Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association

15 November 2005K. A. Connor

Globalization Workshop Washington, DC

The Engineer of 2020

Educating the Engineer of 2020

NAE Recommendations on Research and Education

K. A. Connor

Outline

• The NAE Publication The Engineer of 2020 – Guiding Principles and Characteristics of the Engineer of 2020

• The NAE Publication Educating the Engineer of 2020 – Key Recommendations

• The NAE Report Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future

K. A. Connor

Globalization?

K. A. Connor

The Engineer of 2020from NAE

Paperback Book (Also pdf)

K. A. Connor

The Engineer of 2020

• Guiding Principles• The pace of technological innovation will continue to be

rapid (most likely accelerating).• The world in which technology will be deployed will be

intensely globally interconnected.• The population of individuals who are involved with or

affected by technology (e.g., designers, manufacturers, distributors, users) will be increasingly diverse and multidisciplinary.

• Social, cultural, political, and economic forces will continue to shape and affect the success of technological innovation.

• The presence of technology in our everyday lives will be seamless, transparent, and more significant than ever.

K. A. Connor

The Engineer of 2020

• Attributes• Strong analytical skills• Practical ingenuity• Creativity• Good communication skills• Mastery of the principles of business and management• Leadership• High ethical standards and a strong sense of

professionalism• Dynamism, agility, resilience, and flexibility• Life long learners

K. A. Connor

Educating The Engineer of 2020from NAE

Paperback Book (Also pdf)

K. A. Connor

Educating the Engineering of 2020

1. The baccalaureate degree should be recognized as the “pre-engineering” degree or bachelor of arts in engineering degree, depending on the course content and reflecting the career aspirations of the student.

2. ABET should allow accreditation of engineering programs of the same name at the baccalaureate and graduate levels in the same department to recognize that education through a “professional” master’s degree produces an AME, an accredited “master” engineer.

K. A. Connor

Educating the Engineering of 2020

3. Engineering schools should more vigorously exploit the flexibility inherent in the outcomes-based accreditation approach to experiment with novel models for baccalaureate education. ABET should ensure that evaluators look for innovation and experimentation in the curriculum and not just hold institutions to a strict interpretation of the guidelines as they see them.

4. Whatever other creative approaches are taken in the four-year engineering curriculum, the essence of engineering—the iterative process of designing, predicting performance, building, and testing—should be taught from the earliest stages of the curriculum, including the first year.

K. A. Connor

Educating the Engineering of 2020

5. The engineering education establishment, for example, the Engineering Deans Council, should endorse research in engineering education as a valued and rewarded activity for engineering faculty as a means to enhance and personalize the connection to undergraduate students, to understand how they learn, and to appreciate the pedagogical approaches that excite them.

6. Colleges and universities should develop new standards for faculty qualifications, appointments, and expectations, for example, to require experience as a practicing engineer, and should create or adapt development programs to support the professional growth of engineering faculty.

K. A. Connor

Educating the Engineering of 2020

7. As well as delivering content, engineering schools must teach engineering students how to learn, and must play a continuing role along with professional organizations in facilitating lifelong learning, perhaps through offering “executive” technical degrees similar to executive MBAs.

8. Engineering schools introduce interdisciplinary learning in the undergraduate environment, rather than having it as an exclusive feature of the graduate programs.

K. A. Connor

Educating the Engineering of 2020

9. Engineering educators should explore the development of case studies of engineering successes and failures and the appropriate use of a case-studies approach in undergraduate and graduate curricula.

10. Four-year engineering schools must accept it as their responsibility to work with their local community colleges to ensure effective articulation, as seamless as possible, with their two-year programs.

11. U.S. engineering schools must develop programs to encourage/reward domestic engineering students to aspire to the M.S. and/or Ph.D. degree.

K. A. Connor

Educating the Engineering of 2020

12. Engineering schools should lend their energies to a national effort to improve math, science, and engineering education at the K-12 level.

