Summary Notes on Engineering Education Meeting in Baltimore
Summary Notes of the Engineering Foundation Conference on Realizing
the New Paradigm for Engineering Education, Baltimore, Maryland,
3-6 June 1998, by Jim Yao (6/7/98.)
Wednesday, 3 June 1998
* The meeting began in the evening. Marshall Lih, Director of
the ECE Division at NSF, welcomed approximately 80 participants
for NSF. He talked about "higher and broader calling"
of engineering education. Henry Shaw of the Engineering Foundation
(EC) Conference Committee welcomed everyone on behalf of the EC.
Ed Ernst, a chair professor at the University of South Carolina,
reviewed the recent developments in engineering education. John
Prados of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville asked the participants
to focus on "the How" (to take effective steps) and
"the Who" (to act) rather than the "What"
and "Why Not" that have been well discussed in previous
conferences during this last decade.
Thursday, 4 June 1998
* Joe Bordogna, Acting Assistant Director of NSF, presented the
keynote speech entitled "The Professional Engineer in 2010".
All of his transparencies are available at http://www.nsf.gov/bordogna.
He mentioned that the NSF funding strategies include (1) develop
intellectual capital, (2) strengthen the physical infrastructure,
(3) integrate research and education, and (4) promote partnership.
The NSF themes include knowledge and distributed intelligence,
environment, and education for the future. Among attributes for
professional engineers in 2010, he listed complexity, system,
innovation, commodity, design (manifestation of intent), team,
cognition, and making and moving.
* Bill Wulf, President of the National Academy of Engineering
(NAE), was "less optimistic" than Joe. He believes that
engineering is "design under constraint" and that "nature
is seldom the hardest constraint." Engineering practice is
changing so rapidly that it is urgent to change engineering education.
First, he believes that the 4-year BS degree in no longer sufficient
for engineering practice. Second, we need to reform the curriculum.
Third, we must change the faculty reward system so that contributions
to teaching and practice will also be recognized.
* Art Glenn, a Vice President of GE, is in favor of a broad undergraduate
education without increasing the duration or cost for students.
His new paradigm includes "from other colleges in addition
to the college of engineering, relevance, and communication skills."
* Ed Parrish, President of WPI and President of ABET, talked
about ABET 2000. He also talked about the cooperation of WPI with
the industry and government, and the innovations at WPI.
* Paul Penfield, Head of the Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science Department at MIT, presented their 5-year BS and ME program
that integrates the electrical engineering and computer science
curricula for practice.
* Richard Phillips of Harvey Mudd reviewed their clinic projects.
Each project is 9 month in duration and consists of design, fabrication,
and testing phases. Typically 3 seniors plus one or two juniors
are on a team with a faculty advisor and an industry liaison.
At present, almost all projects are supported by companies (average
cost is $36,000 per project per year).
* Barbara Olds of Colorado School of Mines told us about their
EPICS (Engineering Practice Integrated Course Sequence) and McBride
Honors Program in Public Affairs for Engineers. The EPICS program
is open-ended emphasizing self-education, teamwork, integration,
and credibility. The McBride program selects 10% of freshmen to
participate in seven semesters plus a practicum. Each student
has a minor in public affairs.
Friday, 5 June 1998
* Nihat Bilgutay, Head of the Electrical Engineering Department
at Drexel University, talked about the Gateway Coalition E-4 program.
The emphases were on curriculum integration, computer usage, and
interdisciplinary courses.
* Karan Watson, Associate Dean of Engineering at TAMU, emphasized
the process of change. She told us about a new team, more pedagogical
changes, fixed timelines for decision-making, and faculty resistance
vs. advantages.
* Steve Miller of Lucent Technologies told us about his company
(averaging 3 patterns each day). He told us about their products
for distance learning, multimedia collaboration, One Meeting (voice
and data), WAVELAN (wireless), and CenterVu Internet Call Center.
He said that "reliability, intelligence, etc." are important
considerations in their products.
* Anoop Gupta of Microsoft and Stanford talked about access and
scalability, education effectiveness, and cost effectiveness.
He also introduced the Stanford Tutor Video Instruction (TVI)
experiment involving (1) technology for improved contents and
(2) technology infrastructure.
* Tim Trick of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
told us the success story of computer-assisted just-in-time learning
using Malard Demo. He also discussed the economics and legal aspects
of developing this course. While he enjoyed the 3-year effort
in its development, he "would not advise an untenured assistant
professor" to do something similar with the current faculty
reward system. Note that he was a 10-year department head at UIUC.
Saturday, 6 June 1998
* James Eifert, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Rose-Hulman
(1200 of 1500 students major in engineering), talked from a systems
level viewpoint. His discussion included common concepts, computer
usage, teamwork, active and cooperative learning, and team-based
design projects.
* Mort Freidman, Associate Dean of Engineering at Columbia University,
talked about culture and institution. They have built a high tech,
expensive, and unique computer laboratory that induced many professors
and students to join in this effort and thus changed the academic
culture. He illustrated the saying that "Build it and they
will come" very effectively.
* Jackie Sullivan and Larry Carlson are Co-Directors of the Integrated
Teaching and Learning (ITL) Laboratory at the University of Colorado
at Boulder. They jointly introduced the ITL program that has a
new 34,000 square-foot $17 million building. The "grass roots
initiative" involved students from the very beginning. Their
students voted to give $350,000 each year for the partial operation
of this program. Their recommendations include
