This document has been archived. Title : NSF 95-65 Restructuring Engineering Education: A Focus on Change Type : Report NSF Org: EHR / DUE Date : August 16, 1995 File : nsf9565 Restructuring Engineering Education: A Focus on Change Report of an NSF Workshop on Engineering Education Chair: Carolyn Meyers Georgia Institute of Technology Rapporteur: Edward W. Ernst University of South Carolina Division of Undergraduate Education Directorate for Education and Human Resources National Science Foundation April 1995 Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this report are those of the workshop participants and do not necessarily represent NSF policy. Their recommendations are under review at NSF. Questions may be directed to: DUE Information Center 703/ 306-1666 Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, VA 22230 Internet: Undergrad@nsf.gov Electronic Dissemination: This and other NSF publications are available electronically through STIS (Science and Technology Information System), NSF's on-line publishing system, described in the "STIS Flyer" at the end of this document. Ordering by Electronic Mail or FAX: If you have access to Internet, you may order publications electronically. Internet users should send requests to pubs@NSF.gov. In your request, include the NSF publication number and title, number of copies, and your name and complete mailing address. Printed publications also may be ordered by FAX (703-644-4278). Publications should be received within 3 weeks after receipt of the request. Telephonic Device for the Deaf: NSF has TDD (Telephonic Device for the Deaf) capability which enables individuals with hearing impairments to communicate with the Division of Human Resource Management for information relating to NSF programs, employment, or for general information. This number is (703) 306-0090. National Science Foundation Directorate for Education and Human Resources January 15, 1995 Dr. Neal F. Lane, Director National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, VA 22230 Dear Neal: I am pleased to submit the report from the workshop on restructuring engineering education. The workshop was developed with leadership from the Division of Undergraduate Education of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources in cooperation with the Division of Engineering Education and Centers of the Directorate for Engineering. During June 6-9, 1994, 65 participants, representing engineering faculty, engineering education coalitions, engineering societies, industry, and students, met. The purpose of their meeting was to explore issues important to the continuing development of high quality engineering curricula which are relevant to the needs of our society as it moves into the twenty-first century. During the three days, participants worked in groups representative of the various constituencies to develop recommendations that will provide a basis for future activities and projects designed to improve the quality of undergraduate engineering education. Through their joint efforts, and with expanded support from NSF and others, academia and industry can work together to achieve comprehensive reform of undergraduate engineering education. The reform of undergraduate engineering education will better prepare graduating engineers for entering a variety of professions and provide expanded access to the contextual richness of engineering coursework for non-majors. Sincerely, Luther S. Williams Assistant Director Letter of Transmittal January 8, 1995 Dr. Robert F. Watson, Director Division of Undergraduate Education National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, VA 22230 Dear Dr. Watson: I am pleased to submit the report from the workshop, Restructuring Engineering Education. The leadership and support provided by NSF’s Division of Undergraduate Education in the planning and execution of the workshop was greatly appreciated. Held June 6-9, 1994, the workshop developed recommendations for improving the ability of engineering education to better meet the needs of the twenty-first century. The 65 participants represented engineering faculty, engineering education coalitions, engineering societies, industry, and students. Workshop participants were organized into four working groups: students, faculty, curricula, and experiential learning. Each participant was assigned to two working groups to assure maximum interaction and communication. On behalf of the members of the planning committee, the chairs and scribes of the working groups, and all other participants, I submit this report to NSF in the spirit of cooperation, collaboration, and optimism for the future of engineering education. I encourage NSF, in cooperation with other federal agencies, academia, engineering societies, and industry to take a leadership role in implementing the recommendations in the report. On behalf of all participants in the workshop, I wish to extend thanks to Drs. Norman Fortenberry, Don Kirk, Chalmers Sechrist, and Jack Waintraub of the Division of Undergraduate Education at NSF. Your continued commitment to engineering education and your recognition of the potentially central role of engineering education to comprehensive reform of undergraduate education, particularly the preparation of future teachers, is applauded. Sincerely, Carolyn W. Meyers, Ph.D. Workshop Chair Georgia Institute of Technology Preface Within the context of seeking to understand better the programmatic implications of the broad changes needed for engineering education, the National Science Foundation’s Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) in cooperation with the Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) organized the Workshop on Restructuring Engineering Education. The workshop, held June 6-9, 1994 included 65 selected participants representing individual investigators, engineering education coalitions, Technology Reinvestment Program coalitions, engineering societies, the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Board on Engineering Education, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Engineering Deans’ Council, industry, and students. The charge was to address the curricular content (including experiential/contextual learning activities) and the broad academic framework of an engineering education which is responsive to the new challenges of an increasingly interdependent global society . The workshop was organized around four working groups each with 14 participants. Each group focused on one of four topics: students, faculty, curricula, and experiential learning. Workshop participants were assigned to two working groups each to promote maximum interaction and cross-fertilization of ideas. It was explicitly recognized that the issues related to engineering education do not separate neatly but are interwoven among the topics. Not only must curricula be integrated but also much of engineering education must be integrated. The far ranging scope of the discussions in each group was reflected in the reports from the scribes and the chairs of the four groups. This report of the workshop is an integration of the reports, the perspectives, and the concerns from the four discussion groups. An attempt to summarize a report on students or faculty or curricula or contextual learning would fail to convey the nature of the discussions. In these discussions, the interfaces between the designated areas received as much attention as the areas themselves. Nevertheless, the workshop generated items on which consensus developed. These are presented in the Recommendations and the Executive Summary with the body of the report providing the background. Table of Contents LETTER FROM LUTHER S. WILLIAMS I LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL II PREFACE III RECOMMENDATIONS 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 RESTRUCTURING ENGINEERING EDUCATION: A FOCUS ON CHANGE 4 BACKGROUND 4 VISION AND CHALLENGE FOR CHANGE 4 COMPREHENSIVE RESTRUCTURING 6 FACULTY REWARDS AND INCENTIVES 8 ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION 9 DIVERSITY 10 DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENTS 11 DEVELOPMENT OF FACULTY 11 THE CURRICULUM: WHAT WE TEACH AND HOW WE TEACH 12 IMPLEMENTATION 14 THE REALITY OF CHANGE 16 REFERENCES 17 APPENDIX A: WORKSHOP AGENDA 12 APPENDIX B: INTERPRETIVE SUMMARY OF KEYNOTE ADDRESSES 15 APPENDIX C: WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS 19 APPENDIX D: KEY ISSUES 25 STUDENTS 25 FACULTY 27 CURRICULA 28 EXPERIENTIAL/CONTEXTUAL LEARNING 29 APPENDIX E: BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS 31 BIBLIOGRAPHY 31 ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS OF BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS 34 ANNOTATED SUMMARIES OF BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS 41 EDUCATION FOR THE MANUFACTURING WORLD OF THE FUTURE 41 ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND PRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES 42 ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION 45 ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION 46 QUALITY OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION 48 THE NATIONAL ACTION AGENDA FOR ENGINEERING 51 FOCUS ON THE FUTURE 53 NSF DISCIPLINARY WORKSHOPS ON UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION 54 SCHOLARSHIP RECONSIDERED 0 NEW CHALLENGES IN EDUCATING ENGINEERS 1 CREATING OUR COMMON FUTURE 4 AMERICA’S ACADEMIC FUTURE 4 CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEM RESEARCH 5 ENGINEERING EDUCATION: INNOVATION THROUGH INTEGRATION 8 PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH 8 THE LONG VIEW 10 REPORT ON THE 1993 INDUSTRY SUMMIT 12 SOCIOENGINEERING 13 WHAT IS AT THE END OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL RAINBOW? 15 ENGINEERS: THE NAVIGATORS FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE 17 ENGINEERING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE 20 STUDYING FOR THE FUTURE 21 RE-ENGINEERING ENGINEERING EDUCATION 22 TAKING THE LEAD 22 ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN A CHANGING WORLD 25 MAJOR ISSUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION 28 Recommendations 1. Engineering Education Must Encourage Multiple Thrusts for Diversity. Even though engineering and engineering education are more diverse now than in the past, challenges to our society demand even more, in both kind and degree, including: Educational and professional diversity among faculty; Ethnic, racial, and gender diversity among faculty and students; Diversity in academic backgrounds and experiences among students; and Diversity in planned educational experiences that respond to the demands of a diverse workplace including integrative laboratory experiences which promote inquiry, relevance, and hands-on experience in a variety of contexts. 2. Engineering Education needs a new system of faculty rewards and incentives. Faculty perceive the present system to focus on disciplinary research and publication; this focus must be expanded to include teaching, research, advising, and service in a way that includes all faculty as valued colleagues. 3. Assessment and evaluation processes must encourage desired expectations for both faculty and students: New approaches to assessment must judge faculty contributions across the expanded spectrum; Methods for evaluating student efforts must promote student learning; and Careful assessment of teaching and learning is needed to identify successful educational innovation and encourage adaptation/adoption by others. 