with both proven technical engineering abil- ity as well ... engineering schools teach, then requiring students to .... neering skills, all within an ABET-accredited.
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Dispelling the Myths of
Holistic Engineering
Can the U.S. colleges and universities prepare engineering graduates who are not just technically proficient, but also creative leaders who communicate well and understand broader societal issues? The authors say yes and the time is now. B Y D O M E N I C O G R A S S O, M EL OD Y BROWN BURKINS, JOSEPH HE LB LE, AND DAVID MAR T INE LLI
O
ver the past year, articles by Grasso and others—including “Holistic Engineering” and “Holistic Engineering and Educational Reform”—have followed former IEEE President Joe Bordogna in adopting the term “holistic engineering” to describe a more cross-disciplinary, whole-systems approach to engineering education. It is an approach that emphasizes contextualized problem formulation and encourages innovative changes to traditional engineering training. These articles urged that engineering’s greatest and most immediate challenge for the 21st century is to rethink and re-engineer education to ensure the profession is not transformed into a group of skilled technicians on the sidelines of the global economy. Instead, an engineering education should be perceived as creating global leaders: decision makers who actively shape our future with both proven technical engineering ability as well as creative, cost-effective, and innovative management of the complex social, economic, environmental, and communications aspects of modern engineering projects around the world. These articles were not alone in taking up the issue. Concerns about trends in declining engineering enrollments, a lack of diversity, and the potential erosion of U.S. innovation primacy in global markets have been expressed for over a decade under numerous titles in reports from the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Project led by former University of Michigan President James Duderstadt, and U.S. business and academic leaders. Many of these reports have called for a change in engineering education to maintain U.S. competitiveness and advance innovation. Yet, despite these reports and recent articles, the national transformation of traditional engineering education has been slow. In particular, adopting a more holistic
approach to engineering education—where traditional, technologically-focused engineering curricula is changed to open coursework across both technical and liberal arts disciplines in the first four years of engineering training—continues to meet skepticism in parts of the engineering community. Can we truly educate broad-based, holistic engineers without “watering down” technically rigorous engineering coursework? Will these creative engineers be able to ensure the highest levels of technical proficiency and public safety? Is there truly a market for this kind of engineering talent? And, last but not least, can and should the U.S. engineering education system as a whole be fundamentally reorganized to emphasize and create holistic engineers? Our answer to all of these questions is a resounding “yes.”
The Myth of a Watered-Down Education The most common skepticism expressed about a holistic approach to engineering education is that any broadening of the traditional undergraduate engineering curriculum will “water down” traditional rigor of the field by including “soft” skills such as language, history, economics, and communication to compete for credit hours during the technically-focused engineering degree. While we agree that traditional engineering fundamentals such as statics, dynamics, circuits, thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics must remain the core of the engineering degree, we strongly aver that engineering students are ill-served without complementary fundamentals in creative thought, historical and cultural context, holistic and innovative design, management, and entrepreneurship. This is not “watering down,” rather it is empowering U.S. engineering programs to become globally competitive, more
rigorous, value-added, innovative, and dynamic in their application. And this new rigor is not at all impossible to adopt. For example, creating an initial two-year core of engineering fundamentals, with a modest number of upper-division courses geared toward specific subspecialties, leaves students with multiple elective study credit hours in other disciplines. This is the premise of several engineering B.A. programs already successfully creating more holistic engineers and can also be found in some engineering science B.S. degrees. A more holistic education for all engineering programs means taking the core that most engineering schools teach, then requiring students to contextualize the fundamentals. This includes exposure to studies of the human, societal, and ecological frameworks, followed by more specific technical skills required of various subspecialties, such as environmental, civil, electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineering. This call to a holistic approach is, in fact, a call to regain the true mission of the engineering profession. Engineers are eloquent in distinguishing themselves from other scientists as the science-based professionals who apply their creative and technical knowledge in service to humanity, specifically by designing and building to improve the quality of life for society in both the built and natural environments. Yet, as most practicing engineers know, one of the most difficult phases of any engineering project is initial problem formulation and definition. As presently conceived and executed, our system of education often does not prepare students for the task—an issue eloquently addressed in National Academy of Engineering member Judson King’s Issues in Science and Technology essay “Let Engineers Go to College.” Indeed, problem formulation is where technological skill meets the uniquely societal
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demands of restricted budgets, regulatory frameworks, public-private collaboration complexity, public safety impact, historical context, and public understanding. If engineers are not exposed to comprehensive project management skills around critical reasoning, cross-disciplinary communication, differing cultural expectations, and knowledge of relevant scientific and historical debates, then we have abdicated our professional responsibility to truly create engineers in service to humanity. Engineers trained only in technology become mere technicians, subject to following the vision of service proffered or defined by others. Taking responsibility for creating well-rounded decision makers in the engineering profession is not “watering down” the curriculum—it is taking on the true challenge and interdisciplinary rigor our profession’s core mission deserves.
