Transcript
Brunel
Lecture Series on Complex Systems
MIT Engineering Systems Division
Educating
Engineers for 2020 and Beyond
Charles
M. Vest
MIT
October 12, 2006
Introduction
It is a great honor and privilege
to be asked by my faculty colleagues
to deliver this year’s Brunel
Lecture, and to be the beneficiary
of Frank Davidson’s vision and
gift that makes this possible. This
is a very nice counter to Jerry Wiesner’s
comment that retired MIT presidents
are “forgotten but not gone.”
My talk has its origin in an article
that I wrote for The Bridge,
the magazine of the National Academy
of Engineering, but I have tried to
expand and update it in useful ways.
It
is especially a privilege to deliver
the Brunel Lecture this year because
2006 is the 200th anniversary of Brunel’s
birth. As Joel has noted, I. K. Brunel
was the highest exemplar of engineering
in 19th century – the century
of the Industrial Revolution and the
Century of Steel. Most of my career
as a student, professor, and academic
administrator was played out in the
20th century – the Century of
Physics, Electronics, Communications,
and High-Speed Transportation. But
we all – and especially our
students -- now have the privilege
of living through the transition to
the 21st century – presumably
the Century of Biology and Information.
As
this transition occurs, it surely
is an appropriate time to think about
the nature of engineering education.
And because engineering education
is an increasingly complex and global
undertaking at a time when the population
of the United States will become 300
million any day now, and in a century
when the earth’s population
may approach 9 billion, it does qualify
as a large complex system.
So
all is in order except for one thing.
I question my qualifications to discuss
the subject, because I can see its
future at best through a glass darkly,
while our students and younger faculty
undoubtedly see it much more clearly
and have a much better knowledge and
experience base from which to approach
the topic. Thus before you take me
seriously on this topic, you should
talk with colleagues like Angie Belcher
who’s students use viruses to
grow batteries; Neil Gershenfeld whose
digital fabrication course “How
to Make Almost Anything” builds
a new kind of technological literacy;
Amy Smith whose students do engineering
and design for the developing world.
These and so many other young colleagues
at MIT know far more about what engineering
students need to prepare for 2020
than I do.
I
would also note that this caveat is
entirely consistent with what our
colleague Glenn Strehle said to me
when I announced that I was stepping
down from the MIT presidency. “Well,”
he said, “then you will become
a retired university president –
someone who goes around giving talks
about all the problems with higher
education that you didn’t fix
when you could have!”
I
plead guilty.
When
I look back over my 35-plus years
as an engineering educator, I realize
that many things have changed remarkably,
but others seem not to have changed
at all. Issues that have been with
us for the past 35 years include:
how to make the freshman year more
exciting; how to communicate what
engineers actually do; how to improve
the writing and communication skills
of engineering graduates; how to bring
the richness of American diversity
into the engineering workforce; how
to give students a basic understanding
of business processes; and how to
get students to think about professional
ethics and social responsibility.
But for the most part, things have
changed in astounding ways. We have
moved from slide rules to calculators
to PCs to wireless laptops. Just think
of all that implies.
Looking
ahead to 2020, a mere 14 years, and
setting goals should be a “piece
of cake.” But to gain some perspective,
look back, and think about what was
not going on in 1990. There was no
World Wide Web. Cell phones and wireless
communication were in the embryonic
stage. The big challenge was the inability
of the American manufacturing sector
to compete in world markets; Japan
was about to bury us economically.
The human genome had not been sequenced.
There were no carbon nanotubes. Buckminster
Fullerines had been around for about
five years. We hadn’t even begun
to inflate the dot-com bubble, let
alone watch it burst. And terrorism
was something that happened in other
parts of the world.
So
predicting the future, or even setting
meaningful goals, is risky, even on
a scale of a mere 15 years or so.
Years ago, I read a study that Gerard
O’Neil of Princeton made of
predictions of the future and found
one simple constant—we always
underestimate the rate of technological
change and overestimate the rate of
social change (O’Neil, 1981).
That is an important lesson for engineering
educators. We educate and train the
men and women who drive technological
change, but we sometimes forget that
they must work in an evolving social,
economic, and political context.
Opportunity
and Challenge
I envy the next generation of engineering
students because this is the most
exciting period in human history for
science and engineering. Exponential
advances in knowledge, instrumentation,
communication, and computational capabilities
have created mind-boggling possibilities,
and students are cutting across traditional
disciplinary boundaries in unprecedented
ways. Indeed, the distinction between
science and engineering in some domains
has been blurred to extinction, which
raises some serious issues for engineering
education.
