Engineering Education Evolves

by Terry Costlow

Olin College began hiring teachers in 2000 and enrolling students in 2002, beginning an experiment designed to find ways to upgrade engineers' creative skills. Educators will be watching the performance of the students that will graduate in the spring as the institution strives to improve coursework and remain competitive.

U.S. engineering education is under as much pressure from globalization as many industries. Other countries, including India and China, are educating large number of engineers (Chart 1), and their enrollments are climbing (Chart 2). Comparatively speaking, U.S. enrollments are flat at best, so there’s plenty of concern about preventing those who start engineering school from dropping out, as well as making sure graduates are ready to do the type of innovative work needed to keep the United States competitive.

Chart 1. Top First University Science and
Engineering Degree Producers: 1991-2000

Source: National Science Foundation: 2004 Science &
Engineering Indicators  (Appendix table 2-34)

Chart 2. U.S. Full-Time Engineering Education
Bachelors Degree Enrollments: 1996-2005

Source: AAES Engineering Workforce Commission; Engineering and Technology Enrollments

Olin College was established with a grant from the Olin Foundation with goals such as improving retention, fostering innovative thinking, and attracting more women and minorities. As with most educational endeavors, it will be a few years before it’s clear whether they are meeting these goals.

“We’ve got a number of goals and we’re trying experiments, but it’s too early to know how successful we’ll be,” said Olin College President Richard Miller.

The new engineering school in Needham, Mass., is just one of several colleges exploring curriculum changes to improve engineering education in the United States. The National Science Foundation's (NSF) action agenda for curricular reform has helped to drive and support many such efforts. Though many different approaches exist, most center on giving students more projects. Some leading educators feel that these projects should replace some of the traditional textbook-based coursework.

“U.S. universities have a fairly rigid engineering curriculum without much rationalization for why things are there. I feel we could get rid of a lot of book learning, replacing it with projects. That’s not to make it easier, it’s to get complex challenges in front of students early on,” said Sue Kemnitzer, deputy director at the NSF’s Engineering Education Division.

More Retention

Only about one in five high school graduates have enough math and science training to tackle an engineering major. Since not all of them go into engineering, it's important to decrease the dropout rate among those who do enroll.

“There’s greater awareness that we’re going to have to make sure we retain those people who have the aptitude to be college students and engineering students,” said Ray Almgren, vice president of academic relations at National Instruments. He noted that Olin “is one of the premier colleges trying to fix the retention problem.

One way is addressing the retention problem is by encouraging students to maintain other interests such as music. That’s a change from many universities where non-engineering hobbies are sometimes viewed as wasteful. “Normally there’s a subtle message to buy a laptop and sell the cello. We tell students to hang onto the cello,” Miller said.

Educators view hands-on projects that do some good for society as a key way to spark student’s interest and help keep them motivated. For example, IEEE member Leah Jamieson, along with Edward Coyle and William Oakes of Purdue University, recently won the National Academy of Engineering’s Gordon Prize. Their Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program connects engineering students with charitable and governmental groups that need help with technical problems involving computing and communications. During the 2003-2004 academic year, more than 400 Purdue students from 20 departments participated in 25 multidisciplinary teams.

“Studies show that there’s increased retention when students have socially relevant projects,” Almgren said.

Not too far

Though educators place a strong focus on revising the curriculum, observers note that they don’t want to get carried away and damage the focus on basics. U.S.-educated engineers are among the most successful and creative, helping to keep U.S. companies at the forefront of technology ever since the Soviet launch of Sputnik prompted increased emphasis on science and technology.

Even those who encourage change say improvements must be made judiciously. “We cannot abandon what made U.S. engineering so successful,” Almgren said.

That’s also true at Olin. Among its innovative ideas is an attempt to improve basic engineering skills by making students perform some of the grunt work normally handled by computers. One desired outcome is to improve students' three-dimensional thinking, which has been neglected as they rely on CAD tools do most of the drawing.

“There’s been a drift away from the manual skill of drawing that’s corresponded with struggles in visual design and spotting errors,” Miller said.

More diversity

U.S. universities are also addressing another challenge — increasing diversity. Women account for less than 20 percent of most engineering school enrollments, and most minorities are under-represented as well (Chart 3). Olin focused on the diversity issue when it selected its 300 students, who all receive full tuition. Its student body is about 45 percent female, while women comprise 40 percent of the faculty.

Chart 3. Percentage of U.S. Full-Time Engineering Education
Bachelors Degree Enrollments by Sex and Ethnicity: 2004

Source: AAES Engineering Workforce Commission; Engineering and Technology Enrollments

At this experimental college, glass ceiling is a term that extends beyond women to the entire student body. “We want to attract people with broader goals than working for a company. Engineers need to break through the glass ceiling, overcoming the stereotype of people who have trouble relating to those outside of engineering,” Miller said.

Terry Costlow has been writing about engineering issues for more than 20 years. He can be reached at todaysengineer@ieee.org.