SLIDE 1 (blank)

Hello.

I'm pleased to be here today, to meet so many people for the 
first time and get a chance to discuss what I think are some 
pretty interesting and important ideas in engineering education.  
Although I will pay most attention to my own field of EECS, the 
ideas apply to other disciplines as well.

SLIDE 2 (title)

I'll try to present some perspective on how electrical and computer 
engineering education might change in the coming years.

Designing an engineering curriculum is, at its heart, an act of 
design.  It is similar to the design of electrical components and 
systems.  We design things all the time.  So why do we find it so 
hard to design an educational program?  Maybe we have forgotten the 
customer, or don't have a clear idea of what the customer wants.

So today let's focus on two things.  First, let's assume that 
society is our customer, and think about what society expects 
engineers to do.  And second, let's consider how those expectations 
have changed over the decades.  Then we can extrapolate into the 
future.

As several people have put it recently, we educators should 
figure out what the engineer of 2020 will be doing, and then use 
that information to design our educational programs.

And to do that we will be guided by our history.  Let's go back 
to a point in history when electrical engineering itself was just 
starting.  About a hundred years ago (115 years to be exact).

If I had to pick one event to symbolize the start of electrical 
engineering, it would be what might seem an unlikely choice.

The time is the year 1893, the place is Chicago, and the event 
is the World's Columbian Exposition, in honor of the arrival of 
Columbus in America four hundred years earlier.

SLIDE 3 (Images, Chicago fair)

The World's Columbian Exposition celebrated American civilization.  
It was enlightening.  It was entertaining.  It was exciting.

The most modern technology was there!  People got breathtaking 
views while riding up an enormous wheel that had been designed 
by a civil engineer from RPI named George Ferris.

But it was not just mechanical marvels.  The fair was wired with 
electric power.  The grounds and buildings had electric lights.  
The exhibits in the Electricity Building showed everyone what to 
expect in the future.

Literally and figuratively, there was electricity in the air.  
This event highlighted electricity when it was just coming of age.

SLIDE 4 (Images, electrical devices)

The five important electrical achievements of that day were 
telegraph, telephone, illumination, motors, and the power grid.

But note:  These advances were not made by electrical engineers.  
They were by famous American inventors -- Morse, Davenport, Bell, 
and Edison, aided by scientists such as Henry.  There were no 
electrical engineers at that time.

SLIDE 5 (At that time)

There were scientists, inventors, and industrialists.  But no 
electrical engineers.

Why not?  It's very simple.  

Professions are defined by their educational programs.  If you 
wonder what civil engineers do, look at how they are trained.  
What can you expect of a nurse?  Look at nursing degree programs.

In 1893 EE degree programs had only just started.

SLIDE 6 (No Electrical Engineers?)

The first was set up by Physics professor Charles Cross of MIT 
in 1882.  Others sprung up in the next ten years, and Electrical 
Engineering departments were formed at several universities.  One 
of the earliest of those was at the University of Wisconsin.

Then, as now, students could sniff out fields with a bright future.  
The MIT enrollment data shown on the right is typical -- almost 
immediately the new EE programs were immensely popular.

This was the beginning of Electrical Engineering.  Call it 
Version 1 (if Version 0 was the era of inventors).

SLIDE 7 (Since then)

In this talk I will identify four eras of electrical engineering, 
calling them Version 1, Version 2, Version 3, and Version 4.  
Each was initiated by some crisis, (except of course the first).  
After it started people recognized a new context, and new things 
that engineers were expected to do.  As a result, degree programs 
had to be changed.  Each version, then, had its crisis, its 
context, its roles, and its programs.

SLIDE 8 (Dugald Jackson)

The person who best articulated what was expected of these new 
engineers, and therefore what their degree programs should be 
like, was the young department head at Wisconsin, Dugald Jackson.

Jackson attended the Chicago Columbian Exposition, and while 
there was one of the founders of SPEE, the Society for the 
Promotion of Engineering Education (now known as ASEE).