As
we think about the challenges ahead,
it is important to remember that students
are driven by passion, curiosity,
engagement, and dreams. Although we
cannot know exactly what they should
be taught, we can focus on the environment
in which they learn and the forces,
ideas, inspirations, and empowering
situations to which they are exposed.
Despite our best efforts to plan their
education, however, to a large extent
we simply wind them up, step back,
and watch the amazing things they
do.
In
the long run, making universities
and engineering schools exciting,
creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding,
and empowering milieus is more important
than specifying curricular details.
In fact, that is my primary message.
It
is important that we ourselves as
well as the public and those who finance
our work understand that over time
what research universities do in engineering
and science have huge impact on society.
Consider a brief list of major innovations
in which universities played the sole
or major role: Computing, the laser,
the Internet, GPS fundamentals, Numerically–controlled
machines, the World Wide Web’s
organization and deployment, Financial
engineering, the genetic revolution
and indeed modern medicine. These
are important things for which we
educate students, and indeed in which
our students participate.
Following
the guidance of Vannevar Bush’s
famous report Science the Endless
Frontier, our universities have
been the primary U.S. infrastructure
for research since 1945. Certainly
this has been the case for fundamental
research having long time horizons.
But throughout the 19060s and 1970s
corporations also made major contributions
to what we might term the “science
and engineering commons” –
the open, shared base of scientific
and technological knowledge. In many
fields this industry role has changed
dramatically.
Bob
Lucky, former corporate vice president
of Telcordia, (following a distinguished
career at Bell Labs and Belcore) recently
studied the authorship of papers published
in the IEEE Transactions on Communications.
In 1970, 70 percent of the authors
were from U.S. industry and 8 percent
were from U.S. universities. In 2005,
researchers from U.S. industry authored
only 8 percent of the papers. 47 percent
had U.S. academic authorship. So the
role of industry in this research
area had dropped from dominance to
nearly zero, and the total U.S. contribution
had dropped from almost 80 percent
to about half of the total. This is
emblematic of important trends in
many – though not all –
fields of engineering and science,
that emphasize the critical importance
of advanced education and research
in our universities.
Globalization
When we look to engineering in 2020
and beyond, we have to ask basic questions
about future engineers—who they
will be, what they will do, where
they will do it, why they will do
it, and what this implies for engineering
education in the United States and
elsewhere. In the future, American
engineers will constitute a smaller
and smaller fraction of the profession,
as more and more engineers are educated
and work in other nations, especially
in Asia and South Asia. In the future,
all engineers will practice in national
settings and in global organizations,
including corporations with headquarters
in the United States. They will see
engineering as an exciting career,
a personal upward path, and a way
to affect local economic well-being.
Many
universities around the world that
are preparing for accelerating globalization
especially in Asia and South Asia
strike me as overly utilitarian, with
laser focus on advancing economies
and research. I am reminded of a two-day
meeting at Harvard seven years ago
of a delegation of presidents of American
universities and the presidents of
seven Chinese universities that had
been chosen to be developed into world-class
research universities. Among the Americans
were a Renaissance scholar, an economist,
a political scientist, a linguist,
a mechanical engineer, and, I believe,
a lawyer. Among the Chinese university
presidents were six physicists and
one engineer who had become a computer
scientist. I tell this as part of
the story to illustrate the tectonic
changes taking place in the way engineers
are being produced and in where engineering
and research and development (R&D)
are being done.
From
the U.S. perspective, globalization
is not a choice, but a reality. Our
companies already know this. To them
global operations are old hat, but
it often seems that the public and
the body politick are still largely
in denial of this reality—a
very dangerous situation. If we continue
to deny the realities of globalization
or, worse yet, retreat into protectionism,
then we won’t do the very things
that will enable us to lead and benefit
from this brave new world.
To
compete in world markets in the so-called
“knowledge age,” we cannot
depend on geography, natural resources,
cheap labor, or military might. We
will only thrive on brainpower, organization,
and innovation. Even agriculture,
the one area in which the United States
has traditionally been the low-cost
producer, is undergoing a revolution
that depends on information technology
and biotechnology, that is, brainpower
and innovation.
To
succeed, we must do two things: (1)
discover new scientific knowledge
and technological potential through
research; and (2) drive high-end,
sophisticated technology faster and
better than anyone else. We must make
new discoveries, innovate continually,
and support the most sophisticated
industries. We must also continue
to bring new products and services
to market faster and better than anyone
else, and we must design, produce,
and deliver to serve world markets.
