. Wulf, president of the National
Academy of Engineering, is on leave from the
University of Virginia (UVA), where he is a
University Professor and AT&T Professor of Engineering
in the computer science department. Prior to
joining the UVA faculty, Wulf was an assistant
director of the National Science Foundation,
responsible for computing research, the national
supercomputer centers, and the NSFnet (predecessor
to the Internet as we now know it). He also
founded and was CEO of Tartan Laboratories,
a software company in Pittsburgh based on research
he did while on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon
University. Wulf has conducted research in computer
architecture, programming languages, optimizing
compilers, and computer security. A Sigma Xi
member, he is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, and the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, among others.
The Urgency of Engineering Education Reform
William A. Wulf, President
National Academy of Engineering
Thank you for inviting me to speak here today.
I jumped at the chance because I want to talk
about what should be a watershed change in engineering
education -- but that hasn't happened. I hope
to communicate to you the urgency I feel for
the need for this change, as well as something
of the nature of it.
They say "where you stand depends on where
you sit", so let me say a few words about where
it sit - namely at the National Academy of Engineering.
You all know the Academy as an honorific organization.
One cannot join the Academy; you must be elected
by the existing members. Being elected to the
NAE is generally considered the highest honor
that can be bestowed on an engineer by his or
her peers.
But, in addition to being honorific, the Academy
(together with the National Academy of Sciences
and the Institute of Medicine) was chartered
by congress to provide authoritative, unbiased
advice to the nation on issues of science, engineering
and health. In fact, the NAE's mission statement
says that we should be " … responsible
for the technological health of the nation…"
In that context, the NAE has become very concerned
about the status of engineering education.
I should make three introductory remarks before
proceeding.
First a caveat: I am going to paint with a
broad brush. I know there are exciting, innovative
programs in a number of engineering schools.
Perhaps even most schools are trying one or
two innovative things. My remarks will integrate
over the field, and cartoon the overall state,
thus will miss explicitly recognizing these
"points of light".
Second a word about my view if what
an engineer does, since this colors my view
of how an engineer needs to be educated.
science is analytic-it strives to understand
nature, what is.
engineering is synthetic - it strives to create
what can be.
My favorite operational definition
of engineering is
design under constraint
Engineering is creating, designing, what can
be -- but it is constrained by nature, by cost,
by concerns of safety, reliability, environmental
impact, manufacturability, maintainability --
indeed the long list of such "ilities". Engineering
is not "just applied science". To be sure our
understanding of nature is one of the constraints
we work under, but it is far from the only one,
it is seldom the hardest one, and almost never
the limiting one.
Third, engineering is changing. Indeed that
change is what underlies the urgency that I
feel for a change in engineering education.
Growing global competition and the subsequent
restructuring of industry, the shift from defense
to civilian work, the use of new materials and
biological processes, and the explosion of information
technology -- both as part of the process of
engineering and as part of its product -- have
dramatically and irreversibly changed the practice
of engineering. If anything, the pace of this
change is accelerating.
Although there are isolated "points of light",
in general engineering education has not kept
up with this changing environment. I think it
is only a slight exaggeration to say that our
students are being prepared for practicing engineering
in a world that existed when we were trained,
but not for the 21st century.
There are four parts to the remainder
of this talk:
1. Why do I feel this urgency?
2. What needs to change?
3. Why isn't it changing (faster)? And
4. Some information on what the NAE is doing.
Why do I feel this urgency?
A bit of my personal history is relevant here.
I taught at Carnegie Mellon for 13 years and
then started and was CEO of a software company
for just shy of a decade before returning to
academia at Virginia (with a brief tour as an
Assistant Director of NSF sandwiched between).
That interlude in industry gave me a perspective
that most academics don't have - and I was struck
by how different the academic preparation of
engineers was from what I had experienced. The
practice of engineering has changed, but engineering
education hasn't (not much anyway); with few
exceptions, the current curriculum is the same
as the one I studied almost 40 years ago. Ideally
one would like to think that engineering education
would prepare one for the career they will have
and not the one their fathers had - but, alas,
I don't think that is the case.
Many things are changing simultaneously in
the practice of engineering. Together they form
a mosaic of overall change - a mosaic that,
perhaps, is not easy to see from close up. But
if you stand back an overall pattern emerges
that is startling in scope. I feel this urgency
for change because I am afraid that we will
soon be educating engineers that cannot compete,
that cannot innovate in the way that has brought
such prosperity to the developed world.
What needs to change?
A lot, I think! The first things that always
come to mind, of course, are:
1. curriculum
2. pedagogy
But you are all experts in these so I won't
say much about them. The next thing that comes
to mind is:
3. diversity
This is a topic that also concerns me greatly
and that I would love to spend an hour on. Let
me just say that in addition to the usual reasons
given for diversity - namely equity and having
enough engineers - I believe there is also an
issue of quality. A diverse team will find better
solutions to engineering problems. I wish I
had the time to develop this point further,
but to get back to my main theme I want to talk
about four points that are perhaps a bit more
controversial:
4. retention rate
5. the notion that the BS is the first professional
degree
6. the system of faculty rewards, and
7. technological literacy in the general population
The list is long and the space is short, so
I will say only a few words about only some
of these to give you a sense of both the vector
of needed change and why I feel urgency about
it. I am also going to jump around in this list
because they are not independent.