Jackson, as perhaps you can tell from this later photograph, was 
a stern, no-nonsense type of person who did not suffer fools 
gladly.  But he did think clearly.  Some of his ideas had to do 
with how engineers should differ from other technical people.

SLIDE 9 (Jackson's Vision: EE 1 Roles)

Jackson knew and appreciated both scientists and technicians, 
but said engineers should be different.  Their unique role was 
to invent new techniques, when needed, using known science.  
The scientists would provide the science, and both technicians 
and engineers would exploit the technology.

SLIDE 10 (JacksonŐs Context Assumptions)

In thinking about Jackson's vision, I realized that he made 
some critical assumptions, which were valid at the time, 
about electrical engineering.  First, since the profession was 
new, he had to take science as it was, and serve society as it 
was.  He didn't dare try to change either.  Engineers, in other 
words, should not be leaders of society, though they could and 
should be technical leaders.  Second, he assumed that both 
society and science would be essentially the same at the end of 
a graduate's career as at the beginning.  That is, they would 
change only slowly over a 40-year period, and therefore could 
be considered as constants, not variables.  And the society he 
had in mind was that of America.

SLIDE 11 (Science paper)

Jackson's curriculum ideas are a joy to read today.  The very 
first item in his list was training in speaking and writing.  
He railed against things that he considered a waste of time, 
such as the beauties of nature, science without engineering 
relevance, or contemporary but short-lived techniques.

His was practical education, make no mistake.  But not one 
focused on immediate employment.  He prepared his students 
for a full 40-year career as a practicing engineer.

SLIDE 12 (Electrical Engineer 1)

Jackson only needed one degree program, the B.S.  It was not 
liberal arts.  It was vocational.  Wisconsin was a strong 
general university and if he had wanted, Jackson could have 
designed an engineering program as a form of, or one that 
followed, a liberal arts program.  But he didn't.  Then he 
left Wisconsin in 1907 and came to MIT, which was not, then 
or now, a general university.  This move confirmed his 
position that engineering education should be vocational.

Jackson's educational model worked well, producing graduates 
with potential for technical leadership, until his assumptions 
were no longer true.  That happened during World War II.

SLIDE 13 (1950 - The Science Crisis)

The War effort exposed a weakness in Jackson's assumptions.  
Radar and the atomic bomb required new technology, and Jackson 
would have expected engineers to be the technical leaders.  
However, they also required new science.  The science that 
engineers learned in college was not enough, or was not right.  
Science was no longer constant over a 40-year period.  And it 
was easier for scientists to start thinking like engineers, 
than the other way around.

Jackson had educated engineers to be technical leaders.  
The fact that this did not happen constituted a crisis in 
engineering education, the first of three I'll discuss today.

SLIDE 14 (Images, Brown)

Gordon Brown saw this first hand at the MIT Radiation Laboratory.  
Then, on the MIT faculty, he found himself in a position to 
do something about it.

SLIDE 15 (Changed Context - 1950)

The changed context can be summarized in this over-simplified 
slide.  What is new is shown in yellow; what is unchanged is 
less prominent, in light blue.  Note that half of Jackson's 
assumptions were still valid, those dealing with society.  But 
half were not.

Of course Brown was not the only person to notice this.  He 
and other like-minded educators concluded that engineering 
would require new sciences in the future, and engineers 
should be the ones to maintain them.  Not all engineers, 
but those who could be trained to do scientific research.

SLIDE 16 (Brown's Vision: EE 2.0 Roles)

So a new role was added for engineers (shown in yellow).  
The term "engineering science" was used for those advances 
motivated by engineering needs.  Some engineers would create 
the new sciences, and make it available for other, practicing 
engineers who would keep learning after graduation.

But there was a problem.  Research was expensive.  Who would 
pay for it?

SLIDE 17 (Images, Bush)

Well, it turned out this problem had already been addressed.