We must recognize that there are natural
global flows in industry; thus, the
manufacture of many goods will inevitably
move from country to country according
to their state of development. Manufacturing
may start in the United States, then
move to Taiwan, then to Korea, and
then to China or India, and on to
Viet Nam. These manufacturing migrations
will occur faster and faster and will
pose enormous challenges to our nation.
These
migrations are indeed large. It is
estimated that between 2000 and 2003,
foreign firms built 60,000 manufacturing
plants in China [Palmisano Foreign
Affairs]. In 2004 chemical companies
closed 70 facilities in the U.S. and
have tagged 40 more for shutdown.
And of the 120 chemical plants currently
being built around the world with
price tags exceeding $1 billion, one
is in the United States and 50 are
in China [RAGS].
Actually,
the situation is far more complicated
and far more profound than just the
churning and shifting of manufacturing
locations. Many, including me, believe
that the entire nature of the innovation
ecosystem and business enterprise
is changing dramatically, and in ways
that are not yet fully understood.
The concept of “open innovation”
championed by Harry Chesbrough of
the Harvard Business School; the creative
removal of constraints whose importance
has been emphasized by Richard Lester
and Michale Piore; the importance
of connectivity and continual learning
across multiple networked companies
and organizations noted by John Hagel
and John Seeley Brown; and the increasing
dispersion of corporate R&D around
the world are all harbingers and descriptions
of major change.
Because
of pervasive high-speed Internet connectivity
and the World Wide Web, one can be
a successful entrepreneur and global
player whether one is in Bangalore
or Bethesda, because everything is
just a mouse click away. So said Tom
Friedman when he vividly called the
public attention to the “flat
world.”
A
even bolder and broader conceptualization
was recently set forth by IBM CEO
Sam Palmisano in an article in Foreign
Affairs explaining that businesses
are transforming into globally
integrated enterprises –
a fundamental evolution beyond the
multinational corporation. All of
this is to suggest that organizations
of all shapes and sizes that can add
value to the production and deployment
of goods and services can and will
be linked and integrated in ways that
maximize quality and efficiency, and
minimizing cost – regardless
of their size or location.
I
certainly do not claim to understand
all of this, but it seems clear that
new paradigms are emerging. They will
require rethinking of the policy environment,
and they certainly require deep reconsideration
of the nature of engineering education
and its integration with other fields,
as well as its international content.
I believe that our goal in doing so
should not only be to educate engineers
to lead and succeed in a changing
world, but also to play a role in
ensuring that globalization becomes
an opportunity – not a threat.
Meeting
these challenges will require an accelerated
commitment to engineering research
and education. Research universities
and their engineering schools will
have to do many things simultaneously:
advance the frontiers of fundamental
science and technology; advance interdisciplinary
work and learning; develop a new,
broad approach to engineering systems;
focus on technologies that address
the most important problems facing
the world; and recognize the global
nature of all things technological.
Scale
and Complexity
There are two frontiers of engineering,
each of which has to do with scale
and each of which is associated with
increasing complexity. One frontier
has to do with smaller and smaller
spatial scales together with faster
and faster time scales – the
world of so-called “bio/nano/info.”
This frontier, which has to do with
the melding of physical, life, and
information sciences, offers stunning,
unexplored possibilities. The natural
forces of this frontier compel faculty
and students to obliterate traditional
disciplinary boundaries. This frontier
meets the criterion of inspiring and
exciting students. And out of this
world will come products and processes
that will drive a new round of entrepreneurship…based
on things you can drop on your toe
and feel (although they may be very
light) —real products that meet
the real needs of real people.
The
other frontier – the “macro”
world – has to do with larger
and larger systems of great complexity
and, generally, of great importance
to society. This is the world of energy,
environment, food, manufacturing,
product development, logistics, and
communications. This frontier addresses
some of the most daunting challenges
to the future of the world. If we
do our jobs right, these challenges
will also resonate with our students.
New
Systems Engineering
This brings me to the topic of engineering
systems.
I
first heard the related term “systems
engineering” as a graduate student
in a seminar about the Vanguard missile—the
United States’ first, ill-fated
attempt to counter Sputnik by putting
a grapefruit-sized satellite into
space. An embarrassing number of Vanguards
started to climb and then blew up,
which Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
found amusing. In fact, the Vanguard
rocket was assembled from excellent
components, but it was designed with
insufficient knowledge of how the
components would interface and interact
with each other. As a result, heat,
electrical fields, and so on, played
havoc with them. The system needed
to be engineered. I found this very
interesting, but then, like most students
of that era, I left that seminar and
continued to pursue a career in engineering
science.