4. The changes needed for engineering education require comprehensive change across the campus, not just in the engineering college. As reflected in the previous items, colleges and universities must take new approaches toward students, faculty, and curricula. These changes can not credibly be limited to engineering colleges, but will necessarily entail a comprehensive reform of undergraduate education. Executive Summary The recommendations delineated on the previous page indicate several broad foci of the workshop discussions. Restructuring engineering education requires that we examine the enterprise from a different point of view, with new measures, and with new expectations. Diversity for all aspects of engineering education seems to be a cornerstone of the restructured enterprise. To encourage diversity requires rewards and incentives compatible with the diversity we seek. Similarly, changes in our expectations for diversity and in the reward structure underscore new approaches to assessment and evaluation of faculty, students, courses, curricula and programs in engineering education. The recommendation for comprehensive change across the campus recognizes that engineering education must function as part of the larger campus setting. Workshop discussions focused, not on the recommendations per se, but on four aspects critical for engineering education: students, faculty, experiential learning, and curricula: Students are central to the educational process. As such, they should be active participants in the educational transformation process. The educational experience should develop the motivation, capability, and knowledge base for lifelong learning. We must encourage faculty to assume a more active role not only in the implementation/delivery of the educational experience for the student, but also in the innovation and continuous improvement necessary for engineering education to meet the challenges. Changes in the reward structure and the assessment process are more critical for encouraging faculty changes than for other areas. The learning experience must move from the lecture as the dominant mode to include a significant level of active learning approaches. Laboratory and internship experiences should provide the broader contexts within which to view trade-offs in the design, development, and implementation of engineering systems. These experiences should encourage world class design, development and implementation processes for engineering systems. Cooperative learning approaches and other contextual experiential learning must be integrated within the classroom. Engineering curricula should be broad and flexible, preparing students for both leadership and specialist roles in a variety of career areas. Each curriculum should be designed to develop graduates who are life- long learners and contributors to the profession, fully capable of succeeding in the current and future global, multi-disciplinary marketplace. The learning experiences for which the curriculum is the central part should accommodate and serve students with various learning styles. Further, engineering education should provide an opportunity for non-majors to study engineering topics and concepts and should work to make these studies accessible to non-majors. Restructuring Engineering Education: A Focus on Change Background Over the past 50 years a succession of studies [1-9] has probed engineering education. Each has acknowledged the enterprise to be a vital part of the nation’s higher education with many strengths and contributions. Each also noted changes to strengthen engineering education and some offered challenges for broad changes. Over this half-century period engineering education has changed and, although most of the changes can be noted as incremental, the continuous change sums to changes of significant proportions. In this last decade of the 20th century, the need for sweeping changes in engineering education appears more credible than at any time in the past several decades. Most recently, forums have been sponsored by the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Board on Engineering [10] and the American Society for Engineering Education’s (ASEE’s) Engineering Deans’ Council [11]. Each re-emphasized and expanded upon earlier calls for change. Each also advised, among other things, increased attention by the federal government to the needs of engineering education. Within the context of seeking to understand better the programmatic implications of the broad changes needed for engineering education, the National Science Foundation’s Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) in cooperation with the Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) organized the Workshop on Restructuring Engineering Education: A Systems Approach to Integrated Curricula which was held June 6-9, 1994. The participants represented individual investigators, engineering education coalitions, Technology Reinvestment Program coalitions, engineering societies, the NRC’s Board on Engineering Education, the ASEE Engineering Deans’ Council, industry, and students. The charge was to address the curricular content (including experiential/contextual learning activities) and the broad academic framework of an engineering education which is responsive to the new challenges of an increasingly interdependent global society . The participants were organized into four overlapping discussion groups: students, faculty, curricula, and experiential learning. This report is an integration of the reports, the perspectives, and the concerns from the discussion groups. Vision and Challenge for Change Our society faces significant challenges including international competition, the global environment, an increasingly diverse population, and a rapid growth in information technologies. Industry, government agencies, and educational institutions all have important roles in meeting these challenges. Higher education, in general, has the role of providing the professional preparation for the next generation of business leaders, technical professionals, government officials, and educators at all levels. Engineering education, in particular, will have a central role in our increasingly technologically-based society. The education of engineers must prepare them for the full disciplinary nature of the problems they will face. Reports and presentations about engineering education over the past decade document the growing need for change in the way we do engineering education. Sweeping changes in the context for engineering accompanied by significant changes in the challenges offered by the engineering workplace bring an urgency to the need for broad change in the education of engineering graduates [12-13]. There is a growing