58th Annual North Midwest Section Meeting
of the
American Society for Engineering Education
October 4, 1996
Fargo, North Dakota
Michigan Technological University
I had the privilege of spending some time with Sir Frank Whittle and Dr. Hans von Ohain, each of whom invented the jet engine when he was 21 years old, independently of one another. Sir Frank died at age 89 in August of this year; we bestowed an honorary doctorate upon Dr. von Ohain when I was dean of engineering at West Virginia University. I was present when they jointly received the Draper Prize for superior engineering in 1993. On that occasion, Sir Frank pointedly said that we need to do a better job of listening to our 21-year-olds and to realize that individuals can make major contributions to engineering at early stages of their development. More than 65 years after the accomplishment for which he was being recognized, Sir Frank hit a nail on the head with that advice. In a personal conversation with Sir Frank, he said to me that in his experience, young people rise to and often exceed our expectations if we will but support them and give them opportunities. He gave credit to those who had done so for him when he was only 21 years old.
Drs. von Ohain and Whittle were youngsters who understood engineering very well, and yes, we can say that old people applauded their accomplishments, in the case of the Draper Prize, more than 60 years later. But Cervantes point was that it is not easy to assure that youngsters, as he called them, truly understand, especially the parts of Don Quixote s story in which a person gives his or her all in pursuit of an impossible dream. Understanding comes with experience. Understanding comes from trying, from making mistakes and from feeling the rush resulting from success. There are those Aha! moments that come from doing, not passively observing. Engineering is not a spectator sport. It is a hands-on, do-it-yourself, smell it, feel it, hear it, see it, do it activity.
One of my sons is principal percussionist with a symphony orchestra in Spain. Toward the end of his freshman year at the Eastman School of Music I visited him and had a late-night conversation with him at the local Friendly s ice cream restaurant after one of his concerts. I said, "Gee, Joe, its great that you have been able to be in several orchestras and ensembles, right from the beginning of your freshman year, playing alongside upperclassmen and graduate students."
He said, "Yeah, I've learned a tremendous amount in a short time, and the variety has been challenging . . . the percussion ensemble, the jazz ensemble, the Philharmonia, the Eastman Wind Ensemble. . . ."
He said, "Dad, what do freshman engineering majors do at West Virginia University?"
I blinked. "What do you mean?"
He said, "Well, you know. Do they get to do things like I m doing?"
I hesitated, sensing that this was becoming one of the rare serious conversations my son and I had had . "Well," I said, "Engineering is different than music."
"Yeah, I know, Dad, but I guess I don t understand why there has to be that much difference, at least in how freshman engineering students are treated."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, what do your engineering students take during their freshman year?"
(This was clearly a rhetorical question, because Joe knew that the answer was calculus, chemistry, English and freshman engineering.)
"And what do they do during their second year?"
(He also knew the answer to this question: physics, statics, dynamics, etc.)
Joe said, "Dad, if I had been told that I had to wait until my junior year to do music the way you tell your students they have to wait to do real engineering, I wouldn t have majored in music."
I was feeling a bit defensive at this point and described our outstanding freshman engineering program and talked about co- op program opportunities. I think Joe sensed my discomfort and so he changed the subject.
On later occasions, Joe and I continued the dialogue, comparing engineering and music education. He went on to get a masters degree from the Manhattan School of Music in New York and to play with the New York Philharmonic. We agreed that one similarity between music and engineering majors, at least the successful ones, is their tremendous work ethic. And I came to appreciate the depth of music theory that Joe learned and used. But one of the nagging questions that has stuck with me all of these years since the conversation in Friendly s ice cream restaurant in Rochester, New York is: Is engineering education, from the perspectives of freshman and sophomore engineering majors, as relevant, attractive and connected as it could and should be?
A related question is: Is engineering a performance major? Let me explain what I mean, again in the context of Joe s experience at the Eastman School of Music. There are three fundamental types of undergraduate degrees at the school of music: one trains musicologists, another prepares music teachers, and the other prepares performers. Joe wanted and earned a performance degree; the emphasis was on performing. He was prepared to perform professionally.
Now, to me, there is no doubt that a B.S. degree in engineering is, or at least should be, a performance degree; that is, we are certifying that a graduate with a B.S. degree in engineering is ready to perform as an engineer, not as a teacher of engineering and not as a counterpart to a musicologist. And it is with this performance philosophy in mind that I address you today.
I expect that most of you are familiar with how medical schools operate and how they are structured. About half of the faculty and coursework are in what they call the basic sciences (e.g. pharmacology, toxicology, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, etc.) and the other half are in clinical practice centered around actually dealing directly with real patients who have real problems. One can earn an M.D. degree and practice medicine with, of course, some designated specialty (e.g. cardiology, radiology, dermatology, pulmonary medicine or psychiatry). Or one can earn a Ph.D. degree in a so- called basic science such as toxicology and pursue a research career in academia, industry or a government laboratory. And some earn both the M.D. and the Ph.D. simultaneously.