In 1945 Vannevar Bush had recommended to President Truman 
a program of federal support to continue scientific and 
engineering research after the war ended.  Bush's famous 
report, "Science---The Endless Frontier" led to the 
establishment of the National Science Foundation.  Advances 
in science and applications to engineering were declared to 
be in the public interest.  NSF and other agencies provided 
the funding for the new doctoral programs.

Bush's use of the word "frontier" in his title gave an aura 
of excitement and importance to his proposal.  Americans knew 
that their frontier, the Wild West, was exciting, and they 
also knew that it had shaped the development of America and 
its institutions.  This influence had been pointed out by 
Professor Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian at Wisconsin 
and a colleague of Dugald Jackson, at the World's Columbian 
Exposition in 1893.

The Turner Thesis, as it came to be called, has been a very 
important principle in American history.  Bush knew that the 
Western frontier had vanished, but perhaps he saw that science 
would provide anotherfrontier, just as exciting and influential.  
Engineers could work on that new frontier doing engineering 
science and designing things of benefit to the nation.

SLIDE 18 (Electrical Engineering 2)

America's educational programs were redesigned to meet the need.  
Doctoral programs were started or expanded.  Undergraduate education 
continued but incorporated more science and even research to show 
students how to pick things up on their own after graduation.

This model, Version 2, prevailed for many years.  Lots of new 
technologies found their way into the curriculum.  There were two 
different degree programs, one leading to a career of practice, and 
the other for teaching and research.  Now electrical engineering 
could develop rapidly since engineers were in control of their own 
technical destiny.

This was truly a golden age for electrical engineering.  It is 
the era in which many of us in this room started our careers.

SLIDE 19 (1990 - The Scope Crisis)

But nothing good lasts forever.  Electrical engineering by 
tradition never lets new fields get away, so the body of knowledge 
that practicing engineering needed kept growing and growing.  
Things were changing faster and faster.  Industry wanted engineers 
who knew the latest stuff, and industrial experience was not 
enough because it was the universities who had the new knowledge.

SLIDE 20 (Changed Context - 1990)

So the context changed.  Again changed items are shown in yellow.  
Engineers, including those in practice, were surrounded by new 
sciences and technologies.  And they were expected to know them.

SLIDE 21 (EECS 3 Roles)

Otherwise the roles of engineers were no different.  They 
were still practice and research.

This may sound like a small change but it was serious for us.

Our graduates needed greater breadth.  And technical depth.  
We had to retain the things that supported a 40-year career.  
Our curricula were already stuffed full.  Something had to give.  

But then a strange thing happened.  In essence, our students 
took control of the evolution of engineering education.  They 
found that to be practicing engineers they needed education 
beyond the B.S.  Their employers agreed.  Master's degree 
programs became popular, and industry paid the bill.  

This happened without much effort from educators.  But make no 
mistake, the crisis was real, and the remedy had a substantial 
effect on engineering education.

Different universities reacted in different ways.  Some started 
paying more attention to their Master's degrees, and stopped 
thinking of them as consolation prizes for failing doctoral 
students.  Some beefed up their on-line or TV courses, aiming 
these at working engineers.  My own department declared the 
Master's degree our flagship program, needed for practice, and 
put in a streamlined five-year program.  The result of all this 
is that the Master's degree is now a highly valued terminal 
degree, needed by practicing engineers.

Recently some people have been asking whether the First Professional 
Degree should be a Bachelor's or Master's.  For example, this was 
brought up in The Institute, an IEEE publication, last September.

SLIDE 22 (IEEE image)

It seems to me a little odd to be debating that point.  The 
question has already been answered.  Now it is only a matter 
of the educational establishment catching up to reality.

Perhaps this conclusion is overstated; maybe my observations are 
based on a biased sample, (my own university's graduates).  I would 
urge others to say whether they think the question is still open.

SLIDE 23 (EECS 3)

The result was a realignment of the degrees and their objectives.  
There are now three kinds of electrical engineers.  Those who want 
a career as practicing engineers eventually need a Master's.  Those 
seeking a career in teaching or research get a doctorate, as before.  
The third kind of engineer is one with pre-engineering education but 
not enough for practice.  They are qualified for entry level 
industrial positions, and also to continue toward other types of 
careers, for example medicine, law, management, or public service.  
You may not want to call them engineers, but after all they are our 
graduates; we are educating them.

