The Other Re-engineering of Engineering Education, 1900-1965, by B. E. Seely, Journal of Engineering Education, ASEE, July 1999, pp. 285-294. [113 references]

Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 7/10/00

"Many engineering colleges in the 1990s are busy revising the style and substance of engineering curricula to provide increased attention to design. … This paper examines how and why this earlier 're-engineering' of engineering education came to pass. … The paper next discusses the efforts of leaders such as Solomon Cady Hollister and Eric Walker to introduce changes after 1945, and concludes by noting how their initial visions of curricula based on engineering science were altered during implementation."

"Recent efforts to re-emphasize design in engineering schools and develop a better balance with engineering science actually fit into a history that extends further into the past than two decades. … In fact, the changes being proposed in the 1990s seek to undo an earlier 're-engineering' of engineering education in the United States, an effort that dominated the first half of this century. … It was only after World War II that American engineering colleges completely embraced engineering science as the foundation of engineering education. …"

"Moreover, research was not a normal activity for most engineering faculty, thanks to crushing teaching loads. Only after 1900 did a few engineering schools begin to expect faculty to conduct research as part of their professional lives. And that research almost always was highly practical. … Industrial funds were rarely available before 1920, and then at only a few schools. But when industrial sponsors supported research, they expected practical results, not theoretical studies."

"After 1920, however, firm foundations for real change began to be laid in American engineering schools by a number of European engineers. … In fact, these Europeans brought engineering science to the U.S. They approached engineering with a belief in the utility of applied mathematics and greater interest in developing theoretical bases for engineering. … As a result, the Europeans approached engineering problems as general cases in physics or exercises in applied mathematics. Yet, these Europeans were not mere theoreticians, for they shared the engineer's commitment to solving real-world problems. All of them spent time as consultants. … Only after World War II did their approach become widely accepted."

"… Within a decade, the entire educational enterprise had been transformed. First, and avalanche of federal money, primarily from the military and the Atomic Energy Commission, displaced the smaller industrial research projects that had been conducted by a few engineering colleges before 1940. … After 1945, however, federal grants worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year supported not just researchers but entire graduate programs with marvelous new facilities and expensive equipment. … Engineering scientists were much better equipped to conduct such projects than many practically-trained engineers and received priority in funding. … The military embarked upon a massive permanent research program to be prepared for the next war, and engineering science assumed much greater importance in American engineering colleges. … American engineers schooled in the European approach now began to alter undergraduate curricula and expectations about graduate work. First, they made more time for science and math courses. … Graduate work in engineering grew steadily in importance during the 1950s, with the strongest emphasis placed on engineering science. … These changes in research and curriculum moved engineering science into the mainstream of American engineering education. …"

"This effort to link engineering science and to practice in industry simply continued the long-standing assumption that ties between industry and American engineering schools were natural. … Indications of divergence became apparent in the preparation of a study of engineering education by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in the early 1950s. Hollister, ASEE president in 1951-52, set the study in motion after the Engineers' Council for Professional Development (forerunner to the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology), worried that engineering curricula were not 'breaching the gap between the fundamental sciences and engineering instruction.' The first draft of the so-called Grinter Report stressed the need for more science in engineering curricula and then, more controversially, proposed two tiers of engineering instruction. … Readers of the report disagreed sharply, however, and the final version of the Grinter Report settled for a strong endorsement of the need for more science in engineering schools. Why the protest? The key, again, was military research finding. What engineering school would voluntarily cut itself off from military research dollars, the key to building academic engineering programs? …"

"By the late 1950s, engineering deans had learned this equation for growth. Schools seeking to grow had to develop graduate programs to support fundamental research programs, and emphasize engineering science. But the goal was not to serve industry, rather to attract federal research funds. About 70 percent of all research money came from the federal government through the 1950s, making this source far more important - and lucrative - than corporate funding. …"

"In 1965, Eric Walker was ASEE president and used the office as an opportunity to launch another study of engineering education. This report found that engineering education had been transformed since 1945. … And nearly every engineering school with ambitious leaders had developed a professional-scientific curriculum, not a professional-general program. Thus engineering science came to dominate American engineering schools."

"… Many writers complained that engineering journals contained little material of practical use, and some engineers even dropped their professional memberships. Most intriguingly, educators and reformers such as Eric Walker and Solomon Hollister were not pleased about how things turned out. … In his autobiography, Walker criticized European-born Harvard professors of the 1930s because 'their sacred cow was 'engineering science' - meaning theoretical analysis regardless of whether it could be applied. …' By the 1970s, Walker felt this description fit too many engineering faculty. Frustrated at the 'overemphasis on science for its own sake' among engineering educators, Walker argued that 'The danger for engineers … is that they can become too enamored of research for its own sake. A good engineer … must strike a balance between knowing and doing.'"

"… To many practicing engineers and engineering faculty alike, parts of this history are quite familiar, because they lived through it. … It created a gulf between engineering schools and industrial practice, and perhaps even an imbalance of theory and practice in the colleges. … Almost forty years after Hollister, Walker, and others first proposed the idea, engineering educators are again attempting to harness more effectively engineering science to questions of practice and the problems of industry. … The world of engineering and technology is very different in 1997, to be sure. But maybe the result will be a style of engineering education that more closely resembles what Hollister, Walker, and his European colleagues envisioned after World War II, a system that balances theory and practice."

[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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