|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
To meet the demands for a scientific workforce [1] the National Academy of Engineering [2] has called for engineering schools to improve the effectiveness, engagement, and efficiency of their programs. These three elements summarize aspects of our program—the students, faculty, curriculum, and facilities—that need to be re-examined if we are to prepare students for future engineering careers. Our department realizes that:
- Although students perform well on homework and examinations, our program is not effective in preparing students to apply this knowledge on open-ended or cross-disciplinary problems.
- Rather than being engaged in the study of engineering, students are focused on grades as the means to a well-paying job. Classes do not communicate the excitement and challenge of engineering.
- Neither student nor faculty time is used efficiently. Of engineering freshmen entering OSU, 46% do not complete any degree at OSU, and 19% transfer to a non-engineering major. Only 12% of the remaining students graduate in four years and 59% take five or more years [3]. The faculty teaching load is higher than needed since students struggle through our program.
Our program at Oklahoma State University mirrors some disturbing trends in how the United States produces engineers. The figures below are created from the National Science Foundation’s SESTAT database [http://sestat.nsf.gov/] using 2001 figures.
Engineering graduates are still predominately male and the racial and ethnic distributions do not reflect the population at large. While undergraduate engineering programs in the U.S. attract more citizens than non-citizens this is not true of engineering graduate programs. There is continuing debate over this last issue with strong arguments from multiple points of view on the long term effect of a predominately non-citizen graduate student population. One of our beliefs is that the difference in the citizen:non-citizen ratio between undergraduate and graduate programs reflects the experiences undergraduates have in engineering programs.
There is substantial evidence that the experience our undergraduates have could be improved. For example although OSU’s electrical engineering program is nominally four years duration, many students take longer to graduate as shown in the chart below. This is not simply an OSU phenomena, but reflects national trends. Reference[4] point out that while most engineering programs take longer than four years, student scholarship support is often limited to four years which can result in financial hardships.
The cost of college is a serious consideration for many students and families. Since 1982, the cost of college has increased 6.3% per year above the rate of inflation and it is arguable whether students are any better. The United States produces about 70% of the total number of electrical engineering graduates as we did in 1987. Compare this to computer chips, one of the real successes of electrical engineering. Compared to 1982 the number of transistors has risen 167% per year, the speed has gone up by 127% per year, and the cost has risen by 1.5% a year in 1982 dollars!
The stress, financial and otherwise, of the engineering program takes its toll on students. The low retention rate in engineering has been mentioned previously. The figure on the left below show data on the frequency of cheating of engineering students over a forty year period. As the figure on the right shows over 95% cheat at some point in college while over 60% cheat more than once a semester [refer this document]. Only business students cheat more frequently.
Studies that have looked at why students leave engineering [4] have found that the top two complaints of students who left engineering and those students who stayed in engineering are poor teaching (over 90% of students) and poor academic advising (70%-80%).
Why do engineering programs fail in many cases to meet the needs of students? Engineering Students for the 21st Century hypothesizes it is because our program-as are most undergraduate programs-is built on the educational paradigm that covering a specific set of concepts prepares students for a career in engineering. This may no longer be true. The rapid rise of information technology means that university faculty are no longer the only effective conduit between sources of information and the student. The exponential growth of information, increasing need for knowledge outside a narrow discipline, and growing uncertainty in the career choices of our graduates mean that under this paradigm we need to increase the knowledge content of our program without increasing time to graduation. The figures below show data from NSF’s SESTAT database [http://sestat.nsf.gov/] on what 1999 electrical engineering graduates reported working at in the first two years following graduation.
Even immediately following graduation fewer than 60% of students self identify themselves as working in electrical engineering and half of students don’t work in a field closely related to what they studied in college. It is hard to identify information that students “must know” in a rapidly changing world. What then should an engineering program be if not about what students learn? Engineering Students for the 21st Century is seeking to answer that question.
In giving a talk to a group of engineering students about curriculum reform and presenting much of the data shown above a faculty member involved in Engineering Students for the 21st Century was asked by a student “Of all the problems you talked about, which one do you think is the biggest?” Stumped by this simple question the faculty member took a few moments to reflect on what all this data meant, then looked at the student and said, “Somehow we have managed to make engineering not fun.”
As Walt Whitman wrote:
When I heard the learned astronomer
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
'Til rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.
For more details and statistics on our program, please click here
|
|
|
