A Topical Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Curricula

Journal of Engineering Education, Jul 2006 by Jarosz, Jeffrey P, Busch-Vishniac, Ilene J

Fourth, a very significant characteristic of the core curriculum in mechanical engineering as pictured in the frequent topic list is that it is easily handled in a degree program of four years or even less. As in much of engineering, degree programs in mechanical engineering average significantly more than four years for a baccalaureate [14]. Many faculty members insist that the explosion of technical knowledge requires the addition of more material to the curriculum, resulting in a curriculum requiring more than four years to complete [10]. However, if the topic list is an indication of consensus topics that all ME students must see, then it is conceivable to craft a very efficient curriculum by whittling down much of the material in topics not making the frequent topics list, ie, those topics required at four institutions or fewer. This is a controversial suggestion but one worth discussing. With tuition costs rising rapidly, and the financial aid need of engineering students nationwide exceeding that of students in the arts and sciences, a reasonable question is what the balance should be between efficient education and technologically complete education. The frequent topic list supports the opinion that we have significant room to move on the efficiency side of this argument [14-16].

For example, calculus is often considered a stumbling block or gatekeeper course [17, 18]. The institutions in our survey require three or four semesters of calculus. While calculus is the language of engineering [19], are all calculus topics typically presented by mathematics departments necessary for mechanical engineers? Our high frequency list indicates that integration methods, Taylor series, derivatives, limits, andpo/ar coordinates are essential; but calculus topics on the low frequency list-conies, Cramer s rule, l'Hopital's rule, and transcendental fanctions-are worth a second look These topics are required by only one institution of the nine, and the advantage of a more efficient degree program may dictate that they be dropped from the ME canon.

Computing science is also of interest. While eight of the nine institutions surveyed require at least one computing course, there is a wide variety in topics they cover. CAD/CAM is required by eight schools, data analysis by six, and some sort of programming by six; beyond that there is no consensus. Two institutions require basic computer use, two require computer architecture, four require debugging and two require every ME major to learn Fortran. Among the computer topics required at the institutions surveyed are the following low-frequency topics: applets, classes and objects, derived classes, inheritance, mobile code, procedural abstraction and Web e-mail. These appear on the lists of topics required at only one or two institutions of the nine.

Fifth, the list of 64 essential topics also provides a means of determining the relative weight of various categories of learning currently applied to mechanical engineering undergraduate degrees. Based on the number of topics, the current mechanical engineering curriculum is 45 percent engineering, 18 percent mathematics including calculus, 15 percent physics, 12 percent chemistry, four percent computer science, two percent communication, two percent statistics, one percent economics, one percent ethics, and zero percent biology.