realization among engineering faculty that a new vision for the education of engineers is evolving, a vision based upon the needs of engineering in the 21st century. The philosophy that forms this vision differs from the current more rigid and more uniform basis of today’s curricula. This vision welcomes and encourages all motivated and talented students to become engineers. These students discover engineering from the beginning of their academic career and enjoy a nurturing environment throughout their university education. They find flexible curricula that recognize individual learning styles and diverse career paths. Guided by advisors and mentors, students choose electives for career preparation in support of educational goals and a strong foundation in the fundamentals of engineering. The new paradigm depicts engineering education as broad and forward looking. It describes an engineering education that: · offers a broad liberal education that provides the diversity and breadth needed for engineering; · prepares graduates for entry into careers and further study in both the engineering and non-engineering marketplace; and · develops the motivation, capability, and knowledge base for lifelong learning. Faculty accept responsibility as mentors, with a focus on the development of the student as an emerging professional, building the student’s self esteem and competencies, and accepting responsibility for the intellectual growth of the student. The engineering faculty adopts technological literacy as a mission for engineering education. The contents of the new curricula reflect this vision, and courses include a broad range of concerns: environmental, political and social issues, international context, historical context, and legal and ethical ramifications of decisions. For this vision to become reality requires sweeping changes not only in engineering education, but also in the environment for the engineering education enterprise. A new engineering education philosophy in conjunction with profound cultural changes should provide the environment for the new curricula. The most important means for change include improved pedagogy, revised curricula content, and a process of continuous assessment and continuous improvement. The overall goal of engineering curricula should be to develop engineering graduates who are professional contributors and lifelong learners capable of succeeding in the current and future global, multi-disciplinary markets. Further, engineering education must help develop technologically literate graduates of non-engineering programs. Although the technical component will continue to be the core of an engineering education, economic/political/social/environmental contexts of engineering will be explicitly addressed. Emphasis will be placed on the critical need for the motivation, capability, and knowledge base for lifelong learning. The capability for learning effectively and efficiently benefits an engineering graduate as much as any capability and should be provided by an engineering education. Changes that help students develop this capability for self-learning and provide increasing opportunities during their academic program for practicing this skill are needed. Engineering education must be flexible enough to support the diverse career aspirations and needs of our students as well as agile enough to enable rapid transformation in response to emerging social demands. Necessary characteristics include: · new and highly flexible degree options for students who intend to practice engineering; · new educational pathways for students who need or want a significant technical component to their education, but who intend to pursue non-engineering degrees; · a broader service role within the university community with some engineering courses included in the general education requirements for non-engineering students; and · continued effort to understand and respond to diversity in learning styles and their implications for student learning. We need processes whereby curricula within existing departments can be renewed more rapidly. In addition, we need processes for more dramatic change, enabling curricula to adapt quickly to societal needs, analogous to “flexible and agile” manufacturing techniques. Just as we need mechanisms for quickly assembling new programs we need mechanisms for disassembling them when their time is past. See Figure 1. Comprehensive Restructuring The challenge for change described in the preceding paragraphs focuses on the college of engineering. Yet meeting this challenge requires comprehensive change in the university, including changes in non- engineering academic units with which engineering students interact as well as changes to the campus culture with even broader impact. The engineering college is not an island in the campus ocean. Instituting the changes requires a comprehensive restructuring of undergraduate education. On each campus, the engineering college must take the lead in this comprehensive change that benefits all of undergraduate education and requires participation by many sectors across the campus. The goal is a better prepared more competent and more fully contributing graduate fully capable of and confident with life-long learning. The diversity of the enterprise must be celebrated and not just tolerated. Figure 1. Flowstream of Restructured Engineering Education This requires new links and new approaches to rewards and incentives, assessment and evaluation for faculty and students. Faculty Rewards and Incentives The quality of engineering education is the responsibility of everyone: students, faculty, and the campus administration. However, the faculty play the leading role -- the front line in the delivery of quality engineering education. Critical to the quality of engineering education is a faculty that is diverse in cultural and professional experiences, that is committed to lifelong learning and scholarship, and that places primary emphasis on the education of engineering professionals. In particular, we must develop rewards and incentives that promote the contributions