Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
NEW DEGREE EECS Looks At 5-Year Program Declaring that four years is too short a time for the basic training of entry-level professional engineers, a Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science committee has proposed a five-year program leading to a Master of Engineering degree as the "flagship" degree program. The proposal, part of which requires Institute-wide approvals, was debated-sometimes warmly-by department faculty at a meeting November 25 called to move toward consensus. Professor Paul L. Penfield Jr., department head, in a memo announcing the meeting, said the goal was to have the new program described in the MIT catalog for the 1992-93 academic year. The added flexibility of the proposed program is important, Professor Penfield said. "Traditionally, leaders of our society have come from academic programs that have combined lasting fundamentals with freedom for students to select their own advanced courses. The proposed programs, with this same combination, will give our professional graduates a better basis for national and world leadership through engineering." The proposal was outlined in a document prepared by three faculty members serving on the department Committee on the First Professional Degree, Professors John V. Guttag, Campbell L. Searle (the EECS graduate officer) and William M. Siebert. The proposal would integrate present SB and SM programs into a single structured program leading to a professional Master of Engineering (MEng) degree at the end of five years for a full-time student. An accredited SB degree would continue to be offered and would be picked up automatically by those who receive the MEng. A new unaccredited SB degree program, intended primarily for those seeking an EECS foundation for careers in areas such as medicine, law and business, would also be available. The proposal has been designed, the committee said, to have minimal impact on PhD programs. "Historically, engineering educational programs have regularly required revision to match changing technical and societal demands on the engineering profession," the committee said. "We believe that we have reached the point at which the formal education of an entry-level professional engineer requires five years." The committee cited these reasons for that view: The complexity of today's globally interrelated technical society requires engineering leaders to take "a broader as well as deeper view of their professional responsibility." This will require "significant changes in both the professional components of engineering and many areas that have traditionally been considered `non professional.' And it will require more time. The widespread `pace and pressure' feeling shared by students and faculty alike suggests there is little slack in the current system." Students require more science and mathematics exposure "and the integrated demands of modern competitive designs suggest we should perhaps put back something of those other technologies-mechanics, materials, manufacturing techniques, economics, etc.-that vanished from the EECS curriculum a generation or more ago, because of lack of time." Incoming engineering students "are burdened with a variety of weaknesses-in basic science and mathematics, in written and oral and graphical communications, in experimental skills, in work habits. These are a result of ongoing changes in society and the secondary schools largely beyond our control, but they demand increasing curricular time to correct. Other countries (including our principal industrial competitors) arguably suffer less than we do from the breakdown of general education at the secondary level, and they also spend up to twice as much curricular time as we do on technical subjects prior to the first professional degree." These are problems that should be dealt with as part of a student's early formal academic training, the committee said, and imply a longer program. The problems cannot be addressed by encouraging graduates of the SB program to continue for an SM because the research/PhD orientation of current SM programs is not geared to provide the "integrated educational experience that seems desirable for the majority of our students headed towards a nonacademic career." "This integrated educational experience is the goal of the proposed new MEng program," the committee said. The department plans to establish two five-year programs, distinguishing between a focus on electrical engineering and on computer science. The heart of the program would be a core of four subjects, similar to the current core subjects, and 11 more advanced engineering subjects. Nine of these would be composed of three electives chosen from each of three "depth areas" selected from among seven depth areas spanning all of the department's offerings. The proposed seven depth areas are artificial intelligence; bioelectrical engineering; communication, control and signal processing; computer systems and architecture; devices, circuits and systems; electrodynamics and energy systems; and theoretical computer science. Admission to the fifth year of the new MEng program would be largely automatic for the majority of EECS undergraduates, the committee said. To deal with the increase of masters-level students, the committee has proposed eliminating the SB thesis and reducing the scope of the master's thesis.