Time is Now: Are We Ready for Our Role?, The

Journal of Engineering Education, Apr 2008 by Haghighi, Kamyar, Smith, Karl A, Olds, Barbara M, Fortenberry, Norman, Bond, Sally

Grand challenges-a term originally introduced by physicist and Nobel laureate Ken Wilson in reference to unsolved, computationally intensive problems of extraordinary breadth and importance- are complex, large-scale and vexing technological problems with great economic and universal social impact. While debate swirls around selections for the National Academy of Engineering's Grand Challenges for Engineering list of 14, we agree with former Lockheed Martin chairman, Norman Augustine, that "nearly all the grand challenges potentially to be faced by society as a whole in the next century have significant engineering connotations." Grave challenges in areas such as renewable energy sources, biotechnology, health care, climate change, and sustainable food and water for a growing world population will undoubtedly require the ambitious engineering innovation that can only come out of an energized, persistent, and diverse pool of creative engineering talent.

However, the cultivation of such talent will never happen through a natural evolution of current campus efforts. Engineering talent that transcends disciplinary boundaries and rallies to address grand challenges will result only from a proactive agenda to reshape the educational pathway to engineering practice. The discipline of engineering education is singularly qualified to lead such a rigorous educational revolution. Do we as an engineering education community recognize the need of the hour and uniqueness of the historical opportunity? We must rise to the occasion, shake off remnants of marginalization, and assume a pivotal leadership role as we stand at a strategic crossroad for engineering as a profession.

ACKNOWLEDGING THE DISCIPLINARY ARRIVAL OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Engineering education seeks to combine deep knowledge of engineering with similarly deep knowledge of learning and pedagogy. However, this combination is more than simply a "marriage" of engineering and education. Engineering education has its own disciplinary identity through which it looks not only at interactions of instructors and learners but also at what is taught, how it is taught, and how the various elements in the system of education interact in order to improve performance of students, faculty, administrators, colleges, and industry teams. Systematic research into how to prepare students to serve as engineers of the future provides a core body of knowledge that informs educational practice and allows best practices based on principles of how students learn. This is the same process envisioned by influences such as Ken Wilson, who initiated a physics education research program at Ohio State University in 1988, and his fellow Nobel Laureate, Carl Wieman, who recently argued for a more scientific approach to science education.

Engineering education now enjoys a community of scholars and researchers, an emerging body of core knowledge, an identified research agenda and framework, recognized culture and vocabulary, avenues of dissemination in peer-reviewed journals-such as the now scholarly research-focused Journal of Engineering Education-and is progressing steadily toward developing avenues to maintain standards and regulate quality. We must leverage all such disciplinary resources to rapidly fulfill a clear mission to reform the pedagogical practice of educating engineers-a practice that has been relatively static and wed to the didactic teaching styles of the first universities established over 800 years ago.

HISTORY OF EMERGENCE

Our formative path toward existence as a scholarly discipline has colored our unique community culture. Our history begins with efforts by individual faculty members. A long tradition of classroom-level interventions originally involved professorial "amateurs" with engineering expertise and yet strong interests in educational reform who were often marginalized and isolated in their institutions but found common ground in organizations such as the Education and Research Methods division of the American Society for Engineering Education. From this independent vanguard emerged a growing community of solid educational researchers as exemplified by the award in 1993 of two prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career (CAREER) awards to Dr. Cynthia J. Atman and Dr. Martin Ramirez for research focused on engineering education.

Individual researchers require grant support to nurture their efforts. Many found succor in the $100 million NSF investment in the Engineering Education Coalition initiative that was launched in 1998. But while the Coalitions represented a significant shift in emphasis from teaching to learning and encouraged efforts to stimulate "bold, innovative, and comprehensive models for systemic reform of undergraduate engineering education," their emphasis was not on engineering education research. Specific programmatic support for engineering education research would have to wait until the 2005 reconfiguration of the Engineering Education Program.