Proposal Teams in the Engineering Class

A competitive project in preparing an engineering technical proposal will provide a challenge to students to strengthen their grasp of basic principles and to increase the depth and particularity of application. The proposal project enlists student enthusiasm and provides practical professional experience in conceiving, detailing, publishing, and defending an engineering scheme for a novel equipment. A plan is presented in this paper for conducting such a project.     

Recipe for a Science Happening: 1 Volunteer Engineer, 1 Teacher, 30 Youngsters-Blend in Lots of Love and a Pinch of Humor

Engineers can play a special role in society. Working in industry, the corporation's sphere of influence can act as a lever for a contributing professional individual. Hence, the engineer is able to exert a greater force on the world than most other people. With technology carrying us away at a rapid (and some think devastating) rate, the need for socially responsible professional people is becoming more crucial. Many believe that members of minority groups can make an effective contribution to the modern social engineering concerns that confront us. There are several programs currently underway by colleges, government, and industries to increase the flow of minorities into the engineering profession. This article discusses two programs whose purpose is to promote an interest for engineering and science in youngsters. First, the Science Consultant Program-sponsored by Xerox Corporation. The SCP is a volunteer program that gives elementary school students a first-hand look at science by bringing scientists, technicians, and engineers to the inner-city classrooms. Second, the Junior Engineering Technical Society which works through school sponsored clubs and projects to provide engineering oriented career guidance to high school students.     

Science, engineering, and humanity

This paper discusses the important role scientists and engineers play in societal prosperity. Today, as the gaps between societies, cultures, religions, and races widen and deepen at a frightful rate - enhanced by shortsighted and fundamentalist politicians - it is their obligation to actively foster intercultural contacts. Occasions for intercultural encounters are abundant in academia. In the academic realm, unconditional honesty forms the very first basic law that should not be violated under any conditions without grave consequences. The world sometimes might appear to be in a hopeless disarray that increases day by day. Nevertheless, scientists and engineers are asked to follow the advice of the great science philosopher Karl Popper that optimism is their duty and they are responsible for what will come.     

A Proposal for Broadening the Education of Power System Engineers

Engineering education has placed its major emphasis on developing graduates with a high degree of technical competence in the traditional engineering disciplines. However, society's expectations for the role of an engineer now reflect the increased concern for inclusion of social policy considerations in engineering decision making. Engineering education must respond to these changes so that engineers will be better prepared to meet today's changes. The authors have focused their discussion on suggested modifications to the power system engineering curriculum as an example of the changing needs of a typical engineering program. The paper discusses some of the limitations the authors perceive in the present education of most power system engineers including a lack of study of nontraditional alternatives to central station power generation. Many of the suggested topics can be added to existing courses; for example, power system planning which could be expanded to cover topics such as load management systems and innovative rate designs which influence load patterns. The addition to the curriculum of a course which provides engineers with a broad overview of the laws affecting engineering decisions and the social policy these laws seek to implement is recommended. Such a course should broaden an engineer's perspective of his/her role in society. The authors feel that this overall proposal is responsive to the needs to be faced by many of the future power engineering graduates. The suggested curriculum changes and additions should aid power system engineers in understanding their role in solving society's energy-related problems.     

Engineers without borders and their role in humanitarian relief

Since the foundation of the first national Engineers Without Borders (EWB) organization, or Ingenieurs San Frontieres (ISF-France), EWB-affiliated national organizations have been formed in many countries around the world. All EWB-affiliated organizations share the same vision: a world where all people have access to basic resources and knowledge to meet their self-identified engineering and economic development needs. EWB members want to contribute to new and ongoing development projects around the world in an effective way and at the same time promote new dimensions of experience for engineering students and practicing engineers. The mission of all EWB-affiliated organizations is to support disadvantaged communities in improving their living standard, welfare, livelihood, and quality of life through the implementation of environmentally and economically sustainable engineering projects, while developing internationally responsible engineering students and professionals. EWB members believe in change that can contribute positively to the communities in which they work, in common action to provide new solutions, and in working to interrupt the cycle of poverty that contributes to terrorism and the rejection of democracy. A deeper cooperation between the national EWBs within the framework of EWB-International will also be valuable for students wanting to participate in projects in the third world. This international cooperation could consist of an exchange of experience, allowing project team members from other countries and support to students from other countries wanting to utilize infrastructure and local contacts at a specific site developed by a national EWB organization.     