Today,
many of our colleagues believe we
should develop a new field of systems
engineering and that it should be
central to engineering education in
the decades ahead. In 1998, MIT established
an Engineering Systems Division, which
reflected a growing awareness of the
social and intellectual importance
of complex engineered systems. At
the time, a large number of faculty
members in our School of Engineering
and other schools at MIT were already
engaged in research on engineering
systems, and MIT had launched some
important educational initiatives
at the master’s and doctoral
levels. The Engineering Systems Division,
which provides administrative and
programmatic coherence for these activities,
is intended to stimulate further development.
MIT,
of course, is famous for spearheading
“engineering science,”
which revolutionized engineering in
the post-World War II era. In fact,
in my view, the pivotal moment in
MIT’s history was when President
Karl Compton asserted that we could
not be a great engineering institution
if we did not also have great science.
This realization started us on a path
that ultimately led to the engineering
science revolution.
Another
pivotal moment in MIT’s history
occurred half a century ago when a
faculty commission (headed by Warren
K. Lewis) considering the nature of
our educational programs told us we
had to develop strong programs in
the humanities and social sciences
(Committee on Educational Survey,
1949). Perhaps, the greatly enriched
intellectual environment of MIT that
grew following the Lewis Commission
set us on a path toward the twenty-first-century
view of engineering systems, which
surely is not based solely on physics
and chemistry. Engineers of today
and tomorrow must be prepared to conceive
and direct projects of enormous complexity
that require a highly integrative
perspective and skill set.
Academics
led the way in engineering science,
but I don’t think we have led
the way in systems engineering. In
fact, as we observe developments in
industry, government, and society,
we are asking what in the world we
should teach our students. We need
to establish a proper intellectual
framework within which to study, understand,
and develop large, complex engineered
systems. As National Academy of Engineering
president Bill Wulf (2004) has warned
us in a cogent address on ethical
issues in engineering, we work every
day with systems so complex that we
cannot know all of their possible
end states. Under those circumstances,
how can we ensure that they are safe,
reliable, and resilient? In other
words, how can we practice engineering?
Something
exciting is happening, however, and
it comes none too soon. Biologists
and neuroscientists have reframed
much of their work to address the
full glory and immense complexity
of even the simplest living systems.
Engineers and computer scientists
are suddenly as indispensable to research
in the life sciences as the most brilliant
reductionist biologists. The language
in the life sciences today is about
circuits, networks, and pathways.
Indeed, computer scientists and electrical
engineers are at the very core of
the emerging field of synthetic biology.
And speaking of synthetic biology,
the newly minted term “biohacking”
does have a certain special resonance
to MIT ears, doesn’t it?
It
also is fascinating to participate
in discussions of the role of science
and engineering in R&D on homeland
security, or, more generally, on antiterrorism,
which I think of as the “Mother
of All Systems Problems.” Designing
systematic strategies to protect against
terrorism has about as much in common
with protecting ourselves from the
Soviet threat of just a few years
ago as it does with strategizing against
eighteenth-century British troops
marching in orderly file against the
agile and dispersed American colonials.
Here’s
another example of systems engineering.
Consider what IBM vice president for
research, Paul Horn, is thinking about
these days. His company and his industry,
which produce the ultimate fruit of
the engineering science revolution
(i.e., computers), are morphing into
a new services sector—financial
services, manufacturing services,
McDonald’s hamburger services.
Paul Horn (2005) and many of his colleagues
are convinced that a new “services
science” is about to emerge.
If such a new discipline does appear,
it will be a subset of the new systems
engineering.
An
even greater, and ultimately more
important, systems problem than homeland
security is the “sustainable
development” of human societies
on this system of ultimate complexity
and fragility we call Earth. In Europe,
sustainable development, ill defined
though it may be, is part of the everyday
thinking of industry and politicians
and a common element in political
rhetoric—and rhetoric is a start.
I am troubled that it barely appears
on the radar screen in U.S. politics.
Nevertheless, sustainable development
must be on our agenda for preparing
future engineers.
