Educating the Engineer of 2020 and Beyond –
The National Discourse
by Dean Thomas L. Magnanti, Vol. 3, No. 6, November 2006
We cannot be complacent about American leadership in engineering education or about our responsibility to promote innovation and sustainable systems and economies. Above all, we must ensure that universities and engineering schools are exciting, creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding, and empowering milieus for our students.
– Charles M. Vest, MIT President Emeritus and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, speaking at the Engineering Systems Division's Brunel Lecture, October 2006
Many of you may already have heard that I have decided to step down as dean of MIT's School of Engineering some time over the next year. I want you to know that it has been an immense pleasure, indeed a privilege, to serve for nearly eight years as dean of what I have often referred to as the best engineering school in the galaxy and to collaborate with so many outstanding faculty, staff, students, alumni/ae and friends of the Institute. I am deeply appreciative for all that these many people have done to make these years so enjoyable and productive.
The spirit of creative innovation that is MIT's hallmark has continued apace in reshaping education across the School over the past eight years. In the past year alone, some exciting new programs have come online that I'd like to share with you. We never rest at MIT. We are currently taking part in the national dialog on the changing world of engineering practice and how that might shape engineering education of the future. We are also considering the role that MIT might play in opening that world to all U.S. K-12 students.
The national discourse on engineering education
From my position as dean, I have had the opportunity to actively participate in the ongoing national dialog concerning engineering education. The comprehensive 2004 Council on Competitiveness National Innovation Initiative Final Report recommended the creation of a national strategy to catalyze the next generation of American innovators. I had the pleasure of chairing a working group on Workforce Skills that offered some of the recommendations in this important report.
Last May, I had the opportunity to speak on this topic to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce (footnote to EOW article on talk). I recommended continuing the national momentum for improving teaching and learning in undergraduate science and engineering through the adoption of best-practice pedagogy and innovative education technologies that support learning. Universities, such as MIT, can also play a role in K-12 in supporting children's exploration of science and engineering and is attracting students to pursue degrees and careers in science and technology.
An urgent call for national reform of engineering education has emerged from this dialog. Many are expressing concerns that we are not attracting students to engineering in sufficient numbers and that we are not retaining those students who we do attract – nationally 50% of students who enter engineering are not completing their degrees. (Fortunately, at MIT, nearly all who enter engineering do complete their studies.) After attending an engineering education workshop at MIT that drew a number of national leaders last year, John H. Marburger, science advisor to President Bush and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, commented that the "number one fact I'll take away … is that 98 percent of the students who drop out of engineering cite bad teaching as the cause."
As I listen to the public discourse and read various reports, I can't help but consider the extraordinary resources and influence we have at MIT. This brings me to ask two questions vis-à-vis MIT and this national conversation:
- what is MIT specifically doing in this arena to improve engineering education, and
- as one of the leading engineering schools in the country, what role should MIT play nationally?
Strengthening engineering education at MIT
Over the past eight years, we have made significant investments in educational innovation in the School of Engineering through our program called iCampus, the d'Arbeloff fund, school-based funding, and many departmental initiatives. We have created new content areas and new pedagogical approaches, many enabled by uses of educational technologies. In recent years, the School has introduced eleven new graduate and undergraduate degree programs. We certainly don't stand still!
School and departmental educational innovations
Let me mention some of our innovations. On the undergraduate level, the School has continued to strengthen our offering of engineering fundamentals while at the same time broadening the curriculum. This year, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, in adopting an expanded mission to train students in the design of a sustainable human environment, has introduced a new undergraduate program that integrates the complexity and hands-on nature of real-world engineering problems with an updated core of engineering fundamentals. For example, students recently visited New Orleans on a field trip to study flooding and water quality. The Department of Materials Science and Engineering has made changes to its curriculum to integrate laboratory and lectures to improve learning. Their updated core improves student understanding of the molecular foundations of materials. The Department of Mechanical Engineering has added the option of service learning to upper level engineering design subjects. For example, students can work with clients on the design of much-needed devices for handicapped patients. Deliberations are currently going on in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science about revitalizing the core for their undergraduate programs as well. These changes reflect the result of significant introspection and the impetus to create a more integrated approach to education, especially adding more hands-on and project-based learning to the educational enterprise.
At the School level, our Engineering Council for Undergraduate Education (E-CUE) has prepared a white paper calling for innovative approaches to teaching problem solving, design and systems thinking in undergraduate education that integrates hands-on projects with real world complexity. Some of the E-CUE ideas have been incorporated into a pilot freshman subject on engineering problem solving and design to be taught in Spring 2007: FUNdaMENTALS of Engineering Design: EXPLORE Space, Sea and Earth. These efforts complement other significant efforts such as our Undergraduate Opportunities Program and the Conceive Design Implement and Operate (CDIOTM) initiative of the department of Aeronautics and Astronautics that I have highlighted in other newsletters to you.
New uses of educational technology
To enhance education and learning, we have made significant investments in educational technology in recent years, including those supported by the d'Arbeloff Fund for Excellence, iCampus, and OpenCourseWare.