Educating for innovation and management: the engineering educators'dilemma

Research on ways to improve engineering education has identified management and innovation skills as important to success in an engineering career. This paper explores the nature of those management and innovation skills through presentation of some original research on a community of innovative engineers and managers and some published research on personality differences between engineers, managers, and entrepreneurial innovators. This paper suggests the key to producing engineering graduates with a penchant for managing and innovating lies in developing a special kind of individuality (authenticity) in engineers toward the end of their tertiary studies. It suggests this individuality involves the courage to break with one's engineering paradigm as required and to operate pragmatically and “unscientifically” in the “public world” rather than theoretically and “scientifically” in the “special world” of engineering. It outlines an optional new curriculum for engineers and scientists developed by an Australian university to encourage authenticity and to prepare science and engineering graduates for careers in management and innovation     

Task for engineers-resuscitating the U.S. rail system

It is noted that, to create an effective new rail system in the US, passenger and freight services would be needed, both of them integrated and standardized in a national plan. It is suggested that it is absurd to pose the future of railroads as a complete dichotomy between superspeed passenger lines on one hand and slow freights meandering over decrepit trackage on the other hand. One would hope that the latter category would steadily shrink, but a unified system means that long-distance passenger service, commuter lines including airport access, and freight would move at optimal speeds and provide maximum convenience for their users. This objective-an integrated system, electrified for maximum energy saving and security-defines the details of what should be national policy as well as the tasks that US engineers must face in tackling the job. It is concluded that, if a new system is to fulfil its purposes, engineers will have to become part of an industrial rescue operation that has few parallels     

The third culture: C.P. Snow revisited

As an historian of modern technology who has both taught and taught with engineers for two decades, I am repeatedly dismayed by the lackluster contemporary public image of engineers held, not only by the general American public, but also by many nonengineers in our universities, governments, and industries. Respectable and reliable though they may be, engineers are invariably associated with conservatism not only in their politics and their behavior but also, and more important, in their work. The author Snow recognized that engineering is in fact a third culture separate from the two he focused upon: science and the humanities (Snow, 1960)     

Engineers in the 21st century

Most of us choose engineering as a profession because we like to solve problems and build things. I picture an engineer as a whole person, a well-rounded, well-adjusted individual who is capable of conducting business like anyone else, with the added benefit of technical skills. We are the modern-day renaissance men and women, like Edison and Da Vinci. These men could invent and create. They were artists who had a broad view of the world and saw possibilities that no one had seen before. There is no reason why we can't be like them and do even more. We understand more science and have modern tools like computers and lasers to design and build things, plus we can use information technology to gather data when we have knowledge gaps. The point is that, once we have a clear picture of who we want to be, now more than ever before, that vision is obtainable, and that vision becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy if we choose to act on it. Certainly, if we think we can't do it, we won't. I'd like to share my vision of an accomplished 21st century engineer and offer some thoughts on how to get there. I see successful engineers as people who take an early interest in science and engineering. They have alert minds and a natural curiosity for everything around them. Their drive to learn is insatiable, soaking up knowledge constantly. They do things for the love of it, not simply for monetary rewards, but for the pride and personal satisfaction that comes with doing something particularly well     

Student group working across universities: a case study in software engineering

Distributed group working among teams of software engineers is increasingly evident in the "real world." Tools to support such working are at present limited to general-purpose groupware involving video, audio, chat, shared whiteboards, and shared workspaces. Within software engineering education, group tasks have an established role in the curriculum. However in general, groups are local to a particular university or institution and are composed of students who have a significant shared history (in terms of technical background and social interaction) and who are able to meet face-to-face on a regular basis. This paper reports on work undertaken by three UK universities to provide computer science students with the opportunity to experience group working across universities using low-cost tools to support distributed cooperative working.     

Turning students into science stars (science and engineering education)

To meet the demands for greater numbers of biomedical engineers, it is necessary to expand the biomedical engineering and related educational programs in the United States to provide students with a focused exposure to basic science, engineering, and technology development principles central to advances in this industry. Over the past 30 years, however, the United States has seen a precipitous decline in the number of American students studying science and engineering. It is this downward spiral the Biomimetic Microelectronic Systems Engineering Research Center (BMES ERC) Education Outreach Program seeks to address. This program affects the science literacy of more than 2,000 minority and economically disadvantaged Los Angeles Unified School District students and their teachers each year. In addition, the BMES ERC has augmented the course curricula of undergraduate and graduate students. All facets of the program are facilitated by experience-dependent mentoring throughout the entire curriculum, using BMES ERC testbeds and thrusts research as focal points of learning and motivation. Through its outreach program, BMES ERC scientists and engineers transfer the excitement, knowledge, and skills generated by their research to students from grade school to graduate school.     

