Liberal Studies in Engineering - Workshop Report
Support for this event was provided by the National Science Foundation’s Improving Under- graduate STEM Education program (award no.1451399 made to MIT), by the Teagle Foundation, and by the Deans of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and of Claremont Graduate University’s School of Educational Studies.
The Engineering Knowledge Research Program
The engineering knowledge research program is part of a larger effort to articulate a philosophy of engineering and an engineering worldview. Engineering is not ‘merely’ applied science. Engineering knowledge requires a more comprehensive conceptual framework than scientific knowledge.
Flexible Engineers: History, Challenges, and Opportunities for Engineering Education
Flexibility is a desired characteristic that people must have to adjust to inevitable processes of economic, cultural, and political globalization. Engineering education reform is often used as a justification for changes in curricula, delivery modes, and problem solving that should lead to curriculum integration, modular pedagogies, and systemic reform. Some educators have incorporated the concept in their programs and courses in a variety of ways whereas others have resisted changes to this day. Yet a detailed analysis of the meanings of flexibility, its origins and different forms, along with its challenges and opportunities for engineering education, remains to be done. This article surveys the historical origins of flexibility, identifies different forms of flexibility in engineering education, outlines existing challenges to flexibility-drive educational reform, and provides alternative views to the existing interpretation of flexibility in engineering education.