Enhancing Engineering Education to Reflect the Professional Expectations of the 21st Century: Examples from In-Process Programs

This paper examines complex issues associated with 21 st century engineering practice as described through comparisons between a controversial report, The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century, and our own engineering students of 2005. According to this report and other recent studies published by leaders in engineering education, engineering students of the 21 st century will possess a markedly different set of skills and abilities in order to thrive in a world of high-technology and globalization. Unlike traditional engineering programs that have portrayed students as “empty vessels” waiting to be filled with a regimented schedule of discipline-specific courses, 21 st century engineering programs are predicted to be student-centered programs customized to meet the needs of a divergent mix of undergraduate engineering students through “enhanced instructional methodologies”. This paper presents examples of such programs already in progress in a large, metropolitan institution far in advance of 2020 in hopes that such examples will mitigate the hesitancy and resistance for engineering educators more familiar with traditional engineering instruction. One such example comes from multi-disciplinary engineering educators working collaboratively on one of two National Science Foundation grants (DUE-0122950 and DUE-0422097), where multiple areas of overlap exist between the predicted characteristics described in The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century and the goals and objectives of this program. Other examples are presented to highlight links between what is predicted in 2020 engineering education and what exists in 2005 through incorporation of outreach initiatives and industry partnerships. All of these programs represent “enhanced educational experiences” designed to engage undergraduate engineering students through “non-traditional” instruction and support. While “non-traditional” engineering experiences at the undergraduate level may be atypical in 2005, we join the Committee on Engineering Education in anticipation that multiple modes of multi-disciplinary approaches will be “main-stream” in the engineering education of 2020. It is our hope that these examples will assist other engineering educators in developing their own styles of professional flexibility, and we offer these perspectives to assist and prepare other educators for the changes ahead.