I
believe energy is the key, the sine
qua non, to sustainable development,
but I have feared that we risk becoming
a “can’t do” nation
with respect to innovation rather
than continuing in the great American
“can do” tradition. The
federal government has underinvested
in engineering and physical sciences,
and only nibbled around the edges
of long-term energy supply and distribution
problems. As a result, we have marginalized
the field from the perspective of
many bright young men and women. It
seems to me that we are in a situation
similar to the one we faced in the
1980s when our historically dominant
manufacturing sector had become fat,
sassy, and then, suddenly, uncompetitive.
We
need to recharge corporate, entrepreneurial,
and academic R&D, as well as our
curricula in energy. We need to make
energy an exciting, well-supported,
dynamic field that attracts the best
and brightest young men and women
and gives them opportunities to contribute
and to innovate. We made this transition
in manufacturing, design, and product
development after being knocked down
by the Japanese, and we can do it
now in the domain of energy, environment,
and sustainability. Needless to say,
I am very pleased that President Hockfield
is challenging and enabling our faculty
to forge leadership contributions
to new energy technologies.
But
the federal government and industry
must kick start the change. And it
appears that the tide is starting
to turn in the private sector. A recent
PCAST report indicates “Entrepreneurs
with Venture Capital backing and Private
Equity firms have become very active
in the energy sector recently. The
companies that have been formed have
based their technology frequently
on government-sponsored research performed
at our Colleges and Universities.
Over 100 recently formed companies
have been started with activity in
virtually every sector of the energy
world. Most of the activity has been
in renewable energy such as solar
and biofuels, in fuel cells and fuel
cell systems, and in energy storage
devices such as batteries and super
capacitors. In 2005, over $1 Billion
was invested in energy start-ups with
another large amount by Private Equity
firms in project financing for biofuel
refineries – estimates are that
corn based ethanol refineries alone
received $1.6 Billion in investment”.
Furthermore,
it is highly likely that the research
budget of the Department of Energy
will receive a major boost in the
year ahead. It’s a start.
Delivery
and Pedagogy
So far, I have suggested that engineering
students prepared for 2020 and beyond
must be excited by their freshman
year; must have an understanding of
what engineers actually do; must write
and communicate well; must appreciate
and draw on the richness of American
diversity; must think clearly about
ethics and social responsibility;
must be adept at product development
and high-quality manufacturing; must
know how to merge the physical, life,
and information sciences when working
at the micro- and nanoscales; and
must know how to conceive, design,
and operate engineering systems
of great complexity. They must also
work within a framework of sustainable
development, be creative and innovative,
understand business and organizations,
and be prepared to live and work as
global citizens. That is a tall order…perhaps
even an impossible order.
But
is it really? I meet kids in the hallways
of MIT (and I am sure the same would
be true at other universities) who
can do all of these things—and
more. So we must keep our sights high.
But how are we going to accomplish
all this teaching and learning? What
has stayed constant, and what needs
to be changed?
One
constant is the need for a sound basis
in science, engineering principles,
and analytical capabilities. In my
view, a strong grounding in the fundamentals
is still the most important thing
we provide. Also, I am so old fashioned
I still believe that masterfully conceived,
well delivered lectures are wonderful
teaching and learning experiences.
They still have their place. . . at
least they better have, because we
recently built the Stata Center --
a magnificent, whacky, inspirational,
and expensive new building designed
by Frank Gehry, and—by golly—it
has classrooms and lecture halls in
it (among other things).
But
even I admit there is a good deal
of truth in what my extraordinary
friend, Murray Gell-Mann, likes to
say, “We need to move from the
sage on the stage to the guide on
the side.” Studio teaching,
team projects, open-ended problem
solving, experiential learning, engagement
in research, and the philosophy of
CDIO (conceive/ design/ implement/
operate) should be integral elements
of engineering education.
Two obvious things have changed—we
now have information technology, and
we have the MTV generation, Generation
X, and beyond. So I suppose we should
provide deep learning through instant
gratification. It sounds oxymoronic
to me…but it seems to be happening!
Actually, the Stata Center is about
something like that.
Before
I turn to the role of information
technology in educating the engineer
of 2020, I want to relate an interesting
incident. A few years ago, two extraordinarily
dedicated MIT alums, Alex and Britt
d’Arbeloff, gave a very generous
endowment, the d’Arbeloff Fund
for Excellence in Education, which
was inspired in the first instance
by their desire to understand and
capitalize on the role of information
technology in teaching and learning
on a residential campus. We celebrated
the establishment of the fund with
an intense, day-long, interactive
forum on teaching that brought together
a large number of our most innovative
and talented teachers and a wide range
of students.