How would you feel about trusting the care of your family members to a physician who did not have adequate clinical training and experience? Clearly, the M.D. degree is a performance degree. With an internship and a residency beyond the academic degree and training, the young M.D. still scrambles to deal with the complexities of direct patient care.
Likewise, the young engineer is a practitioner who is expected to perform well from the outset of his or her career and to continue to learn and grow as a performer, not as a spectator. And so all concerned (i.e. the engineering graduate, the employer, the engineering school and the general public) have stakes in the performance ability of the individual engineer. And the understanding, as accentuated by this conference, and the skills of that individual engineer are as important to those stakeholders as those of the musician and the medical doctor to their constituents.
And so, with this clear focus on performance expectations, we come to my theme today which is, in the spirit of this summer s Olympics in Atlanta, Going for the Gold in Engineering Education.
Of all of the institutions developed by humankind, few do a better job of motivating and rewarding superior performance than the Olympics, with youngsters from 197 nations competing for gold medals, pursuing in the great majority of cases, an impossible and yet energizing dream. For the youngsters who participate in the Olympics, Going for the Gold does not mean coping; it does not mean competing. It means WINNING.
To be a winner, there has to be an abiding spirit of confidence that what we do virtually every hour of every day is moving us toward a gold medal. The purposefulness with which an athlete prepares for the Olympics is an essential ingredient of success; likewise, that same type of purposefulness and that developing sense of confidence should pervade engineering education. Most of us here today are the coaches of the individuals who will be competing and striving in the global engineering arena in the early 21st Century. We have the responsibility to assure that engineering education is relevant, attractive and connected for each and every engineering student with whom we work.
In the same way that athletes are coached to be prepared for the next Olympics, we must coach our young engineers toward success in terms of the measures and indicators that will be used in the world of practical affairs to judge their performances.
Our graduates will need leadership skills, team skills and communication skills that are continually being honed and strengthened through their careers. They will need to be creative, innovative and entrepreneurial if they are to go beyond coping and competing to winning. They will need to have a steadfast commitment to lifelong learning with the realization that once behind in knowledge and skills, it is difficult if not impossible to catch up. At the outset, they should have a keen sense that the bachelor of science degree is only a beginner s license and that daily dedication to continual improvement is a never-ending essential ingredient of continuing success.
Are we satisfied with what we are doing in our universities in these regards today? I certainly am not, at Michigan Tech. Find an Olympic athlete or team satisfied with status quo, and I guarantee you that we won t see that individual or team do well in the years ahead. I believe the same philosophy applies to engineering education. A reason we have to engage in continuous quality improvement institutionally and programmatically is that our students need to experience an ever improving environment while they are students. If we are simply treading water for years at a time individually or institutionally, we aren't providing a winning environment in which our students are being prepared to be winners. Let s give our students credit: contrary to some old conventional wisdom, they do know quality and they can sense a winning environment while they are in school. Universities as Unique Institutions.
Prior to development of land-grant universities in the United States 130 years ago, American colleges and universities were elitist organizations that were relatively isolated, insulated and detached from the economic and social mainstream; there were few connections with the world of practical affairs.
The establishment of land-grant universities and technological universities in the late 1800's brought a more practical focus to American higher education. The contemporary university in America has evolved to relate more directly to the economic and social structure of the world. The traditional roles and responsibilities of universities, i.e. creation and dissemination of knowledge, continue to guide and shape our activities, but now in more practical and sophisticated ways than was true even a generation ago.
Universities continue to be unique institutions. I believe that the core reason for being, the primary mission, the most essential aspect of each and every one of the colleges and universities in the United States and the thousands of colleges and universities around the world is to contribute to the improvement of the human condition.
The pace of change in higher education in the United States has been accelerating; the forces of change are market, financial, ideological and technical in nature.
Market forces have been with us for decades, reflecting the demands by industry for graduates and for continuing education. Financial forces in public universities have been shifting during the past 30 years from large state government appropriations and low student tuition to much smaller state appropriations and higher student tuition. Ideological forces (whether we called them that or not) have reflected the balance of sciences, mathematics, engineering, humanities, social sciences and other courses required by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the specific philosophy of any particular engineering school and the university within which it resides. And technological forces have most recently been heavily affected by telecommunications, computing, the Internet, and information technology in general.
When we think about changes in engineering education, it is insufficient to be preoccupied with the specific technical substance and content in a particular subject matter or discipline. Of course, it is imperative that subject matter be up-to-date and that we help students learn engineering as it will be, based on recent research and development and the real problems facing industry. In the global economy of the 21st Century, for any country to be at least competitive, we must assure that engineering education looks forward, anticipates the needs of industry, and prepares our students for life-long learning.