of all faculty and that signal clearly that they are valued colleagues within their units, their institution, and society. The new system of rewards and incentives should: · recognize the contributions of teaching, advising, research, and service; and · provide an appropriate response to contributions that may have received less recognition and remuneration in the past. Since the reward system is the driving force which encourages or discourages faculty investment in the effort necessary to reform engineering education, changing the faculty reward system is critical. At most institutions faculty are major players in the faculty reward system. Thus, much of the push for change in the reward system must focus on the faculty. Even though this may be difficult since many senior faculty were rewarded under the old reward system, overwhelming evidence tells us the engineering education reward system must change. Faculties that fail to change will find their engineering programs lagging behind others. These schools will become followers and not leaders and their graduates will find they are at a disadvantage in the engineering market place. Although faculty are critical agents for change in the undergraduate engineering enterprise, faculty cannot accomplish this change alone. It requires the commitment of the broad academic community (students, faculty, and administration) in cooperation with industry, and government. The goals and objectives require changes in rewards and incentives that include broad and sweeping initial steps. We must avoid creating new barriers during this transformation process. Diverse faculty with diverse interests bring diverse solutions. Some faculty will take strong leadership roles in initiating this cultural change, but the system of rewards and recognition must be structured to encourage the participation of a broad representation of the faculty community and recognize all as valued colleagues. Rewards and recognition must encourage programmatic risk taking without exposing individual faculty to undue career risk. Implementation and institutionalization of a new reward system will require long term commitment by the community. Assessment/Evaluation A new system of rewards and incentives requires the use of existing assessment techniques and the development of new assessment techniques for student learning as well as faculty teaching, advising, research, and service. Such techniques should: · provide feedback to students on what they are learning including problem formulation, problem solution, critical thinking, innovative design, and creative synthesis; · motivate further student learning; and · provide better metrics for assessment of teaching, advising, research, and service. Assessment drives student learning. The dominant assessment method that focuses on exams and midterms drives students to rote learning, memorization, cramming, and manipulation within narrowly defined problems. An appropriate reward and incentive system promotes meaningful learning, actively involving students in making choices and defining their learning experience. We need new evaluation and assessment methodologies focused on student learning in new educational environments. These methodologies must support the faculty in assessing student learning, the subsequent success of graduates, and the health of engineering educational programs. Evaluation and assessment have central roles in the curriculum reform process. We need new processes for assessing both student learning and the effectiveness of our programs. The educational community as a whole should undertake this work, with collaboration between faculty, undergraduates, graduate students and industry. NSF has shown it’s commitment to this task by awarding prestigious National Young Investigator awards to PI’s taking rigorous approaches to understanding the teaching and learning process in engineering. Diversity Diversity is fundamental to successful engineering education. Diversity in faculty, the student body, and program emphasis must become part of the future of engineering education. Institutions need rewards and incentives that promote exemplary programs that demonstrate successful recruitment, mentoring, and retention of women and minorities through the senior academic and administrative ranks. Institutions also need rewards and incentives for exemplary programs that demonstrate the development of a professionally diverse faculty. This includes industrial, international, or government experience as well as education beyond engineering. The new engineering curriculum must encourage multiple thrusts for diversity. It must serve the needs of students entering the undergraduate educational process on a variety of paths and with a variety of skills and backgrounds. Similarly, the curricular structure should assure flexibility to support the diverse career pathways and goals of students as well as the needs of a student body whose diversity incorporates ethnic, racial, age, and gender diversity, and a very wide diversity in learning styles and aesthetics. Further, undergraduate engineering education must support two classes of career aspirations: · all students who have a motivation to practice engineering; and · those who desire a curricular pathway with significant technical content, but focused on various non-engineering career objectives, including careers in K-12 education, public policy, management, financial services, and health care. Engineering education must be accessible to a wide spectrum of students coming to us from diverse pathways. Colleges of engineering need to work to make our communities more accessible and responsive to students entering the educational process from many gateways including: community colleges, engineering technology programs, traditional K-12 gateways, the displaced industrial and military workforce, and other returning older students. Guidance to possible approaches is given by the Foundation engineering education coalition’s strong link to community colleges and the Greenfield engineering education coalition’s link to community-based technical