基于卓越电气工程师培养的实践教学体系探索

随着我国电力工业的迅速发展,社会对电气工程专业人才工程能力培养的要求越来越高,科学合理地构建实践教学体系具有十分重要的意义。在教育部的"卓越工程师教育培养计划"教育背景下,以培养优秀的卓越电气工程师为目标,针对卓越工程师培养的核心与本质——工程实践与创新能力,构建了多元化多层次的立体化实践教学体系,探索了培养学生工程能力的途径,有效地培养学生的工程能力,提高了人才培养质量。     

能源动力卓越计划学生工程实践能力评价体系研究

阐述了"卓越计划"中学生工程实践能力及其评价方式与体系,论述了学生工程实践能力的评价方法与体系及其初步成效以及校企合作在对学生工程实践能力培养中各自的角色和作用,阐明高校、企业及其合作在工程实践能力培养体系中的不可或缺性。所提出的评价体系对高校相关专业,特别是热能与动力工程专业及卓越工程师培养有一定的借鉴意义,值得推广。     

电气专业“卓越计划”企业培养方案研究与实践

在介绍了广东石油化工学院实施"卓越工程师教育培养计划"情况的基础上,对广东石油化工学院电气工程及其自动化专业在实施该计划企业培养方案过程中遇到的企业方案制订、企业课程衔接和企业实践环节如何体现工程实践能力的培养等问题进行了剖析,提出了解决相关问题的方法。实践证明,通过行之有效地实施企业培养方案,提高了学生学习的积极性,较好地培养了学生的工程意识、工程实践能力和工程创新能力,达到了实施"卓越工程师教育培养计划"的目的。     

培养卓越电气工程师存在的问题及对策探讨

"卓越电气工程师教育培养计划"旨在培养一批创新创业能力强、能够适应社会和经济发展需求的高层次电气工程技术人才。以南华大学电气工程及其自动化专业为例对卓越电气工程师培养过程中遇到的主要问题进行分析总结,并提出了不断优化电气工程专业新的多维实践教学平台,进一步完善师资队伍建设等。     

“控制技术基础”系列课程教学改革与实践

面向教育部"卓越工程师教育培养计划",针对电气工程及其自动化专业"控制技术基础"系列课程目前存在的一系列问题进行改革,重新构建与卓越人才培养目标相适应的课程体系,优化教学内容,选择特色教材,改进教学方法、教学手段,加强实验环节,强化学生实践能力、工程应用能力、创新能力的培养训练,培养具有创新意识、创新精神和较强工程实践能力的应用型本科电气工程及其自动化专业卓越工程师人才。     

自动化专业卓越工程师培养过程中师资队伍建设探讨

"卓越工程师教育培养计划"以培养创新能力强、适应社会经济发展需要的高质量各类工程技术人才为目标。在此过程中,教师队伍的工程实践能力是影响卓越人才培养质量的重要因素。结合自动化专业卓越工程师培养计划的实际情况,从教师队伍的工程实践能力培训等几方面,探讨了卓越工程师培养实施过程中师资队伍的建设问题。     

卓越采矿工程师人才培养的实践教学体系研究与实践

培养学生的工程能力和创新能力是"卓越工程师计划"的核心内容。为适应采矿工程专业卓越工程师人才培养的要求,在分析当前采矿工程专业实践教学存在的主要问题的基础上,提出了培养卓越采矿工程师的实践教学改革思路及措施,初步建立了卓越采矿工程师培养的实践教学体系。     

基于“卓越计划”的电子技术课程教学改革

“卓越计划”是国家旨在培养和造就一大批创新能力强、适应社会发展的高质量人才而提出的重大教育改革项目,也是当前高校工科学生的培养目标。分析当前电子技术工程实践能力和创新能力培养现状,提出以培养卓越工程师为宗旨的电子技术教学改革,构建适应实践动手能力和创新能力培养的实践教学新体系。教学实践表明,这些改革措施对于提高学生分析问题和工程实践能力有很大帮助,有利于卓越工程师的培养。     

应用型本科高校车辆工程专业人才培养体系研究

为提高应用型本科高校人才培养质量,加强学生工程实践能力,接轨工作岗位,结合卓越工程师培养目标,对应用型本科高校车辆工程专业人才培养体系进行了系统研究,其中涉及人才培养体系的实施基础、基本思路、组织保障、培养标准、培养方案等核心内容,重点论述了专业培养方案与企业培养方案及其保障措施,为应用型本科高校相关专业改革提供重要的经验借鉴。     

基于卓越工程师培养计划的“机械设计”课程设计改革

"机械设计"课程设计是机械设计课程学习的一个重要环节。结合"卓越工程师培养计划"的基本要求,针对"机械设计"课程设计中存在的问题,提出了课程设计改革的思路,确立了以培养工程师为目标的课程设计改革思想,对于提升学生的工程实践认识,培养学生的工程素质和工程实践能力有一定的意义。     

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     

Factors Influencing the Choice of an Engineering Career

In two National Engineering Career Development Surveys, engineering students (N = 960) and graduates (N = 2401) were found to be quite similar in their ratings of the relative importance of various factors which influenced them to pursue careers in engineering. Work-related factors (especially challenge, creativity, independence, problem solving, and salary) were found to be most important followed by school-, people-, and hobby-related factors. In selecting engineering as a career, graduates were more apt than students to cite related work experiences, and students were more apt to cite security and rapid advancement. Other differences were noted when comparisons were made by sex, ethnic group, and field of engineering. Women and minorities tended to rate independence, challenge, female role models, and precollege programs to be of greater importance than did men and majority students. Differences among engineers in different fields were observed primarily in their ratings of related hobbies. For example, electrical and mechanical engineers were more influenced in their career choices by electrical and mechanical hobbies than were engineers in other fields. Electrical and computer engineers were influenced strongly by computers, chemical engineers by high school science and college chemistry courses, and civil and agricultural engineers by outdoor activities.     