At
the end of that very exciting day,
we all looked at each other and realized
that nobody had actually talked about
computers. Even though information
technology is a powerful reality,
an indispensable, rapidly developing,
empowering tool, computers do not
contain the essence of teaching and
learning, which are deeply human activities.
So we have to keep our means and ends
straight.
Information
technology is more or less the paper
and pencil of the twenty-first century.
For engineering students of 2020,
it should be like the air they breathe—simply
there to be used, a means, not an
end. The Internet, World Wide Web,
and computers can do two things for
engineering schools. First, they can
send information outward, beyond the
campus boundary. And second, they
can bring the external world to the
campus. By sending information out,
we can teach, or, better yet, provide
teaching materials to teachers and
learners all over the world. By bringing
the world in, we can enrich learning,
exploration, and discovery for our
students.
Information
technology can also create learning
communities across time and distance.
It can access, display, store, and
manipulate unfathomable amounts of
information: text, images, video,
and sound. It can provide design tools
and sophisticated simulations.
In
addition, information technology can
burn up a lot of money. To reduce
the amount, we should take advantage
of what the Internet and Web do best—create
open environments and share resources
and intellectual property across institutions.
The goal of MIT’s OpenCourseWare
initiative is to make the basic teaching
materials for 2,000 MIT courses available
on the Web to teachers and learners
everywhere, at any time, free of charge.
And even more amazing forms of educational
sharing are coming. Our remarkable
colleague Jesus del Alamo, for example,
has established a program called iLab
that allows experiments to be run
via the Web. He is installing PCs
in under-resourced African universities
that enable students to log on and
operate sophisticated and expensive
experimental equipment that is physically
located at MIT.
OpenCourseWare
and iLab are prime examples of a snowballing
global movement toward open resources
for education and for scholarly materials
emanating initially from the United
States and fueled largely by thoughtful
support from the Mellon Foundation
and the Hewlett Foundation. I think
educational openness and global sharing
emanating from the United States is
a very good exercise in public diplomacy;
it contributes to the global common
good in new and non-prescriptive ways
that are valued by individuals and
institutions all over the world. Our
nation needs this at this moment in
its history.
In
my view, openness is creating a global
meta-university, a transcendent, accessible,
empowering, dynamic, communally constructed
framework of Web-based open materials
and platforms on which much of higher
education worldwide can be either
constructed or enhanced. Like the
computer operating system LINUX, knowledge
creation and teaching at each university
will be elevated by the efforts of
individuals and groups all over the
world. It will rapidly adapt to the
changing learning styles of students
who have grown up in a computationally
rich environment. But the biggest
potential winners are clearly in developing
nations.
Before
leaving the topic of pedagogy and
delivery, I would like to make a very
personal observation about my own
educational experience, and how that
informs my view of universities and
engineering education.
In
1963 Clark Kerr, the president of
the University of California, articulated
the rapid metamorphosis of U.S. research
universities into something new and
different. Campuses sprawled intellectually
even as they sprawled physically across
the landscape of state after state.
As they evolved, they developed a
complex web of purposes, and they
created increasing tensions between
societal utility and what had always
been considered to be academic purity.
In
the same year that Kerr articulated
this, and much more, in the Godkin
Lectures at Harvard, I graduated from
West Virginia University and immediately
headed to Ann Arbor to begin my graduate
studies in mechanical engineering
at the University of Michigan. What
to Kerr, as a leader of his generation,
was a somewhat surprising new incarnation
of the American research university,
was for me a given. MIT, Berkeley,
Caltech, Michigan, and Stanford were
great magnetic attractors to a young
engineering student who was truly
a child of the Sputnik era.
This
strong personal attraction largely
resulted from what I noted earlier
is termed the “engineering science
revolution.” This revolution
was spawned largely by faculty at
MIT who, building on their experiences
in the MIT Radiation Laboratory during
World War II, created a radically
different way to practice and teach
engineering. The “Rad Lab”
had brought together a remarkable
group of scientists and engineers
to rapidly develop radar, whose key
concepts and elements had been invented
by the British, into battle hardened
systems. A towering legacy of the
Rad Lab work was a new world of engineering
education that was built on a solid
foundation of science more than on
traditional macroscopic phenomenology,
charts, handbooks, and codes. The
new engineering science was research
intensive, required an entirely new
panoply of textbooks and laboratories,
and led and drove change in things
ranging from the space program to
defense to transportation to telecommunications,
computing, and medicine.