Not all universities support all three levels today, just as many 
do not have doctoral programs.  However, many do.

My own department decided over ten years ago to make the Master 
of Engineering our primary degree.  We saw what was going on, and 
realized that a two-degree five-year program had an important 
advantage over a four-year Bachelor's program followed by a one-year 
Master's program.  Our students could postpone to their fifth year 
some of their B.S. requirements, and use the greater flexibility to 
optimize their last two years.  For example, they could plan ahead 
to catch a course that is only offered alternate years.  The 
program is definitely successful -- most students want it, over 
half actually finish it, and their success after graduation has 
been very gratifying.  What has been surprising to us is how few 
other universities have adopted this sort of program and promoted 
it.  Some have it available on special request, and of course 
enterprising students can always figure out how to do what they 
want.  But all too many universities have continued to operate as 
though a 4-year B.S. prepares people for an engineering career.

But before the engineering community has even had a chance to 
adjust to the new reality of EECS 3, another crisis is upon us.

SLIDE 24 (2000 - Society's Crisis)

The current crisis affects more than just the engineering community.  
Until now the context for educating electrical engineers that I 
have been showing you has always been that society changes 
slowly (compared to 40 years).  Today it is clear that society 
and its institutions are changing much more rapidly.  I'm not sure 
of all the reasons, but one of them is caused by our own success.  

Electrical engineering products and processes are found everywhere 
in America and in the world.  The most obvious examples are 
computers, cell phones, the Internet, and embedded electronics in 
all sorts of products.  If any major part of any society changes 
rapidly, then that society must itself change rapidly.  This is 
what is happening both in America and worldwide.

By the way, do you remember the Turner thesis, introduced at the 
World's Columbian Exposition, about how America was shaped by its 
Western frontier?  Isn't there a similar thesis now about the 
effect of the scientific frontier on both America and the world?

Note that societies are not as nimble as we engineers.  We can 
adapt to changes more easily than either the public or the other 
major institutions of society.  The leaders of society are having 
trouble leading society in this new context because most have no 
technical training and cannot anticipate the effects of new 
technology.  This is true in America and many other countries, 
though there seem to be some exceptions such as Germany and China.

The question for us:  Is there anything we can do to help?  
Funny you should ask.

SLIDE 25 (Leaders in American Society)

Traditionally the leaders of American and worldwide society 
have been graduates of general education, Liberal Arts, rather 
than vocational programs.  There are good reasons for this.  
Liberal Arts is really preparation for citizenship, rather than 
preparation for a career.  The best of those with a general 
education can be outstanding citizens and go on to leadership 
positions in society.  For them, knowing a little about a lot 
of things is much better than knowing a lot about a few things.  
Even the very best of those with vocational training cannot 
compete to provide national leadership.

People drawn to general education are often those who do not 
have aptitude for science and engineering.  Since specialists 
usually make more money than generalists, kids who love math 
and science in high school usually get steered toward specialized, 
technical education rather than Liberal Arts.  That's good for 
them but not necessarily good for society.

SLIDE 26 (Today's Context)

So here is the context for engineering education today.  Society 
is no longer constant, but is changing rapidly.  And its changes 
are not taking advantage of the technical talent available.  In 
some cases well meaning leaders institute changes that are not 
effective because they don't understand the technology well enough.

SLIDE 27 (EECS 4 Roles)

Here is my thinking of what the engineer in the future should do.  
All of our students, during whatever career they follow, will 
need to adapt to changes in society.  But in addition we should 
educate at least some of our students so they can help society 
cope with the onslaught of technology.

How should we do this?  I'll give you my best guess at this time, 
though I'm sure others can do it better.