Each of us needs to understand and appreciate that market forces are increasingly demanding continuous improvement in education and that slowness in shifting paradigms may result in significant negative impact on the program in which we are engaged. In fact, past successes may set the stage for mediocrity or even failure if self-satisfaction constrains the pace of change in the program. There is growing national, state and regional emphasis on assessment of quality, effectiveness, and productivity in all levels of education in the U.S. Governors, legislators, institutional boards, accreditation agencies, and other constituents and stakeholders are expecting and, in some cases, demanding performance assessment.
Financial forces in American higher education have been increasingly influential in reconfiguring programs and universities. Student tuition has risen so high and the cost of earning a college degree has become so expensive that many families have had to sacrifice substantially to be able to send their children to college; some have not been able to find the means to do so. This phenomenon is not new but it is being increasingly accentuated and discussed in public forums. At the same time, state support in most of our 50 states has been static at best when inflation is considered, and Federal government support is uncertain. In fact, there continue to be indications that Federal support of non-defense research and development may decrease, perhaps drastically, during the next ten years.
As market forces call for more and financial forces seem to say less, the ideology from within the engineering education community in general and within the specific university and the engineering program obviously cannot be sustained in isolation. As we realistically assess what it is that we are currently doing and what we should do during the next five to ten years, I believe the real winners are going to be those who can see around corners, who can anticipate the future, who are willing to deal with the real and significant problems and challenges of industry and society, and who can think globally. Our ideologies must reflect this perspective if we are to survive and prosper.
And with all this, we have the exciting developments in information technology that pose significant opportunities and tremendous challenges to universities on an unprecedented scale. Many U.S. universities are spending around ten percent of their annual operating budgets on information technology in all of its forms. This means, for example, that the University of Illinois spent roughly $100 million on information technology last year. In 1965, the budget for computing and copying at Michigan Tech was $23,000. Thirty years later, in 1995, we spent over $9 million on computing and telecommunications out of a total general fund budget of $80 million. As information technology opens new opportunities for research, teaching and learning, we can do old things in new ways or we can extend ourselves to do new things in new ways. Our teaching and learning can be transformed with information technology to shift from teacher-centered and classroom-centered to learner-centered approaches to engineering education. I expect that some of you are leading the way in this regard. Learning productivity, that is, the productivity of learning, can and will increase with self-directed and self-paced learning that is focused and purposeful with appropriate faculty intervention.
Students can tell very accurately when they are confused, bored or skeptical about the value of a course. We know that knowledge not applied quickly is quickly lost. Putting these two concepts together with modern information technology is an exciting development that some engineering faculty at Michigan Tech and other universities are using to good advantage.
For example, using the Internet, some faculty members are requiring their students to post questions immediately following each class meeting and to also post an answer to at least one of the questions posted by other students. At the next class meeting, the faculty member will clarify, correct or elaborate based on between-class postings on the Internet; the faculty member often posts his or her own answers and comments regarding student questions before the next class meeting. The pace of learning and understanding is much greater, and retention is improved; students generally give rave reviews to courses using this approach. Combining this pedagogical approach with real-time linkages with practicing engineers through the Internet is responsive to market forces; resultant productivity improvements are responsive to financial realities.
When we consider New Directions for Student Understanding, some of us can identify with Benjamin Franklin s frustration in 1787 as the Constitutional Convention was dragging on into a hot summer in Philadelphia. He stood on June 28, 1787 and peered at his colleagues who were debating details of the new directions that America might pursue and he said this:
The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance and continual reasonings with each other . . . is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those republics which, having been formed with seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist.We realize that engineering education as we know it today in America has roots back to England, France, Germany and Russia. Most of our institutions have evolved during the 20th Century along fairly similar paths. The large majority of engineering schools represented at this conference were established in the late 19th Century to respond to the needs of the immediate region and the State or Province in which each is located. In some cases, the primary initial reason for establishment was the need for mining engineers; in others, manufacturing or steel making or other industry had needs for engineers. Whatever the initial motivations, all of the engineering schools represented here today have grown and developed far beyond the expectations and dreams of our founders.
I had the privilege of serving two years ago as a member of the National Advisory Council co-chaired by Norman Augustine, CEO of Martin Marietta Corporation, and Charles Vest, President of MIT, on a joint project of the Engineering Deans Council and the Corporate Roundtable of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) which produced a National Science Foundation sponsored study entitled Engineering Education for a Changing World. I commend that report to each of you for careful consideration as a partial road map toward new directions for student understanding.