13. The engineering education establishment should participate in a coordinated national effort to promote public understanding of engineering and technology literacy of the public.

K. A. Connor

Educating the Engineering of 2020

14. NSF should collect and/or fund collection, perhaps through ASEE or the Engineering Workforce Commission, of comprehensive data by engineering department/school on program philosophy and student outcomes such as, but not exclusively, student retention rates by gender and ethnicity, common reasons why students leave, where they go, percent of entering freshman that graduate, time to degree, and information on jobs and admission to graduate school.

K. A. Connor

Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter

Economic Future from NAE

K. A. Connor

News Stories (Mid October)• Chronicle: Australia tops US and UK in foreign fee

paying students • NY Times: Top Advisory Panel Warns of an Erosion of

the U.S. Competitive Edge in Science (NAE) Last year, more than 600,000 engineers graduated from

institutions of higher education in China, compared to 350,000 in India and 70,000 in the United States.

Recently, American 12th graders performed below the international average for 21 countries on general knowledge in math and science.

The cost of employing one chemist or engineer in the United States is equal to about five chemists in China and 11 engineers in India.

Chemical companies last year shut 70 facilities in the United States and marked 40 for closure. Of 120 large chemical plants under construction globally, one is in the United States and 50 are in China.

K. A. Connor

News Continued• Recommendations

To create a corps of 10,000 teachers annually, four-year scholarships, up to $20,000 a year, for top students to obtain bachelor's degrees in science, engineering or math - with parallel certification as K-12 math and science teachers. The students would work for at least five years in public schools.

An Advanced Research Projects Agency modeled after the military's should be established in the Energy Department to sponsor novel research to meet the nation's long-term energy challenges.

The nation's most outstanding early-career researchers should annually receive 200 new research grants - worth $500,000 each, and payable over five years.

International students in the United States who receive doctorates in science, technology, engineering or math should get automatic one-year visa extensions that allow them to seek employment here. If these students get job offers and pass a security screening test, they should automatically get work permits and expedited residence status. If they cannot get a job, their visas should expire.

The Research and Experimentation Tax Credit, scheduled to expire in December, should be made permanent and expanded.

K. A. Connor

Reference

http://www.nationalacademies.org/morenews/20051012.html

K. A. Connor

Additional Recommendations from NAE Report on Research and Engineering

K. A. Connor

Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future

• Sustain and strengthen the nation’s traditional commitment to the long-term basic research that has the potential to be transformational to maintain the flow of new ideas that fuel the economy, provide security, and enhance the quality of life. Increase the federal investment in long-term basic research,

ideally through reallocation of existing funds but also if necessary via new funds by consenting to an increase of 10% annually over the next 7 years. Special attention should go to the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and information sciences and to Department of Defense (DOD) basic-research funding.

Allocate at least 8% of the budgets of federal research agencies to discretionary funding that would be managed by technical program managers in the agencies and focused on catalyzing high-risk, high-payoff research.

K. A. Connor

Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future

• Make the United States the most attractive setting in which to study, perform research, and commercialize technologic innovation so that we can develop, recruit, and retain the best and brightest students, scientists, and engineers from within the United States and throughout the world. Increase the number and proportion of US citizens who earn

physical and life sciences, engineering, and mathematics bachelor’s degrees by providing 25,000 new 4-year undergraduate scholarships each year to US citizens attending US institutions.

Increase the number of US citizens pursuing graduate study “in areas of national need” by funding 5,000 new graduate fellowships each year.

K. A. Connor

Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future

Provide a federal tax credit to encourage employers to make continuing education available (either internally or though colleges and universities) to practicing scientists and engineers.

Continue to improve visa processing for international students and scholars

Institute a new skills-based, preferential immigration option. (Being fought by IEEE-USA)

• Ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world to innovate, invest in downstream activities, and create high-paying jobs that are based on innovation by modernizing the patent system, realigning tax policies to encourage innovation, and ensuring affordable broadband access.