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Summary Notes on "Tomorrow's Engineering Education,"
by Wallace Fowler, prism, ASEE, January 2001, p. 38. Summarized
by J. T. P. Yao - 1/9/01
"When examining engineering programs in the United States,
we see many faculty members who are 60 years of age and older. Most
of them entered engineering - and engineering education - in the
post-Sputnik decade (1957-1967), and will retire within the next
ten years. As a result, many institutions will lose from one third
to one half of their current faculty to retirement before 2010.
… An ideal situation would be to pair retiring faculty members
with their 'replacements,' letting them work together for a year
- writing proposals, team-teaching courses, and advising students,
for example. …"
"Higher education has changed significantly over the past
four decades, and the environment for new faculty members today
is difficult. The demands placed on young engineering faculty members
are more daunting every year. We expect young members to generate
more funded research, to write more refereed journal articles, to
present more papers at technical meetings, and to establish stronger
regional, national, and international reputations than ever before.
… The importance of good teaching is usually stated but is
not emphasized."
"… We must add new elements to the academic reward structure
that support, encourage, and reward high-tech academic innovation.
Development of high-tech course materials - including Web-based,
interactive, and CD-ROMs - is a time- and resource-intensive academic
design process. …"
"Engineering education will be different tomorrow. It will
either be designed by engineering educators or by others and given
to us to implement. … We must rise to the challenge."
[Readers who are interested in this article are encouraged to read
the original paper in its entirety. Other summary notes on faculty
reward systems are available on the Internet at http://lohman.tamu.edu
under the heading "Summaries of Papers ..."]
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