Champy calls for engineering change at MIT

Suggests interdisciplinary engineering undergraduate core, five year program

By Lois Slavin, Communications Director, MIT Engineering Systems Division – April 26, 2005

On April 21, 2005, James A. Champy, Chairman of Consulting, Perot Systems Corporation, delivered the annual Charles L. Miller Lecture, named for the head of MIT’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department from 1962-69. Sponsored jointly by MIT’s Engineering Systems Division and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Champy’s presentation was entitled “In Charlie’s Vision: The Future of Engineering at MIT.”

Daniel Roos, who delivered last year’s Miller lecture, introduced Champy. Roos, Japan Steel Industry Professor of Engineering Systems and Civil and Environmental Engineering and founding director of MIT’s Engineering Systems Division, noted that during Miller’s tenure, he not only revolutionized the department, but the CE profession itself.

Miller’s aggressive use information technologies to address engineering problems, coupled with systems thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration, “resulted in the golden age of CE at MIT,” said Roos.

Champy, an MIT alumnus who holds bachelor’s and a master’s degrees in CE and was Miller’s teaching assistant, and who lead the search for MIT’s new president, suggested that recent advances in science demand that MIT faculty must re-examine engineering with the same boldness of Miller’s vision. “The problems and opportunities in which MIT is engaged today demand an increased level of inter-departmental collaboration, and raise questions about the content of disciplines and increased collaboration among departments’ and schools,” he said.

Despite receiving two CE degrees from MIT, Champy never practiced as an engineer. “I am a re-engineer -- I skipped engineering entirely,” joked the co-author of the best-seller Re-engineering the Corporation and author of best-seller Reengineering Management.

Nevertheless, Champy said that his work as a management consultant repeatedly demonstrates the need for MIT to re-examine the content of engineering disciplines and integrate broader skills and attributes.

Champy characterized MIT’s School of Engineering as a great institution, but one facing increased competition for students, faculty, research funding, philanthropy and share-of-mind. A focus on sustaining that greatness and becoming even stronger is critical.

Remaining a “meritocracy” is a core value of the Institute. He noted “…MIT’s work drives industries and markets” and suggested that “an engineering curriculum must have disciplines that develop our students’ deep understanding of organizational behavior and the skills to deal with and within flawed organizations—and maybe fix them”

Champy seemed doubtful about whether the traditional four-year undergraduate engineering program is sufficient. He called for MIT to balance the usual and the practical with the exceptional and the confounding. “Consider creating an undergraduate core engineering program that will be taught across all engineering departments and examine whether this should be done in a five year program.”

Champy closed by speculating that Charlie Miller, were he here today, would say this is all very interesting but “what are you going to do tomorrow?”