Portrayals of engineers in "Science Times"

Engineering plays a crucial role in the creation of technologies and infrastructure that make vital contributions to the U.S. economy and security, to U.S. prestige in the international arena, and to individual well-being through the provision of jobs, services, and products. Despite this, a large proportion of the U.S. public undervalues the role played by engineers in a wide variety of technologically-based activities, holds engineering as a less prestigious occupation than science, and regards engineers as less socially responsible than scientists. In addition, declining levels of enrollment by Americans in engineering programs, together with under-representation of women and minorities in the profession, are also seen as causes for concern. The reasons for these low levels of public understanding about what engineers do are most likely complex. However, since Americans obtain much of their information about science and technology through the mass media, it seems likely that media coverage of engineering plays at least some role in the formation of public ideas about engineers and engineering.     

An Accredited Electrical Engineering and Management Program

A new five year program in electrical engineering and management is described. This unique undergraduate program provides the student with a firm foundation in both engineering science and management studies. Its graduates are eligible for registration as professional engineers after engineering experience as well as qualified to write the Chartered Accountants' examination after an articling period. Every indication is that these graduates will be successful as both engineers and managers.     

Three kinds of ethics for three kinds of engineering

The phenomenon of the engineering enterprise stands within a web of contextual relationships, and the elements of (1) the engineer, (2) engineering and (3) the engineered stand out as fundamental to the engineering enterprise. Each element is contextual in the sense of being integrated into a more or less coherent realm of discourse consisting of thoughts, actions, words, things, roles and goals. That realm of discourse indicates the contexts that condition and are conditioned by the engineering enterprise. Corresponding to each of the three elements of the engineering enterprise is an appropriate and distinct type of ethics. (1) Virtue ethics is appropriate to the engineer who engineers the engineered. It asks how the engineer can be good in a moral sense. (2) Conceptual ethics is appropriate to engineering, which aims at the production of the engineered and requires the engagement of engineers. It asks how engineers can do good engineering. (3) Material ethics is appropriate to the engineered, which follows from the engineering process via the efforts of the engineer. It asks how engineering can make products that contribute to the common good in a convivial society. Being, doing and making are all bound up in the statement “The engineer engineers the engineered”. We cannot separate the engineer, engineering and the engineered, either from each other or from the contexts in which they are embedded, but we can distinguish them, and with each we can associate a different kind of ethics     

Let's Drop Physics from the Curriculum

The historical fact that engineering programs emerged as options in physics departments has long influenced the first two years of our curriculum. For years, we have quietly tolerated duplication of subject matter between physics and engineering. It is about time that we should reexamine the traditions that all students take a year of physics before entering engineering. Modern physicists do research in astrophysics, black holes, new particles, high energy machines. None of this research relates directly to material in the first course. On the other hand, engineers do research in mechanics, electricity, circuits, solid-state devices, optics. The subjects of first-year physics couple directly with their research. Haven 't we claimed for years that such coupling always improves instruction? There are those who contend that engineers should learn how physicists think. This probably has its origins in the old days when physicists did fundamental research and engineers applied it. Things are different now. While physicists are worrying about black holes, Ph.D. engineers do our own fundamental research, and then work with other engineers in applications. There is another aspect of scheduling physics courses early in the program of engineering students. Such a course always serves as a filter, eliminating a significant fraction of those who enter engineering. Can we trust physicists to eliminate the right ones? After all, there is a difference in the functioning of the scientist and the engineer.     

Sustainability principles and practice for engineers

The Institute of Professional Engineers of New Zealand (IPENZ) Presidential Task Force recognized that there was little direction for practical application of sustainability to engineering practice, and developed a context and vision for that application. A set of sustainability principles for engineers was then developed, based on the long term viability of the planet, intra- and inter-generational equity, and a holistic view for projects and engineering practice - integrating environmental, social, and economic issues. Practical tasks and requirements for engineers, including a checklist was then drawn up to provide further direction to practicing engineers.     

Ethics for engineers falls in an unstructured gray zone

As engineering is a profession, engineers must consider the impact of ethics in their behavior. The design and application of technology include the responsibility to provide quality products and services. Professional engineering includes the responsibility of creating a positive impact on society and the quality of life. The trust places a greater responsibility on the engineering profession to assure personal safety and national security. This underscores the need for engineers to understand ethical behavior and to establish ethical conduct as a foundation of their career. In fact, engineering ethics is as important to good engineering practices as mathematics, physics, design skills, and other engineering fundamentals. Thus many Professional engineering organizations such as the IEEE have developed codes of ethics as a guide for their members.     

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.     

Making connections - ABCs of what engineering schools don't teach

This paper describes the information what engineering schools don't teach. Students who graduate with degrees in engineering will leave school with a great deal of technical knowledge, it's all the nontechnical information, which wasn't taught in class, that will ultimately determine each student's level of success. The paper includes Carl Selinger's guidance to engineering students in a professional world. His goals for the book are simple: to introduce engineers to what Selinger calls real-world issues, to guide engineers in assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and to improving them selves in the needed areas. The reactions to Selinger's ideas from working engineers and students who have attended one of the author's seminars are peppered throughout the book, offering a kind of reality check for the reader in terms of the value of his message