education programs. Development of Students Multiple paths for entry and re-entry to engineering study, as well as the diverse needs of students within our programs, require effective advising and mentoring processes. Engineering faculty, in collaboration with colleagues across the campus, must coordinate the education of our students beyond engineering topics. We must help students integrate rather than compartmentalize their education. Lifelong learning has become an important concept recognizing the rapid advances in technology over the past 40 years and anticipating that technological changes will be no less for the foreseeable future. Most engineers experience several major job changes during their career. Undergraduate engineering programs can no longer ignore the fact that they cannot provide all the necessary knowledge for graduates to remain competitive in their careers; they must educate the student for life, not just for the initial job. Students must know how to learn, and must be able to assess their skills and educational needs. This requires they have confidence in their ability to satisfy the need for lifelong learning; this confidence must be accompanied and fortified with a passion for the practice of engineering and a zeal for excellence in that practice. Curricula should be designed to cultivate a sense of professionalism. The student follows the lead of the faculty, adapts to change and, in fact, comes to enjoy the challenge of change. The experience gained from their passage through the education process has prepared graduates to be confident, to move forward and to accept the challenge of change. Design clinics represent one means of achieving such inculcation of values among students. Harvey Mudd College, the originator of design clinics and an excellent model of the implementation, recently hosted a DUE-sponsored workshop to help others learn how to effectively use this pedagogic device. Development of Faculty Faculty are role models for students and no role is more important than that of the faculty member as student, learner, and scholar. Although individual faculty members have the ultimate responsibility for their professional development, guidance and assistance are important, perhaps critical. Faculty development opportunities can take many forms: · involving consultants, seminars or workshops which focus on administration, advising, research, or teaching; · providing a variety of opportunities for engineering professors to maintain engineering literacy in scientific and engineering knowledge, engineering applications, use of sophisticated software tools, and proficiency with design methodologies; · developing opportunities for faculty to have or maintain industrial literacy involving consulting, industrial sabbaticals, industrial employment, and collaboration with engineers in industry; and · promoting significant multi-disciplinary interactions among the faculty through: reduced institutional barriers, team teaching, new university structures, and recognition of multi-disciplinary activities in promotion and tenure decisions. Engineering faculty must take a more proactive role in making industry aware that it is a vital part of the educational process, including seeking active participation in the design, implementation, and evaluation of new curricula. This must include an effort by engineering faculty to work with industry to help them expand their practices for recruiting students, as well as enhance faculty/industry relationships, an area in which far more numerous and sustained programs of real interaction are needed. Further, if the emerging needs of our students are to be met, the faculty as a whole must incorporate significant industrial experience. For example, a DUE- sponsored project at Wytheville Community College is sending engineering technology faculty on industrial internships to gain insights and skills which will enrich their classroom teaching. The Curriculum: What We Teach and How We Teach Students learn in different fashions, some more comfortable with traditional lectures, but most more receptive to active learning approaches that engage their problem solving skills and nonverbal cognition abilities. “Learning-by-doing” is the norm in many professional fields and it should be an important component of engineering education. However, current engineering instruction typically relies upon large lectures, highly structured problem assignments, and structured examinations for assessment. The process of engineering education should change to use more effective pedagogical approaches and to engage students more effectively in the educational enterprise. Emerging technologies, including multi-media, computer-based simulation and computer-aided engineering, can be important components in the educational process along with collaborative learning, team projects, and other student centered modes. We seek changes that provide improved learning environments including: · active learning; collaborative learning; modular learning; · research, development and practice experience for undergraduates; · new physical environments; · distance learning; · hands-on learning; and · integrative learning. Curricula are usually defined in terms of required and elective courses. The typical course definition focuses on the knowledge to be mastered and prerequisite requirements. Most engineering courses are inaccessible to non-engineering students. Curricula for the 21st century should represent holistic education, involving mastery of a limited set of engineering fundamentals, preparation for lifelong learning, and flexibility to allow pursuit of individual student goals and aspirations. It is impossible to define an engineering curriculum applicable everywhere in the nation. Each school serves its own constituents, and we should expect and applaud diversity in curricula and programs. Assessment and evaluation of the educational process are critical for exposing problems and enabling continual improvement. Traditional assessment methods such as student surveys of course quality, accreditation processes, and the market