Any argument suggesting, therefore, that technically or technologically focused curricula sensu stricto provides a four-year engineering student with either a competitive or intellectual advantage is simply incorrect. Legal educators faced the impossible task of teaching technical legal details of thousands of individual laws created during the 19th century and so moved their educational program to a fundamentals-based paradigm instructing students to learn how to “think like lawyers.” Similarly, the engineering profession should not stand in the way of its own growth with an argument that it must teach more and more technology. As argued again recently by Grasso in an IEEE Technology and Society Magazine essay, “Dead Poets and Engineers”—and by so many others across the engineering profession—the focus today must be on teaching our engineering students to think creatively across scientific, technological, and liberal arts disciplines.
The Myth of Technological Supremacy
The Myth of Specialization
There is a strong belief that credible and top-ranked engineering programs require as many high-level, highly specialized, and highly technical courses as possible to ensure students are truly competitive and successful in today’s job market. In other words, the more technical acumen students show on their transcript, the higher the regard in which their graduating program will be held, the higher-paying job they will find, and the more successful an engineer they will prove to be. The premise of this argument is fallacious, simply because it is impossible— and irresponsible—to suggest that any engineering curriculum could ever capture the myriad of rapidly changing technical skills and knowledge needed in the 21st century innovation and information economy. A recent report suggested that much technical information can be outdated within two years and even the popular media—in books such as Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, and Derek Bok’s Our Underachieving Colleges—recognize that 21st century innovation in technology and the business world now happen at speeds almost incomprehensible by comparison to the times when many current engineering faculty members and practitioners were in college.
It is not, therefore, the drilling-down detail and precision that an early engineering education should give our future engineering professionals, but the ability to learn and reason across (and out of) disciplinary boundaries. Students showing “T-shaped” breadth and depth that comes from a holistic approach to their craft during their undergraduate years—mastering core fundamentals as well as gaining an understanding of areas such as business, foreign language, humanities, and social sciences— will be truly competitive graduates in 21st century engineering markets. They will be able to acquire highly technical, highly specialized skills in postgraduate study, just as surgeons are trained after a solid grounding in more general medicine. World leaders such as IBM, CDM, and MITRE Corp. are already appreciating the value of “T-shaped” thinking with both management investments as well as their deployment of “services” markets that deliver technologies contextualized and customized to the social, economic, environmental, and business needs of individual clients. More importantly, if we continue training the majority of engineering students in narrowly prescribed technological formats, we will potentially create a resource not for global engineering leadership, but simply another global commodity, traded by markets
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at its lowest value and dependent upon the economic whims of any engineering employer—an issue discussed in reports and essays including the 2007 National Center on Education and the Economy’s Tough Choices or Tough Times as well as the aptlynamed “Engineers as Commodities” by IEEE Life Fellow George McClure. However, if we train our students to be proficient in engineering thought, as “T-shaped” and holistic thinkers with fundamentals strongly in place as well as the skills to reason, learn, and innovate beyond traditional disciplines, we will have created truly competitive and value-added engineer. This paradigm shift will require engineers pursuing highly specialized fields to gain additional skills in the first few years of practice, similar to the legal or medical professions. It will also allow engineeringtrained individuals to bring their skill and acumen to professions ranging from law to finance and policy—all of which should, in fact, be infused with our professional expertise. The holistic engineer is, therefore, the most competitive employee of all.
The Myth of Public Peril One of the most alarming, yet patently untrue, skepticisms of a broad engineering education is that the holistic engineering education will, despite its good intentions, imperil the public. Without precision engineering skills learned and repeated through those four critical years of college engineering classes, the argument goes, bridges will fall, buildings will collapse, and dams will fail. As PE readers know well, however, the work of engineers is subject to postgraduate licensing and constant review before any project is entrusted to public use, whether engineering degrees of the designers were received from a highly regarded technical program or a small liberal arts school. In all states, engineers serve an apprenticeship period before being allowed to sit for the Principles and Practice of Engineering Exam, and once they pass the exam and meet all other requirements, they are officially sanctioned to call themselves professional engineers. Furthermore, this argument implies that four years of technical training would, in fact, allow an engineer to be qualified to build a bridge or construct a building. Yet, just as a medical student (many of whom gained liberal arts degrees before
choosing their profession) cannot, without supervision or oversight, operate on a living being without serving several years as a resident and apprentice before becoming a trusted surgeon, professional engineers are also highly skilled in their craft, with many years expected before mastery of the trade. Suggesting that sufficient knowledge is gained in four years of college is simply a false premise for argument. It is not the broadening of an engineer’s education that disserves the public, but the present educational system that does not train professionals to think holistically about the true impact of their technological and scientific creations in society.