The distilled essence of our study is that engineering education programs must be relevant, attractive, and connected:
a. As each institution establishes its vision and charts new directions, it should ensure that its faculty reward system supports the institutional goals.b. While recognizing and encouraging diverse institutional missions and changing industry needs, colleges of engineering must re-examine their curricula and programs to ensure they prepare students for the broadened world of engineering work. This process has begun among most engineering colleges and must be accelerated with the aim to incorporate:
- team skills, including collaborative, active learning,
- communication skills,
- leadership,
- a systems perspective,
- an understanding and appreciation of the diversity of students, faculty and staff,
- an appreciation of different cultures and business practices, and the understanding that the practice of engineering is now global,
- integration of knowledge throughout the curriculum,
- a multi-disciplinary perspective,
- a commitment to quality, timeliness and continuous improvement,
- undergraduate research and engineering work experience,
- an understanding of the societal, economic and environmental impacts of engineering decisions, and
- ethics.
c. Engineering colleges should create innovative advanced degree programs, including practice-oriented degrees. Such degree programs might include course material on engineering systems; finance and accounting; technology policy; management and decision-making. Courses should feature team-based activities and case studies. In some instances, engineering schools will develop such degree programs in collaboration with business schools and industry.
d. Engineering colleges, in collaboration with industry, should develop innovative ways of providing continuing education to practicing engineers by instituting non- degree-career-enhancing programs. This will be facilitated by new communications technologies.
e. The federal government, in partnership with engineering colleges and industry, should develop a national program to foster creation of industrial professorships in engineering colleges. Financing might include tax incentives for industry.
f. Each engineering college, or group of colleges in a region, should develop reciprocal personnel exchange programs with local and regional corporations. Companies and engineering colleges should encourage participation in these exchanges by providing incentives to individuals who are selected to participate. These partnerships must also focus on meeting the real needs of both corporate and university participants and feature a variety of exchange modes, including industrial professorships and university sabbaticals in industry.
g. Engineering deans and faculty should actively encourage students to participate in university-wide activities. These activities can include participation in student government, student professional societies, athletics, performing arts, study abroad and similar activities. The aim is to promote leadership and communications skills, as well as a sense of the integration of engineering into the broader world.
In the case of Michigan Technological University, Michigan Governor Austin Blair signed Public Act 207 in March, 1861 chartering the Michigan Mining School. That legislation specified that citizens of Michigan and surrounding states could study mining engineering at the Michigan Mining School for $10 per year while providing their own room and board. In April, 1861, the Civil War began and plans for the Michigan Mining School came to an abrupt halt. In 1885, the Michigan Mining School finally was established, on the second floor of the fire hall in Houghton, Michigan with 23 students, four faculty, an annual state appropriation of $15,000 and monthly rent of $25 for use of the fire hall.
The Houghton campus developed slowly but surely, the name changed to the Michigan College of Mines and then to the Michigan College of Mining and Technology and finally Michigan Technological University. Today Michigan Tech has a modern physical plant that has been consistently well maintained. Our $44 million Dow Environmental Sciences and Engineering Building is under construction, joining an attractive set of facilities for students pursuing degrees in engineering, science, business, forestry, technology and related fields. Michigan Tech is the only nationally ranked, doctoral-granting public technological university in the Upper Midwest. Yet, we share virtually all of the opportunities and concerns facing the other colleges and universities represented here today as we approach the 21st Century. And I believe that most of us gathered here today can agree on the basic principles with which we will operate during the next 100 years, regardless of the type of institution.
First and foremost perhaps, we should all be going for the gold in our respective fields of endeavor, that is, being the very best at what we choose to do; I believe that any lesser aspirations are simply irresponsible and unacceptable. This does not mean that we should copy or follow anyone else, but it is clearly wise to benchmark our competition. And that competition is changing for most of us; increasingly, it is global competition.
My own sketch of what Going for the Gold means for Michigan Tech may be suggestive of principles for some of your schools. I will leave that to your judgement. But collectively, I believe that our business is learning in a global context. Just as there were 197 nations competing in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, our students in the 21st Century will be expected to compete in an international, truly global arena. Their competition will not only have graduated from other engineering schools in this region; they will come from engineering schools in Korea, Japan, Germany, Brazil, Australia, England and South Africa, and many of the other 189 countries represented in Atlanta a few weeks ago. Those competing engineers will speak at least two languages and in many cases three or more languages. They will have lived, studied and often worked in more than one country. They will be motivated to continue their education throughout their lives. These things are virtually certain. And the work ethic and dedication to task of those competing engineers will be extraordinary.
New directions for student understanding should take these principles into account and should include growing excitement and enthusiasm by students, faculty and staff for engineering that is relevant, attractive and connected, with emphasis on learning in a global context, continuous quality improvement, confidence, purposefulness and, ultimately, winning. Someone once said that a good coach is first and foremost a good teacher. I believe the opposite is also true: a good teacher is also a good coach who inspires the engineering student to be a winner who wants to be the best and who is consistently going for the gold, every day in every way, so that throughout the student s life, she or he will make significant contributions to the improvement of the human condition.