- Named for its creators, MIT alumni Alex ('49) and Brit ('61) d'Arbeloff, the d'Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in MIT Education has sparked a significant number of rich experiments in teaching and learning designed to enhance and potentially transform the academic and residential experience of MIT's undergraduate students. For example, one initiative, "Discover Engineering," has created a series of immersive seminars to introduce engineering disciplines and improve the quality of the freshman year at MIT. (See current projects.)
- iCampus, the seven-year research alliance between MIT and Microsoft Research to enhance university education through information technology, has touched 150 courses with a combined enrollment of over 7,200 students. Its 28 faculty-led research projects and 27 student-run projects brought together faculty and student expertise from across traditional academic departments and disciplines, including about 400 researchers. iCampus promoted the use of IT–based "active-learning" systems in classes such as freshman electromagnetism (MIT's highest enrollment subject) and introductory computer science (a subject taken by half of all MIT undergraduates). iCampus pioneered a few global learning web-based services, including iLabs that allows MIT students to access novel online, real-time laboratories state-of-the-art labs (including a Microelectronics MEMS testing device, chemical reactor, a wind tunnel, and a heat exchanger) from dorm rooms and other locations 24 hours a day. The iLab concept has given students a new framework for carrying out experiments and relating it to underlying theory, permitting us to integrate laboratories more effectively with the lecture material in our classes.
- OpenCourseWare (OCW), is the large-scale, web-based electronic publishing initiative that provides free, searchable access to MIT's course materials to educators, students, and self-learners across the country and around the world via the Internet. About 445 engineering courses (of over 1550 MIT courses currently offered) are available through OCW. (See more below.)
Institute-wide initiatives
The MIT Task Force on the Undergraduate Educational Commons has recently released its final report. For the past two and a half years, the two dozen MIT faculty members and undergraduate students on the Task Force have comprehensively reviewed MIT's General Institute Requirements and other aspects of the common educational experience of MIT students. The School's E-CUE played an important role in discussions to expand the GIRs to include engineering. It's exciting that engineering is now being proposed as part of the common education for all MIT students – one of several recommendations that the Faculty and faculty committees are now considering over the coming months.
Leading change in engineering education nationally
Across engineering departments nationally, inclusion of engineering design experiences and use of real-world case studies and active learning pedagogies have improved undergraduate education. Yet more needs to be done. As one of the leading engineering schools in the country, and one that has undertaken significant innovation in education, does MIT have a particular role to play nationally in engineering education for the future?
I think we do. I say that based both on our track record of leadership and on our embracing of bold experiments in education.
National impact in higher education
I've already mentioned OpenCourseWare, which is an important model for the use of the Internet to disseminate and provide wide access to information. (OCW had 8.5 M visits to OCW content last year, a 56% annual increase.) With plans to offer materials from 1800 MIT courses by 2008, OCW has contributed to higher education in remarkable ways, as evident from these statistics:
- 95% of users report MIT OCW has or will help them to be more productive and effective (49% of visitors are self learners, 32% students, 16% educators)
- 46% of educators have adopted MIT OCW content to improve their own teaching
- 38% of students use MIT OCW materials to complement a course they are taking; 34% use MIT OCW to learn about subjects outside of formal classes
- 56% of self-learners use MIT OCW to enhance personal knowledge; 16% use MIT OCW to stay current in their chosen field
The Open Knowledge Initiative is another example of MIT playing a significant role both nationally and internationally. Led by MIT, OKI was launched as a collaborative program among several universities to define learning-technology architecture for the higher education community. With the goal of building the infrastructure for sustainable educational transformation, OKI has created a set of open service interface definitions for use by educational institutions and commercial vendors to create learning management systems and tools that interoperate.
Foundation for change in engineering education nationally
Throughout history, our nation has experienced periods of significant change in education that have had very broadly impact. We can point to the 1860s when the Morrill Act made higher education more accessible to a wider proportion of Americans by making it possible for states to establish agricultural and technical colleges through the granting and sale of land. Dozens of "land grant" colleges, of which MIT is one, were established under the Morrill Act and many grew into large public universities, providing higher education for millions of Americans. These A&M schools had as part of their purpose addressing the most pressing problems of their time.
Another critical stimulus to higher education came with the GI Bill signed in 1944. It also significantly opened universities to the public, for example, to my father on returning from service in World War II. Certain fields at points extensively overhauled their approach to education; for example, the field of medicine went through a period of significant introspection in this country back in the early 1900s and subsequently dramatically changed the teaching of medicine. And in engineering itself, MIT led the establishment of engineering science some 40+ years ago as a new model for engineering education that fundamentally changed the teaching of engineering.
I believe that the current time has brought us to another critical juncture for higher education as our country recognizes the tremendous importance of providing superior engineering education to our young people. MIT serves as a powerful model for enhancing learning in new and exciting ways, including exposing students to the world of practice, utilizing advanced technology to facilitate learning, and developing new approaches to teaching and learning. MIT has played a very significant role in the past in shaping engineering education and I think we can and will do so in the future. Indeed, we have an obligation to do so.