The Myth of Institutional Inertia Finally, skeptics of holistic approaches may argue that true reform of U.S. engineering education is just not feasible at large scales (e.g., while smaller engineering programs such as that of Dartmouth College’s Thayer School and the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College have the luxury of developing competitive, integrated, interdisciplinary approaches to undergraduate engineering education, the larger university programs simply cannot implement a broad-based curriculum). Engineering education progress cannot be held hostage to a false premise of institutional inertia. The agents for adaptive change are no further than the distinguished engineering faculty populating university halls and their professional colleagues in the business and governmental community urging and supporting reform. Indeed, a paradigm shift to the holistic engineering model can be achieved with relatively minor adjustments to existing curricula. For example, offering parallel, alternative, holistic engineering tracks that use existing, traditional engineering courses, such as that being developed by dedicated faculty at the University of Vermont, should liberate, not inconvenience, existing faculty. Under this model, engineering majors are given the flexibility to focus on core engineering requirements, such as statics, dynamics, circuits, or thermodynamics, in their first two years and then open their undergraduate experience to cross-disciplinary courses that create truly “T-shaped,” holistic, and competitive engineering skills, all within an ABET-accredited degree format. In turn, as engineering faculty
move to a two-year core curriculum, time can be opened in their professional schedules for more elective course teaching as well as innovative research. The data for nationwide engineering enrollments, retention, and attrition are currently alarming. Engineers across academia, business, and government know that we are losing the potential of new engineering talent, both men and women. As shown clearly in a 1998 Harris Poll cited by the National Academy of Engineering, far too many students perceive traditional engineering degree programs as too prescriptive, lacking breadth and societal engagement, and without connection to pressing issues of social responsibility, entrepreneurial thinking, and environmental awareness—all issues that connect with the youth’s hearts and minds. We recognize that this perception is, in part, a message problem and the 2008 National Academy of Engineering publication Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering is a good, if belated, start to engaging potential engineering students using the power of our media-intensive, message-driven culture. At the same time, we argue that this is also a substantive, curriculum-based problem that only a true investment in holistic approaches can solve. Even with the most impressive marketing program of NAE, it is impossible to argue convincingly that we teach creativity and innovation in our engineering schools when many schools refuse to let go of a curriculum that has changed little since the 1950s. If we truly want to attract and retain the best, brightest, most diverse, and most innovative students in the U.S., we must invest in, and actively offer, the highest-quality engineering education filled with integrative courses in engineering technology, humanities, and the arts. Broad-based first year and senior design courses engaging local and national business and nonprofit interests should flourish, courses that actively contextualize engineering’s role in public policy debates should be encouraged, and student engagement in forward-thinking activities such as Engineers Without Borders and hybridpowered race cars should be highlighted to potential students and parents alike.
The Holistic Advantage A holistic engineering training that includes exposure to global issues and contextualizes technological knowledge within the framework of 21st century, complex economic, social, and environmental issues is critically needed to ensure the competitiveness and relevance of the American engineering enterprise. The future of leadership and excellence in our profession is one in which we invest in and create engineering practitioners who crave broad knowledge across disciplines and command a diversity of both technical and professional acumen throughout their career, be it for high-tech engineering or the management of a global IT corporation. These engineers are holistic in view, adaptive in the face of challenge, and able to provide continuous, cost-effective value to employers or clients—in rapidly changing markets. They are creative and innovative and will inspire the next generation of engineers to invest in our practice and profession. While all new ideas deserve critical thought and skepticism, we argue that an investment in holistic engineering—not a new idea, but the encapsulation of many efforts, over many years, to shift the engineering education paradigm—is of critical and immediate importance for 21st century competitiveness of the U.S. engineering sector. Technologically based engineering training can be outsourced; engineering creativity and innovation, married to technological excellence, cannot. The future of the profession relies upon a core investment in holistic approaches to engineering education, creating the truly 21st century engineering professional who can best meet the complex social, environmental, energy, economic, and technical challenges begging for engineering expertise. We hope the engineering community will embrace the holistic approach as an inspiring, exciting, and competitive advantage for future generations.
Domenico Grasso, Ph.D., P.E., is dean and Melody Brown Burkins, Ph.D., is associate dean of the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Vermont. Joseph Helble, Ph.D., is dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. David Martinelli, Ph.D., P.E., is professor and former chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at West Virginia University.
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