MIT
under engineering dean Gordon Brown
and Stanford under provost Frederic
Terman were first movers, and Berkeley,
Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and
other institutions were fast followers
and strong contributors. This corner
of the emerging multiversity was very
attractive and exciting.
In
short, as a student I learned and
worked at the new boundaries of academic
engineering, and yet still felt very
much a part of the great, centuries
old traditions and values of academia.
These two aspects of the multiversity
did not, and still do not, strike
me as inconsistent. Rather the multiversity
as I experienced it was a noble and
enabling place. What appeared to many
to be sources of tension, cross-purposes,
and potential conflicts of values
and interests were for me a great
web or mosaic to be savored and celebrated.
It was what I expected a university
to be. And, despite the passage of
40 years, it still is.
But
there is a larger point here. We are
one of the few nations in the world
that insist that engineering education
is best conducted within an academic
environment that ranges far beyond
science and technology. So as you
As engage students with nanoscale
science, large complex systems, product
development, sustainability, and business
realities, … do not even
be tempted to crowd the humanities,
arts, and social sciences out of the
curriculum. Their integral role in
U.S. engineering education differentiates
us from much of the rest of the world.
I
believe that the humanities, arts,
and social sciences are essential
to the creative, explorational, open-minded,
environment and spirit that is necessary
to educate the Engineer of 2020. The
humanities help us to understand the
broader context of our work, establish
the values that should govern our
lives, and give us a wondrous multiplicity
of perspectives and interpretations
of our world. The arts free our thinking
and challenge us, and it has been
said – accurately in my opinion
– that artists see the future
before others, and therefore should
be indispensable to the strategies
and work of technology. The social
sciences are increasingly as important
a base of the work of many engineers
as are the natural sciences.
Danger
of Complacency
Despite our decades-long national
leadership of almost every aspect
of engineering education, we must
not be complacent.
In
the past 15 years, the number of engineering
and computer science B.S. degrees
granted in the United States dropped
from about 110,000 to a low of 88,000,
although it has recently rebounded
to about 109,000 (NSB, 2006). This
is unlikely to be sufficient going
forward, and as our demography changes,
we must double and redouble our efforts
to make our engineering schools and
our profession attractive and fully
engaging for women and for currently
under-involved minorities. We need
equity and full participation in our
engineering workforce, our faculties,
and our leadership. This is a matter
of equity and fairness as well as
one of necessity.
In
this global knowledge age—with
its serious problems and great opportunities—we
need the best and brightest to enter
engineering schools. And we need a
larger percentage of them to earn
Ph.D.s in areas of engineering that
can lead to innovations that will
keep us free, secure, healthy, and
thriving within a vibrant economy.
We
all know the statistical trends. The
United States awards about 220,000
first degrees in science and engineering.
China awards almost the same number,
about 350,000 first degrees in science
and engineering, having grown by almost
120 percent in the last decade. In
2002, Asian countries awarded 635,700
first engineering degrees, European
countries awarded 369,700, and North
America awarded 122,400.
Let
me note parenthetically that there
is some uncertainty and indeed controversy
about these numbers, but it is clear
that the educated engineering workforce
in Asia is growing extremely fast
and that the U.S. is therefore educating
a smaller and smaller percentage of
the world’s bachelors-degree
engineers.
The
United States annually awards about
19,480 doctoral degrees in science
and engineering, a number that has
remained essentially constant for
a decade. China today awards more
than 7,500 doctoral degrees annually
in science and engineering, an astounding
420 percent increase in one decade.
Statistics
are important, but, in my view, the
real global challenge in engineering,
technology, and innovation leadership
is cultural. In Asia today,
science and engineering “rule”
for young people. These are hot, exciting,
and respected fields. In Asian countries,
engineering and science are understood
to be the path of upward mobility
for individuals and for nations. These
countries are eager, and they are
not ashamed to learn all they can
from the very best the world has to
offer and then try to improve on it—and
we should not want it any other way.
They understand competition, and they
are learning rapidly about innovation.
The United States is still the clear
world leader in science and technology,
but of all the enemies our country
faces, complacency is the one
I fear the most.
We
may be starting to shake off
our national complacency, however.
Last fall, the National Academies’
Committee on Prospering in the Global
Economy of the Twenty-First Century
released its report, Rising Above
the Gathering Storm: Energizing and
Employing America for a Brighter Future
(NRC, 2006). This report outlines
a federal agenda to improve K–12
science and mathematics education,
strengthen our commitment to long-term
basic research, and to make the United
States the best place in the world
to study, do research, and innovate.
