Technological Innovation and Engineering Education: Beware the Da Vinci Requirement

摘要

How best can one educate the engineer of 2020 and beyond? How can institutions meet increasing demands to produce graduates with sound scientific fundamentals and essential non-technical skills, while ensuring they are knowledgeable of state of the art advances in technology? To better frame the discussion, I present an analysis of historical technical innovation and engineering knowledge trends, and provide a perspective on the practice of parsing technological knowledge to define new engineering disciplines. Evidence suggests that the emergence of new engineering disciplines has historically matched the pace of increases in technological innovations, with both the number of disciplines and technological innovation doubling at a rate of between 31 and 35 years. Continued success of the parsing strategy requires increased emphasis on certain engineering education trends such as instilling communication and teaming skills, an emphasis on life-long learning skills, and mechanisms for interdisciplinary integration. Lastly, I recommend that a proactive and thoughtful mapping of future disciplinary demarcations could prove more beneficial than the current ad hoc process.