Engineering schools change with the times

Colleges still stress engineering fundamentals, but they’ve also added some new twists. Engineering schools sure aren't what they used to be just 10 or 20 years ago. They've shed classes in machine shop and how to manipulate the slide rule, but they're still responsible for turning out the well-trained engineers who keep economies humming and civilizations safe. One of the challenges facing colleges today is how to introduce students to all the technologies, computer tools, and design techniques that have been and are being developed, and all in the four-year time frame introduced over 100 years ago. To learn how colleges are coping with the technology explosion, we interviewed several engineering deans and department heads. The objective for engineering schools is universal: Turn out graduates with strong backgrounds in basic engineering and science, and good work ethics, who can learn new tasks and information on their own. The idea of lifelong learning is vital. "We impress on students that their GPA, major, and what they learn are only tickets to the race," says Professor Ward Winer, head of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. "If they don't continue learning at whatever career they go into, they won't be very successful." At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the objectives have been somewhat formalized. Students must show proficiency in five areas: Mastery of fundamentals, creativity, leadership, professionalism, and societal awareness. "Granted, most time is spent on the fundamentals, but the faculty is doing an outstanding job of integrating the others into classes, starting in freshmen year," says Robert Savinell, Engineering Dean at CWRU. "Creativity, for example, is taught by giving students the opportunity to ‘think out of the box,' letting them use the fundamentals they've learned innovatively rather than by rote," says Savinell. He is convinced this method is working. "Many of our grad students come from countries with tightly regimented curricula. Case students, on the other hand, have much broader exposure to the humanities and are encouraged to think independently and innovatively when examining open-ended problems. So our