The Council on Competitiveness’
framework document, Innovate America
(2004), preceded this report. Building
on these and other national studies,
including two from the President’s
Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology, the president of the United
States, in his 2006 State of the Union
Address, proposed an American Competitiveness
Initiative to begin building momentum
for a science, education, and innovation
agenda (DPC and OSTP, 2006).
Just
two weeks ago, despite the current
broiling sea of partisanship, Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid announced
that they would co-sponsor the National
Competitiveness Investment Act and
take it up on the Senate floor following
the election recess. The draft bill
from which this is derived had 70
co-sponsors – 35 Republicans
and 35 Democrats. If this Act is passed,
and if the House of Representatives
joins the effort, it would be a major
step in implementing the recommendations
of the Augustine Committee’s
recommendations enumerated in Rising
Above the Gathering Storm, and
would expand President Bush’s
American Competitiveness Initiative.
This
hopeful momentum comes none too soon.
This month the European Union established
a broad-based innovation strategy
with ten priority actions. Priority
no. 1 is to establish innovation friendly
education systems. Priority no. 2
is to establish a European Institute
of Technology. And last summer, President
Hu Jintao of the Peoples Republic
of China gave a remarkable speech
to the Chinese Academy of Sciences
and the Chinese Academy of Engineering
in which he outlined China’s
implementation of its National Mid-
and Long-Term Science & Technology
Development Plan. Its content is very
much like that of Rising Above
the Gathering Storm.
Now
I have no idea how completely or how
rapidly either China or Europe will
actually meet their objectives, but
we in the U.S. should let no grass
grow under our feet.
Conclusion
In closing, as I said earlier, my
primary advice regarding engineering
education is that making universities
and engineering schools exciting,
creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding,
and empowering milieus is more important
than specifying curricular details.
As we develop the concept of a new
curriculum and new pedagogy and try
to attract and interest students in
nanoscale science, large complex systems,
product development, sustainability,
and business realities, we must resist
the temptation to crowd the humanities,
arts, and social sciences out of the
curriculum. The point of my referring
to the meeting of American and Chinese
university presidents was to demonstrate
the integral role of these subjects
in U.S. engineering education. In
this respect, we are different from
much of the rest of the world. I believe
the humanities, arts, and social sciences
are essential to the creative, explorative,
open-minded environment and spirit
necessary to educate the engineer
of 2020.
American
research universities, with their
integration of learning, discovery,
and doing, can still provide the best
environment for educating engineers…if
we support, sustain, and challenge
them. They must retain their fundamental
rigor and discipline but also provide
opportunities for as many undergraduates
as possible to participate in research
teams, perform challenging work in
industry, and gain substantive professional
experience in other countries.
My
secret wish, which I hope will play
out on the time scale of the next
15 years or so, is that cognitive
neuroscience will catch up with information
technology and give us a deeper understanding
of the nature of experiential learning—a
real science of learning. Then we
might see a quantum leap, a true transformation
in education. In the meantime, we
must see to it that the best and brightest
young American men and women become
our students and, therefore, become
the engineers of 2020 and beyond.
We simply cannot afford to fail.
References
Committee on Educational Survey. 1949.
Report of the Committee on Educational
Survey to the Faculty of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Cambridge,
Mass.: Technology Press.
Council
on Competitiveness. 2004. Innovate
America: Thriving in a World of Challenge
and Change. Washington, D.C.: Council
on Competitiveness. Available online.
DPC
(Domestic Policy Council) and OSTP
(Office of Science and Technology
Policy). 2006. American Competitiveness
Initiative: Leading the World in Innovation.
Available online.
Horn,
P. The New Discipline of Services
Science. Business Week Online, January
21, 2005. Available online.
O’Neil,
G. 1981. Year 2081: A Hopeful View
of the Human Future. New York.: Simon
and Schuster.
Wulf,
W.A. 2004. Keynote Address. Pp. 1–8
in Emerging Technologies and Ethical
Issues in Engineering: Papers from
a Workshop, October 14–15, 2003.
Washington, D.C.: National Academies
Press.
NRC
(National Research Council). 2006.
Rising Above the Gathering Storm:
Energizing and Employing America for
a Brighter Economic Future. Washington,
D.C.: National Academies Press. Available
online.
NSB
(National Science Board). 2006. Science
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Va.: National Science Foundation.
Available online.
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