Basically, we need to recognize where society gets its leaders.  
They do not come from vocational programs such as EECS.  They are 
not specialists.  They are the result of liberal arts programs, 
which after all are designed to prepare people to be good 
citizens.  If we engineering educators what to help, we had better 
get involved with such programs.

SLIDE 28 (Possible EECS 4)

Yes, this slide shows one additional degree program.  What it 
does not show, equally important, is how the other programs 
should be changed to allow the graduates to view their societal 
context as variable rather than constant.

This is a long list of degrees.  It is probably not possible 
for any department to offer all without help.  There are many 
ways to implement a B.A. program and it is not clear which if 
any will actually be effective.  But it seems to be a job worth 
doing because it would allow technological knowledge to inform 
public decisions.

SLIDE 29 (Summary, Roles of Engineers)

Here is a summary of what engineers have been expected to be 
able to do.  The role of engineers has expanded in response to 
various crises.  First it was practice.  Then, for some of our 
graduates, research.  Then, for some, other career paths in 
which their engineering training can help.  Finally, we have 
today's crisis which will, I hope, lead to at least some of our 
graduates being able to combine their engineering attitudes and 
abilities with their general education as citizens.  Such 
people, if they also have leadership abilities, can be exactly 
the type of leaders our society so badly needs.

The challenge we educators face is how to design a curriculum 
which will serve those who want to go into public service, 
taking everything they know about engineering with them.

How should this be done?  Here are some of the models that have 
been used in the past, and some that might be considered for 
the future.

SLIDE 30 (Possible Models for Education)

We could spend an hour talking about the relative advantages 
and disadvantages of these (and other) structures.

No. 1 has been historically the most common model for American
engineering programs.  But remember that it is no longer 
adequate for a career.  How should it be altered to serve its 
new purpose, and what is that purpose.  Remember that many, 
perhaps most students with a B.S.E.E. degree do not practice 
engineering for 40 years any more.  Careers are more flexible.  

No. 2 was tried some years ago and did not succeed, perhaps 
because it cost more and the student did not get a second 
degree, or perhaps because it was before its time.

No. 3 is the dominant model in use today, even if not always 
acknowledged.

No. 4 has inherent advantages over No. 3 for students who want 
to pursue their Master's at the same university.

The next four are ways of equipping students for the new role 
of society leadership.  I am personally fond of No. 5 
(3 years at a Liberal Arts institution, followed by 2 at a 
technical university, with both Bachelor's degrees awarded 
after 5 years).  I started my own higher education with that 
as a goal, though I eventually converted to No. 6.

No. 7 is interesting.  That is the model currently used for 
education in medicine and law.  Doctors and lawyers often play 
leadership roles in society.  Their B.A. degree gives them 
a general education and they add on a specialty.  Could a 
similar thing work for engineers?  Why not?

There are several ways of doing No. 8.  One involves offering 
engineering as a major in a B.A. program.  Another involves 
introducing more science and engineering for all majors.  
They all involve partnerships with people who can teach the 
Liberal Arts part.  These partners could be at the same 
institution or elsewhere.

Let me suggest that you use this list to help organize your 
thoughts.  Which of these degree programs or sequences do you 
offer now?  Which could you offer by yourself?  Which could 
you offer with help from others, and who might help you?  In 
other words, think about what you regard as your mission, your 
market niche?

If you are interested in any of No. 5 through No. 8, you 
have to think about what should be the features of a B.A. 
program in today's global environment.  Remember that the 
purpose of a Liberal Arts program is to prepare people for 
citizenship.  How much science and technology do they need?

SLIDE 31 (Some Things to Remember)

And here are a few things to be careful of.  Traditionally 
engineering has been an important avenue of upward social 
mobility in America.  In order to attract the most talent 
to the engineering enterprise you don't want to destroy 
that, by making the path harder, longer, or more costly.  
Is that possible?

As you can tell, there are conflicting needs and requirements.  
Just like any other engineered product.

SLIDE 32 (Engineering Education Models)

That's all that I have time for today.  I'd be happy to 
take questions.  Then, good luck thinking about all this 
stuff.

Thank you for your attention.

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