demand for graduates should be augmented with new approaches. The current examination, co-sponsored by industry and NSF’s DUE and EEC divisions, of Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) criteria, processes and procedures signals a new role for ABET in the assessment and evaluation of engineering education. Engineering colleges must assume new responsibility for promoting technological literacy throughout the university. For engineers and non-engineers alike, technological literacy means more than acquisition of technical skills and knowledge, more than “nuts and bolts.” It also means understanding and appreciating technology’s evolution over time, and technology’s cultural, social, historical, economic, political, legal and environmental concepts. The future of our avowedly technological society depends on greater technological literacy. Engineering courses within the engineering discipline benefit non- technical majors, analogous to the benefits engineering students receive from their experiences within the culture of the liberal arts community. Engineering faculty should assume leadership roles in integrating curricular elements across disciplines, including math, the physical and social sciences, and the humanities, to better serve the needs of our students. Drexel University’s Enhanced Engineering Educational Experience program, initiated with DUE support, provides an example of an integrated holistic curricular approach to lower division instruction. The program has proven so popular that its methods have been expanded to encompass the entire freshman class and serve as the basis of the Gateway engineering education coalition. A DUE sponsored laboratory improvement project at Western Kentucky University provides a model contextual learning experience. As part of a biomedical engineering curriculum, students are measuring occupational exposure to chemical and physical stressors not only in student wood working and chemistry labs, but in local manufacturing plants. Through such methods students can immediately grasp the importance of their studies to real world applications. Implementation Anticipating the challenges of the 21st century, undergraduate education, in partnership with industry, must prepare leaders, not only of professional communities, but of all segments in an increasingly technological society. Graduates are, and will be increasingly, called upon to utilize not only technical knowledge, but communication skills, managerial and financial capabilities, awareness of social implications, and ethical judgment. This breadth of skills is needed by graduates who will become effective leaders in areas such as advanced manufacturing, materials and processing, biotechnology, infrastructure enhancement, health care delivery, and environmental preservation. The engineering education community is well positioned to foster the breadth expected of graduates. Broadly defined, the community includes not only engineering and engineering technology faculty members, but also industrial professionals who supervise interns and cooperative education students, as well as the students themselves as active participants, each responsible for his or her own education. In addition, this community interacts with instructional designers familiar with integrating advanced technologies into effective pedagogic systems, academic support personnel who provide enrichment and enhancement opportunities to students, and academic counselors and advisors who provide students with information on career options and required coursework. Thus, in order to prepare graduates for the challenges of the 21st century, the engineering education community must : Develop a rigorous educational research base on the teaching and learning of undergraduate engineering topics; Restructure curricula to include integration of contextual experience, appreciation for the complexities of physical devices and structures, broad attention to learning environments, and recognition of the differing backgrounds and career goals of students; and Develop faculty and organizational structures better prepared to implement revised curricula and laboratories and to address the broad range of factors which influence student learning. Redesigned engineering educational systems should better meet the needs not only of engineers, but also: the large number of students who will use their backgrounds in engineering and technology to serve them in their roles as literate citizens; future leaders in industry, academe and government; future teachers of mathematics, science and technology, including those at the elementary level; and future scientists and mathematicians. We believe these objectives can be successfully achieved through an integrated systems approach to the design, implementation, and evaluation of undergraduate engineering curricula. The objectives of this approach are to: eliminate barriers caused by departmental boundaries; achieve vertical and horizontal integration within curricula; foster integration between engineering and other technical and non-technical fields; and promote integration of diverse sets of students. Consequently, this requires cooperation among faculty within a given engineering department and faculty in: other engineering departments; science and mathematics; management science; humanities; arts; and social science. Expected results of these collaborations are determinants of successful teaching and learning at the undergraduate level, innovative curricular frameworks, comprehensive faculty development activities to facilitate implementation of the new curricula, and enhanced integrative and contextual laboratory activities. The interdisciplinary nature of such an integrated systems approach would be central and particularly challenging and would require development by a multidisciplinary project team and strong support across academic units. Examples that illustrate some approaches might include development, implementation, and evaluation of: - a complete curriculum that integrates topics from science, mathematics, management, English, social sciences