Retention Rate
It is a disgrace! Depending on whose numbers
you use, something approaching half the students
entering engineering do not finish with an engineering
degree. Those who leave are not poor students;
by almost every measure they are about the same
caliber as those that stay. We are not "weeding
out" the poor students! Rather, the poor retention
rate is a measure of our failure to convey the
pleasure and impact of engineering.
A few weeks ago there was an article on the
front page of the business section of the Wall
Street Journal that talked about the impending
shortage of engineers in the U.S. The article
started with a real life story of a young woman,
an A student, who dropped out of engineering
because she could not see how a career in engineering
would contribute to society. I find that story
deeply troubling. The truth is that engineering
and the technology that engineering creates
has had a profoundly positive effect on society.
If you are as concerned as I about the number
and quality of engineers in the future , the
quickest fix is simply to halve the drop-out
rate … and we can do that by fixing the
curriculum and pedagogy of engineering education.
The First Professional Degree
Most professions -- business, law, medicine
-- do not consider the bachelor's degree a professional
degree. Engineering does. Doing so is a misrepresentation
to both the student and employer; to mention
just a few of the problems this causes:
- the program has bloated to over 130 credit
hours and still doesn't cover requisite
material,
- companies generally presume that they need
to invest 1-2 years in training
to complete the job
- liberal education in the humanities is squeezed
out
- as are social and management sciences needed
by modern engineer
- the problem is exacerbated as a number of
states mandate a maximum of 120
hours
These problems naturally segway into the curriculum
issues. The squeeze caused by treating the BS
as a professional degree leads to the bloat
in the program, etc. It also provokes recitation
of the mantra "the undergraduate curriculum
should teach (only) the fundamentals". Everyone
agrees with that, pretty much. The rubber meets
the road when we get to talking about what are
the fundamentals.
The last major curriculum change in engineering,
a changed to what is referred to as the "engineering
science" approach followed WW II. Since then
the fundamentals have been largely seen as continuous
mathematics and physics. But, as I said earlier,
engineering is changing!
Information technology will be embedded in
virtually every product/process in the future
-- i.e., the "design space" for all engineers
will include IT. Discrete math, not continuous
math, is the underpinning if IT. It's a new
"fundamental".
Biological materials and processes are a
bit behind IT in their impact on engineering
-- but they are "closing fast". Thus the chemical
and biological sciences are also becoming
fundamental to engineering.
Engineering is global, and engineering is
done in a holistic business context. The engineer
must design under constraints that include
global cultural and business contexts -- and
so must understand them at a deep level. They
too are new "fundamentals".
We can't just add these "new fundamentals"
to a curriculum that's already too full, especially
if we still claim that the baccalaureate is
a professional degree. We have to look critically
at the current cherished "fundamentals", and
either displace them or find ways to cover them
much more rapidly.
Faculty Rewards
I don't especially want to engage in the teaching
vs. research debate. I suspect, like most of
you, I believe that teaching and research complement
each other. And, by and large, there is a high
correlation between good teaching and good research.
Good people are good! In my admittedly idiosyncratic
career, the number of cases of genuinely good
teachers who were not good researchers is very
small.
But, in engineering education I think we have
an additional problem, and that's the one I
want to emphasize. Recall, my definition of
engineering is "design under constraint". I
believe that it's a synthetic, highly creative
activity.
Can you think of any other creative field on
campus where the faculty are not expected to
practice/perform ? Art, music, drama? Even if
you won't buy that engineering is creative in
the same way as art or music -- performance
oriented professions such as medicine and law
expect their faculty to practice that profession.
Can you imagine a medical school where the faculty
was prohibited from practicing medicine?
Yet, not so in engineering.
Faculty are, for the most part, judged by criteria
similar to the science faculty -- and the practice
of engineering is not one of those criteria.
The faculty reward system recognizes teaching,
research and service to the profession -- but
not delivering a marketable product or process,
or designing an enduring piece of the nation's
infrastructure.
Of course, what you measure is what you get.
For the most part our faculty are superb "engineering
scientists" -- but not necessarily folks that
know a lot about he practice of the profession
of engineering. At most schools, for example,
it's hard to bring someone onto the faculty
who has spent the career in industry, even though
such people would be extremely valuable to the
students; their resumes simply don't fit those
the reward system values. Sometimes it's even
hard to get recognition for a sabbatical in
industry.
Please understand that I am not criticizing
the current faculty; I am one of them, and I
respect my colleagues greatly. Rather I am criticizing
a system that prevents enriching the faculty
with a complementary set of experiences and
talents. But, to close the loop -- of course
the current faculty are the folks with the largest
say in the engineering curriculum. It should
not be a big surprise that industry leaders
have been increasingly vocal about their discontent
with the engineering graduates.
Technological literacy in the general population
In "real life" I have been a professor at the
University of Virginia, which was founded by
Thomas Jefferson. He founded the university
based on the conviction that we could not have
a democracy without an educated citizenry.
