Re-Engineering Engineering Education for the Challenges of the 21 st Century

摘要

It is unthinkable that U.S. society can remain competitive and can sustain its present standard of living without a large number of people with the knowledge and know-how to innovate. In the early days of the nation, Noah Webster claimed that democracy succeeds and prevails only if the people have economic and educational hope, and that these two are closely interlinked. To educate engineers ready to face the challenges of tomorrow we must appreciate how profoundly the world has changed from just a few decades ago. Thus, we need to examine the curriculum from a new perspective and accept the possibility that changes that go beyond minor tweaking are needed. Here, we have attempted to set up a framework to do so. We have tried to be general, but we believe that the suggestions made here have very specific implications for engineering curricula. The actual implementation, however, remains a topic for further study.