Engineering Education and the Identities of Engineers in Colombia, 1887-1972

摘要

Downey and Lucena state that "[w]hen nations redefine their priorities and re-plot their directions of travel, engineers get worried about the contents of their knowledge."74 In the Colombian case, the nation and its engineers developed in parallel the essence and consistency of their respective identities during the twentieth century. At the end of the nineteenth century, both Colombia as a nation and engineering as a profession were inco-herent ideals that attempted unsuccessfully to enfold such heterogeneous entities as Panama, foreign engineers, international models of engineering education, the institutes in Medellin and Bogota, railroads, and so on. During the twentieth century, the identities of both the nation and its engineers were established and stabilized, and this article has attempted to demonstrate the interdependence of these changing identities. Colombian engineers' professional identities were concurrently established with the country's identity.