I think he would consider the current state
of his democracy to be dangerous. Technology
is one of the strongest forces shaping our nation,
and our representatives in Congress are called
upon regularly to vote on issues that will profoundly
affect the nation -- and whose roots are technological.
Yet both those representatives and the people
who elect them are, for the most part, technologically
illiterate.
Every person with a "liberal education" needs
to be technologically literate!
I am consciously saying "technologically literate"
and not just "scientifically literate" because
its not enough to understand something of nature,
what is. An understanding of the larger "innovation
engine", the process by which an understanding
of nature is converted into what can be -- into
a better, richer life -- is critical.
Engineering schools have not traditionally
provided courses for liberal arts majors --
but in my view they must. These courses will
not be of the kind we are accustomed to teaching,
since they need to relate technology and the
process of creating it, that is engineering,
to larger societal issues. But the urban myth
of engineers, whether faculty of practitioners,
is in my experience just that -- a myth.
In a Bridge article in the Summer of 1996,
analyzed some popular modern American history
texts and discovered that most of them ignore
the impact of technology on society -- yet nothing,
absolutely nothing has had a more profound impact
in the 20th century.
Why haven't things changed (faster)?
I don't know, but I have a hypothesis. That
hypothesis is simply that the faculty don't
believe that change is needed. They are following
the wise adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix
it". If one hasn't had recent experience in
industry, which I argued above that most faculty
don't, and if the change is a mosaic in multiple
dimensions whose pattern is hard to discern,
then the fact that it's "broke" is not easy
to see.
What is the NAE doing?
You in ASEE are the experts on curriculum and
pedagogy and the NAE has little to add to those
efforts. Rather we are trying, with a number
of specific activities, to change attitudes
among your faculty colleagues to make them more
receptive to your efforts - to make them accept
that change is indeed, needed. Changing attitudes
is not easy and it will not happen overnight,
but it's a role that, perhaps, only the NAE
can play. In particular, I believe that a clear
and consistent message from the NAE that
1. The NAE believes change is necessary,
and
2. The NAE values contributions to that change
will, over time, change faculty attitudes.
To that end, we are taking four concrete actions:
- We have created the Committee on Engineering Education
(CEE),
- We have made contributions to engineering
education a valid criteria for election
to the Academy,
- We have established the $500,000 "Gordon
Prize" for innovations in engineering
and technology education, and
- We will establish a Center for the Scholarship
of Engineering Education
(CSEE) at the NAE.
The CEE will conduct studies and hold workshops
on topics in engineering education; the first
of these will be held this Fall and will examine
what the engineer of 2020 (that is, a mid-career
engineer graduating now) will be doing - and
hence what we ought to be teaching him or her
today.
It would be inconsistent to say that the NAE
values contributions to engineering education
- but that's not enough to be elected as a member
- so we changed that!
The Gordon Prize now establishes contributions
to engineering education on a par with engineering
innovation as recognized by the Draper and Russ
Prizes - all are $500,000 prizes awarded by
the NAE!
The CSEE is not yet funded, but we're working
on it. The idea is to have a number of competitively
selected "NAE Fellows" rotating through the
center from engineering schools, from the "learning
sciences" and from industry. These fellows will
propose scholarly projects and will work on
them at the NAE for distribution to the entire
community.
To conclude -- our society is not only dependent
on technology, it is addicted to technological
change. If asked about the important events
of the 20th century, most people will respond
with the list of wars, the great depression,
etc. But, if one contrasts the life of an average
citizen in 1898 with that in 1998, the profound
differences are all the result of the technology
produced by engineers.
Engineering, the process by which our understanding
of nature is combined with constraints to create
artifacts and processes, is changing. Indeed
it is changing very rapidly. Engineering education
has to change too!
We have studied it to death, and while there
are differences between the reports cited at
the beginning -- and with my remarks here --
the differences are not great. Let's get on
with it! It's urgent that we do so!
The NAE will support you in ASEE in any way
that we can, and specifically we are doing a
number of things to try to make your colleagues
on campus more receptive to the innovations
we all know need to happen. Let's hope that
all this effort will soon pay off!
ASEE Annual Conference Best Paper Awards -
2002 – Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Best Conference Paper (two-way tie)
Title: “Project-Based
Construction Education”
Session: 1421
Authors: James Pocock and Peter Ridilla
and
Title: “Instructional
Technology, Learning Styles and Academic Achievement”
Session: 2422
Author: Malgorzata Zywno
Best Paper, PIC I
Title: “Project-Based
Construction Education”
Session: 1421
Authors: James Pocock and Peter Ridilla
Best Paper, PIC II
Title: “Herding
Cats: A Case Study of a Capstone Design Course”
Session: 2425
Authors: John Paul Giolma and Kevin Nickels
Best Paper, PIC III
Title: “A
Remote Laboratory for Electrical Experiments”
Session: 2359
Author: Ingvar Gustavsson
Best Paper, PIC V
Title: “Instructional
Technology, Learning Styles and Academic Achievement”
Session: 2422
Author: Malgorzata Zywno
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