Engineering Schools Strive To Serve Up Pinter With Planck

An engineering degree isn't necessarily just an engineering degree anymore. Consider the students in Arizona State University's Arts, Media and Engineering program. Grad students in electrical engineering, computer science and bioengineering leave with their engineering degrees and something extra--a concentration in media arts. Engineering schools are working to refashion curricula to reflect industry's demands for well-rounded grads who can effectively compete in the global marketplace. While that may be good news for the profession, it also means that the process of voluntary academic accreditation is becoming increasingly complex. No one argues that an evolution of engineering curriculum isn't needed. "The problems facing society today are very complex, and they just cannot be solved along traditional engineering discipline lines," said Gerald Jakubowski, president of the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute, Ind.). Jakubowski is immediate past chair of the engineering accreditation commission (EAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. The commission accredits all engineering programs in the United States. It does not accredit departments, schools, colleges or universities. Colleges can choose to have either their undergraduate or graduate programs accredited, but not both. The trend of program creation can result in difficult questions for those involved in the accreditation process. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology has four commissions, covering engineering, technology, computing and applied science. Some new programs require evaluators from two or more of the four commissions to decide whether a program can be accredited. The EAC is concerned about programs that "blur disciplines" because it isn't always clear which commission should review them or which criteria should be applied, Jakubowski said. At the same time, he acknowledged that national problems such as dependence on foreign oil or global warming demand new approaches to the engineering curriculum, with "multiple disciplines" marshaled to solve them. Some in academia criticize the slow pace of change in engineering education, as well as the EAC's methods of dealing with nontraditional programs. Industry has been calling for engineers who are trained across disciplines for years, said James Gover, an electrical engineering professor at Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute; Flint, Mich.) and a former IEEE congressional fellow and competitiveness fellow. Industry has asked for engineers with verbal and written communication facility, the ability to work in teams and other so-called soft skills, he said. Those demands have resulted in changed requirements in accreditation criteria, which now stipulate that engineering graduates be familiar with technology's impact on society and that they have a global view. "The common theme was to make the engineer a much broader person, and to do that, you have to sacrifice some depth," Gover said. Rather than incorporate this idea into the curriculum, though, what most colleges did was add on a liberal-studies course, which might include leadership or ethics. Gover isn't impressed with the results so far. "I don't think they have done a very good job," he said. He's also critical of the accreditation process. Rather than lead the universities and encourage them to innovate in their curricula, the EAC serves to maintain the status quo, Gover said. "They're organized to send a team of EEs to evaluate an EE program, and they send out a team of MEs [mechanical engineers] to evaluate an ME program." Arizona State's three-and-a-half-year-old Arts, Media and Engineering program, one of a group of transdisciplinary programs at the school that include engineering, bypasses the accreditation issue. By making digital media a concentration in engineering rather than creating a program around it, accreditation issues don't even come up. "The way we handle accreditation at ASU is by creating concentrations within disciplines," said the program's founding director, Thanassis Rikakis. "This renews degrees without compromising their core structure." There are 28 engineering master's and doctoral students with a concentration in digital media at ASU. Rikakis hopes to see the mechanical and industrial engineering departments join the group of existing engineering departments that allow their students to pursue a digital-media concentration. EE grads with the added academic qualification would be well-suited to apply at corporations such as Google or Intel, he said. Rikakis echoed the concern of engineers, academics and policymakers looking at U.S. technological competitiveness: attracting enough young American citizens to the profession. "The question is, are we structuring and marketing engineering in the right way to young people in the U.S. right now? The answer is no," he said. Engineering itself is to blame because of the way the profession defines itself, according to Rikakis. It does so in a limited way that doesn't cover the diverse interests of the younger generation, he believes. Rikakis pointed to MySpace and Facebook as clear examples of how younger Americans are driving the social-networking revolution. There's an opportunity for engineering recruitment among the masses of users on such sites, he said. "If you go to them and explain that at the core of social networking is engineering, then you have recast engineering as something that is related to what interests them," he said. The students Rikakis sees are interested in engineering that will have a direct social impact, and they care about a mix of current social issues, from arranging social networks to mixed-reality rehabilitation, he said. But it isn't just engineering that needs shaking up; the accreditation process itself needs to make changes, according to Rikakis. "We need to work on diversifying the understanding of engineering within the accrediting bodies." . The new approaches do not compromise engineering education, Rikakis said. "We're not saying that we take an EE and make them an artist. We're saying that we're going to make them a good EE and show them how to connect their education to a more diverse spectrum of needs."