and humanities, and from the various disciplines of engineering, created and taught by multidisciplinary teams; - a new delivery system which integrates the effective use of technology in the curriculum to maximize access to students from underrepresented groups, and to accommodate a variety of backgrounds, learning styles and rates; - engineering-based curricula intended for students planning to pursue career options such as medicine, law, business, and K-14 level teaching, as well as "engineering and technology appreciation" course sequences for non-engineering students, including science and mathematics majors; and - a unified engineering core and an integrated capstone design experience with active participation by all departments within a college of engineering. To be credible all projects would have to include the following features: the faculty and institutional support necessary for systemic and lasting impact; close cooperation of faculty in engineering with faculty in other disciplines, including, for example, mathematics, science, management and the humanities as a multidisciplinary project team with multidisciplinary representation among the co-principal investigators; mechanisms to increase the diversity of students who are attracted to and successful in engineering; development of interpersonal skills such as teamwork, leadership, and sensitivity to multicultural considerations; emphasis on developing students' capability to learn on their own; development and implementation of new, effective instructional methods; development of instructional materials, such as textbooks, course modules, lab manuals, software and multimedia presentations; an evaluation component with both formative and summative elements to determine how effectively the project is meeting its goals and the cost effectiveness of the curriculum; dissemination that facilitates widespread adaptability and increases adoption of the approaches and products developed in the project; Additionally, projects would be expected to have several of the following elements: an emphasis on oral and written communications skills integrated throughout the curriculum; a focus on projects, experiential learning, and discovery-oriented learning environments to develop student capability to solve ill- posed and open-ended problems; cooperative relationships with industry involving students, faculty and industrial practitioners as a community of learners; development of faculty and training of graduate students (for those institutions with graduate programs) to improve adaptation and implementation of effective approaches to teaching and learning; initiation of new instructional and staffing paradigms that optimize efficient and effective use of instructional staff and technology; flexibility to enable students to prepare for careers in a variety of fields, including medicine, law, business, and teaching, as well as engineering; interaction among faculty from education, science, mathematics and engineering in a cooperative activity to enhance K-14 teacher preparation; a strong component of international education; comprehensive elements to introduce engineering and technology to students from non-technical majors, as well as to students majoring in science and mathematics. The Reality of Change For changes in any of our institutions to endure, the community must participate broadly. Engineering education is no exception. Each part of the community has a role and for each we can identify tasks, often to be shared with other parts of the community. NSF and others provide stimulus for change and the leadership to begin. Academic institutions not only implement the changes but also, in partnership with the employers of engineering graduates, seek to understand better the educational needs of the student. Enabling the graduate to succeed in the current and future global multi- disciplinary world depends on this understanding. References 1. Engineering Education and Practice in the United States, Foundations of our Techno-economic Future, Committee on the Education and Utilization of the Engineer, National Research Council, Washington, DC 1985. 2. Education for the Manufacturing World of the Future, National Academy of Engineering, National Academy Press, Washington, DC 1985. 3. Quality of Engineering Education, Final Report of the Quality of Engineering Education Project, American Society for Engineering Education, September 1986. 4. The National Action Agenda for Engineering Education, Report of an ASEE Task Force American Society for Engineering Education, Washington, DC, November, 1987. 5. Engineering Undergraduate Education, Committee on the Education and Utilization of the Engineer, National Research Council, Washington, DC 1986. 6. Engineering Technology Education, Committee on the Education and Utilization of the Engineer, National Research Council, Washington, DC 1986. 7. Focus on the Future: A National Action Plan for Career-Long Education for Engineers, Report of the Committee on Career-Long Education for Engineers, National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC 1988. 8. Report on the National Science Foundation Disciplinary Workshops on Undergraduate Education, Workshop on Engineering pages 51-55, April 1989. 9. New Challenges in Educating Engineers, Report of a Conference presented by Illinois Institute of Technology, June 10-11, 1991. 10. Major Issues in Engineering Education, A working paper of the Board on Engineering Education, National Research Council, Washington, DC, August, 1993. 11. Engineering Education in a Changing World, Report of a Workshop held in Washington, DC, February 24-25, 1994, American Society for Engineering Education, October 1994. 12. Socioengineering, Norman R. Augustine, Remarks: University of Colorado Engineering Centennial Convocation, October 1, 1993. 13. Engineers: The Navigators for a Sustainable Future, George E. Brown, Jr., Representative to Congress from California, Remarks at National Academy of Engineering Symposium on New Directions in Science and Technology, Washington, DC, October 7, 1993. Appendix A Workshop Agenda