What would your perfect engineer look like? What kind of a school would it take to produce him or her?
Would you be interested in folks with industry experience - and a newly earned degree?
What will be needed to be successful in the next decades?
And, are there too many "silos" in engineering? Mechanical vs manufacturing vs civil vs electrical , etc.
Would the perfect Engineering school be theory? Practice? labs? research? in person or web based?
Would you go back for training? or would you want to have a co-worker or employee retrained?
I received my engineering degree 30 years ago, so I do not quite match the demographic requested, but I think I can add a couple of thoughts.
Even though my school (University of Pennsylvania) didn’t have it, I like the idea of co-op programs. There are a few well-known programs at Drexel, Northeastern and Kettering. These programs seem to get students ready for the actual practice of engineering in the real world. They seem well-grounded in both the theory and application.
A few times I have been asked to explain engineering to high school students at a career day. I say that engineering is an applied science. It involves the use of your brain and your hands. You need your brain to analyze the theoretical side of what you are doing and you need your hands to execute it. If you are using just one or the other exclusively, you are not an engineer. A simple-minded explanation, to be sure, but everyone seems to get it.
You are the target demographic, an experienced engineer with as good a summary of engineering as I think has been coined. -And good ideas about how to get there.
I wish that I had a nice solution to this problem, but it is a thorny one.
As someone who has spent some time in industry and academe, I can say that part of the problem is these two areas rarely interact. As a result, each group tends to believe the negative stereotypes about the other, because they don’t know any better. When the two camps do talk, it isn’t much of a conversation; it is more like people talking at each other rather than with each other. I always cringe when I hear the word “presumably” in a conversation of this type. People should not presume anything. You may be standing next to someone with the information or experience of interest, find out and ask them, don’t guess!
Should IW invite some academics to have a discussion about education? Is there a comparable place to invite some industrial people to discuss education, like the Chronicle of Higher Education? It might be a step in the right direction.
I've about 8 years in industry, and although originally majoring in Physics, I graduated with degrees in Eng Mgmt (Mfg) and Psychology from a public university in the Midwest. My experience included working in a machine shop, fab shop, department computer assistant, and co-op with a utilities equipment oem while in school, and industry experience in oil and gas and aerospace.
My experience in both academia (as a student) and industry, as a mechanical/manufacturing engineer, has left me disheartened. I love engineering, but have found that many people titled 'engineers' or profess to teach/instruct engineering, are far from competent in their positions, and often fundamental knowledge of engineering (or even critical thinking) are lacking. Those who teach usually lack practical real-world industrial experience and those in industry lack engineering 'fundamentals' (often 'developed' or untrained (not necessarily uneducated) engineers).
Both academia and industry seem plagued by the problem in our society of 'entitlement', where ethics, customer service, and good business sense are often undermined or overridden in favor of nepotism/cronyism; collusion; intellectual, financial, and business misconduct, mismanagement, and/or lack of acumen. In academia this is probably due in part to a lack of effective oversight, and in industry this is probably due to a lack of effective management and leadership, with most companies minimalizing all employees (not just engineers) as expendable resources fostering disloyalty and lack of work ethic by the employees since they lack security or trust in their employer.
My best experience has been with my current employer, and I'm proud to work for them, although these issues are omnipresent, even if only on a more minimal scale.
A perfect engineering school would have a good faculty, good curriculum, good resources, good location, and good (interactive) relationship with industry. A good engineering education is a sore-point for myself and many of my former classmates, and like industry, academia is in need of a major overhaul due in part to a lack of acumen as to their own problems. The sad part is that the problems in industry are practically the same in academia, and I'm sure there is a correlation, although I'm not sure the causal relationship is directly between these two.
Strout and JCG,
More good input.
You have meantioned a disconnect between working engineers and academia, I have noticed that as well and that is part of what prompted my question.
I have looked and wondered if the change between engineering curiculums before and after Sputnik made the difference? Or if it was earlier, when they needed to rush out ships engineers in ww2? When it went from building things to studying one small model of a problem.
If a group wanted to discuss it, maybe at least a profile of what to look for would come out that may be usefull.
I think the disconnect goes back to WWII, when the funding for research drifted away from industry to the government. I can't blame them, but academics are interested in their sources of funding. If more funding came from industry there would be no disconnect, but I don't see that happening anytime soon, given the state of our economy.
What if? perfect engineering school
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