A University-Industry Approach to Continuing Education for Engineers

A cooperative university-industry approach to satisfying continuing education needs for engineers is presented. The effort involves the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Maine at Orono, and Fairchild Semiconductor, South Portland, Maine. The program which results is a solution to a troublesome geographical problem since the industry is separated from the center of science and engineering education for the state by some 150 miles. This program includes courses offered in-house at Fairchild via a closed-circuit television-talkback system, a commuting professor and Fairchild engineers who have qualified for admission to the graduate faculty. A unique semester-on-campus grants the student-engineer a paid industrial sabbatical. Degree candidates culminate their M.S.E.E. program with a work-related thesis. However, the in-house courses, which are specifically designed to meet the joint requirements of the student and the industry, are open to all engineers, whether degree candidates or not.     

cooperation and competition [From the Editor]

One of the great aspects of biomedical engineering and life science in general is that all of us who are practitioners for the most part work together. The scientific enterprise is devoted to a better understanding of our world and, through that understanding, improving the quality of life of the world's population. We do this by learning from each other and each of us adding something to what we have learned. We learn by reading, listening to, and exchanging the ideas with our colleagues in the field. Most scientists and engineers not only carry out this type of exchange with colleagues in their own field but also look to other areas of knowledge as well.     

Military Influence on the Electrical Engineering Curriculum Since World War II

In World War II, the military discovered ``science,' notably in the forms of radar and the atom bomb. Regrettably, physicists?not engineers?developed these technologies, for engineering education had not prepared that generation of engineers to cope with innovation. Since that war, academic engineers have found it increasingly easier to get research funds for military-related projects than for others clearly non-military. Indeed, military-related support has been so abundant that ideas with primarily commercial rather than military application have been subordinated unless they could be expressed in potential-military terms. The standard electrical engineering curriculum has followed the pattern of academic research support since World War II. Courses in electronics, communications, and electromagnetic waves have grown out of the World War II experience in radar and subsequent developments in electronic warfare. Computer development began in World War II and has since been motivated primarily by military needs. Space activity likewise has had military motivation from the outset. New curricular trends reflect these military purposes. True, there has been valuable civilian ``spinoff' from these technologies, notably in the computer field. But one may ask whether military applications follow the available technology or whether perceived military needs drive the technology and hence the curriculum. If the latter is the case, we may be educating a generation unable to envision a world at peace.     

What Mathematics Courses Should an Electrical Engineer Take? A Report on the National Study of Mathematics Requirements for Scientists and Engineers

The National Study of Mathematics Requirements for Scientists and Engineers is concerned with establishing the best mathematics course selection for the many specializations in science and engineering, such as organic chemistry or electrical engineering. An Instruction and Course Content Sheet and a Course Recommendation Form were sent to over 9000 scientists and engineers. They recommended courses for the Ph.D. in their specialization and filled in additional information concerning their age, place of employment, and orientation of work. Forty mathematics courses were selected by the consultants; and the respondents rated each course on length, level, applied-theoretic orientation, their knowledge and use of the course. Those selected for the study were all nationally known specialists or were very productive in reporting research to the major professional journals. Some of the general conclusions of the study were as follows. 1) Mathematics courses should have a fifty percent emphasis on theory and fifty percent emphasis on application. 2) There were few recommendations for courses such as the functional analysis sequence, modern algebra sequence, and mathematical logic. 3) High recommendations were for applied courses such as vectors, the many types of differential equations, matrix theory, and machine computation. 4) Comparisons of categories within each specialization showed little differences in recommendations for most specializations. However, applied electrical engineers used much less mathematics than those who were theoretically oriented.     

The future of electrical and computer engineering education

The authors will briefly describe how some of today's innovations and advancements might provide potential for improving the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of contemporary teaching methods. A model curriculum proposed in this paper merges the disciplines of mathematics, science, engineering, and computing. It also addresses the growing need for exposing aspiring engineers to the human, cultural, and professional aspects of their emerging careers.     

Engineering of computer-based systems-a proposed curriculum for a degree program at bachelor level

This paper presents a curriculum proposal for an Engineering of Computer-Based Systems (ECBS) Bachelor program from the Working Group on Education and Training of the IEEE Computer Society ECBS Technical Committee. It explains the need for a formal undergraduate education of engineers in this discipline and describes courses required for such a program.     

Attracting Prospective Engineering Students in the Emerging European Space for Higher Education

A set of outreach activities implemented by the College of Engineering of the Public University of Navarra, Spain, is described. They represent different initiatives aimed to improve recruitment of young engineers in the difficult context of declining interest in engineering and the educational changes Europe is facing nowadays. The initiatives include didactic materials and activities specifically targeted to high schools and other events aimed to increase awareness about the relevance of science and engineering in the society. During the three years the outreach program has been applied, an increase in the number of engineering students of 12.5% has been experienced, which is in contrast to the decrease of 1.6% in the number of new university students during the same period.