Tonight we held the second dinner gathering for engineers who work in northern Minnesota. We met at Valentini's in Chisholm. The purpose of our group is to provide a social and professional network. The socialization definitely happened and I noticed many professional interactions taking place as well. A key element is people getting to know people from a doing business standpoint or for potential new job contacts. We had a guest speaker, Rodney VanBaalen - ICC Engr grad, who is the general manager of Rockwell Automation IPS and four participants got up to talk more about themselves and their companies. The only downer was the weather turned bad so the 50 people who had RSVP'd turned into 32 actually attending. Our next meeting will be on August 8th. Everyone is invited.
This week I have been working with two colleagues on a concept we call the Innovative Engineering Academy. It is a model for a radical new approach to engineering education. I tried explaining it to the group tonight and my message bombed so I want to try again here.
Engineering education is behind the times. Research has been available for 10 years showing that lectures are one of the poorest methods to enable learning. Additionally, 6-7 years ago a document describing the attributes engineers need to attain to be effective was published. It is called Engineer 2020. The ABET criteria call for an engineer that is quite different from the engineer we are currently graduating. Despite these facts, very little has changed in the way engineering education happens. If you were to look back and analyze the effectiveness of the time you spent in class or compare the skills you need to be successful in your job with the skills you attained in college, I think you would agree. We believe there is a better way. This week we created a new website that describes our proposed model. I invite anyone interested in this topic to visit our site:
http://engineeringacademy.typepad.com
The site is new and still a little rough around the edges, but anyone reading our pages will get a flavor for the ideas. In one sentence, we propose an education without courses and without grades. If that isn't radical, I don't know what is.
Will this ever happen? Who knows. Should this happen? Absolutely and I hope that you will take a few minutes to send me your comments.
TBL: With all of the advances in everything around us, including the psychology of how our brain learns, why is college education still following the model established over 200 years ago?
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