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"We will embrace diversity and global perspectives in Engineering Education."
Engineering education must evolve to keep pace with mighty changes occurring today in business’ industry, and society. Engineers must develop attributes and knowledge beyond traditional constraints of the classroom. Engineering education must be designed to accommodate current trends and future needs. We must enhance the flexibility of curricula. Engineering education must create more connections and stronger partnership with the global society in which we are embedded. We must examine the relevance of curricula and strive for fulfillment of university, college and professional missions.
Our goal is to articulate the role of engineering education in the early part of the 21 st century and to establish design specifications that will enable the college of engineering to be a leader in shaping the future of engineering education. As such we have an obligation to address the full range of higher education, namely: teaching and learning, research, and service to the community. Indeed these three elements must be totally integrated if we are to be effective in the pursuit of our mission.
Engineering and technology play a dominant role in manufacturing, including the manufacturing or processing associated with agricultural products. It should be clear that engineering expertise and technology are major contributors to mining, construction, and transportation and infrastructure. Use of current technologies and creation of new technologies are at the heart of engineering profession. Engineering education must have an eye on the fruits of profession’s labour. Designing our educational program toward these ends will have a tremendous impact on the viability of profession in practice. In the last quarter century, technology and society exhibited two defining characteristics: namely increasing rates of change and increasing complexity.
Successful commercial technologies have changed in one basic way over the past quarter century: they have become more complex. In 1970, nearly 60 percent of the world’s top exports were simple products that could be designed and manufactured through relatively simple processes or methods. In these top exports that generate the most wealth for a country or region. Again, engineering must be intimately familiar with the “business” of innovation.
The themes outlined above apply more broadly than just to the engineering profession. Consequently, another major element in our design of engineering education is teamwork and partnership. The team we now envision is a partnership of scientists, engineers, business people, and society’s leaders. It is through these partnerships that the rapid pace and increasing complexity of technology designed to serve society will flourish. The message for engineering education becomes:
- Be flexible in the face of rapid changes in society and technology.
- Embrace and encourage creative problem solving.
- Facilitate the ability to integrate complex system and technology.
- Seek partnerships with a variety of engineering and science disciplines, with business, with leaders in education, with government and the greater community.
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