Category Archives: Universities

Olin Engineering Education Experiment

Excellent article: The Olin Experiment by Erico Guizzo:

Founded with more than US $460 million from the F.W. Olin Foundation, the school, which will graduate its first class at the end of this month, was conceived as perhaps the most ambitious experiment in engineering education in the past several decades. Olin’s aim is to flip over the traditional “theory first, practice later” model and make students plunge into hands-on engineering projects starting on day one. Instead of theory-heavy lectures, segregated disciplines, and individual efforts, Olin champions design exercises, interdisciplinary studies, and teamwork.

And if the curriculum is innovative, the school itself is hardly a traditional place: it doesn’t have separate academic departments, professors don’t get tenured, and students don’t pay tuition – every one of them gets a $130 000 scholarship for the four years of study.

Find out more about the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

Building a Better Engineer by David Wessel:

To a visitor, the school resembles any other small college. What’s different about it is its almost messianic mission: to change the way engineers are educated in the U.S. so that they can help the U.S. compete in a global economy with lots of smart, ambitious engineers in China, India and elsewhere. “If they become another good engineering school, they will have failed,” says Woodie Flowers, an MIT professor advising Olin. “The issue is to do it differently enough and to do it in way that will be exportable” to other colleges.

We share more thoughts on Olin’s efforts to improve engineering education on our other blog.

Harvard Elevates Engineering Profile

Harvard is planing to move engineering education to the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (via Engineering is Becoming a Liberal Art).

The Technology Mosaic by David Epstein:

as Paul S. Peercy, dean of engineering at the University of Wisconsin and chair of the Engineering Dean’s Council at the American Society for Engineering Education put it: “I used to say, ‘look around, everything except the plants are engineered.’ Now I say, ‘look around, everything and some of the plants are engineered.’”

From Harvard’s announcement:

President Lawrence H. Summers. “It marks our recognition of the profound importance of technology and applied sciences for every aspect of our society. It makes visible our commitment to major new resources and faculty positions in this vital area, and our dedication to educating a new generation of technologically-literate students.

In order to provide adequate coverage of modern engineering and applied science for students and to be in the vanguard of emerging research areas, the school plans to increase the university’s engineering and applied sciences faculty by about 50 percent in the coming years.

House Testimony on Engineering Education

Testimony of Vivek Wadhwa to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce,
May 16, 2006.

Vivek Wadhwa has continued the work published in the Duke study: Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate. In the testimony he provides an update on the data provided in the report.

Contrary to the popular view that India and China have an abundance of engineers, recent studies show that both countries may actually face severe shortages of dynamic engineers. The vast majority of graduates from these counties have the qualities of transactional engineers.

Differentiating between dynamic and transactional engineers is a start, but we also need to look at specific fields of engineering where the U.S can maintain a distinct advantage. Professor Myers lists specializations such as systems biology and personalized medicine, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics that he believes will give the U.S a long term advantage.

Our education system gives our students broad exposure to many different fields of study. Our engineers learn biology and art, they gain significant practical experience and learn to innovate and become entrepreneurs. Few Indian and Chinese universities provide such advantages to their students.

The dynamic and transactional differences were mentioned in his business week article: Filling the Engineering Gap.

The conclusion he presents seems wise to me.

The numbers that are at the center of the debate on US engineering competitiveness are not accurate. The US may need to graduate more of certain types of engineers, but we have not determined what we need. By simply reacting to the numbers, we may actually reduce our competitiveness. Let’s better understand the problem before we debate the remedy.

Mexico: Pumping Out Engineers

Mexico: Pumping Out Engineers

Currently, 451,000 Mexican students are enrolled in full-time undergraduate programs, vs. just over 370,000 in the U.S. The Mexican students benefit from high-tech equipment and materials donated to their schools by foreign companies, which help develop course content to fit their needs. Many of these engineers graduate knowing how to use the latest computer-assisted design (CAD) software and speaking fluent English.

Another country on the engineering education bandwagon for economic growth.

Those figures are quite impressive. I would like to see what Vivek Wadhwa (one of the authors of the Duke study: USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates) says about the comparability of the figures. Still, the number of engineering undergraduate students in Mexico surprises me; this is one more indication of how many people see the value of engineering education.

Related:

The Economic Benefits of Math

The crisis in maths in Australia by J Hyam Rubinstein:

The rapid economic reconstruction of Japan after the war was remarkable. A major feature was adoption of ideas of the great American statistician W. Edwards Deming on quality control and efficiency of production processes. In the United States Wal-mart, the retail giant, has a superb supply chain system, which is a key part of cost control. In Australia BHP Billiton has estimated that its group of mathematical scientists have saved the company several hundreds of millions of dollars in costs in a single year.

On our Curious Cat Management Improvement blog we post frequently about Deming’s ideas.

Most countries in the world, except for the poorest, give special attention and support to the mathematical sciences. For example, in the US, the National Science Foundation has instituted a number of programs to increase the supply of both mathematicians and statisticians. China and India stand out as emerging powerhouse of mathematical skills and the innovative technologies that will emerge from this investment.

Australia is an exception. We are in the midst of a national review of the mathematical sciences that will be completed in mid-2006. The international reviewers have been travelling across Australia. It is no exaggeration to say that the nation is facing a very serious situation.

As we have stated in previous posts the macro-economic impacts of government policy relating to science and math can be large:

Universities Focus on Economic Benefits

In the USA, Georgia Tech Focuses on Competitive Challenges

A leader in science and engineering education and with a research program totaling more than $400 million per year, Georgia Tech is a major developer of science and technology innovations. Building on these new technologies and collaborating with like-minded organizations, the Enterprise Innovation Institute will work with the private sector to apply innovations to real marketplace needs

and in India, Innovation through industry-academia tie-up

The Samtel Display Technology Research Centre at IIT Kanpur, the Micro-electronics Research Centre funded by Semiconductor and EDA companies at IIT Kharagpur, the Automotive Research Centre at IIT Madras, IBM’s Research Lab at IIT Delhi and the HP Lab at IIIT-Bangalore are examples of academia-industry partnerships.

Art of Science at Princeton

spreading of a surfactant over a thin liquid film on a silicon wafer Image: illustrates evolving dynamical patterns formed during the spreading of a surface-active substance (surfactant) over a thin liquid film on a silicon wafer. Larger photo and more information.

Princeton University: Art of Science Exhibition (the web site doesn’t seem to work in Internet Explorer but does in Firefox) includes images from the 2005 exhibition.

‘Art of Science’ exhibition bridges disciplines by Teresa Riordan on 2006 competition selections announced today:

  • Jennifer Rea, a senior in the history of science, who took first place for her painting titled “Mitosis,” which depicts cell division superimposed on a floral fabric
  • Melissa Green, a graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering, who was awarded second place for “Isolated Hairpin,” a computer simulation of turbulent air flow
  • Qiangfei Xia, a graduate student in electrical engineering, who won third place for “Easter Bonnet,” a photograph taken with an electron scanning microscope of a tiny piece of metal melted by a laser onto a silicon chip.

Top degree for S&P 500 CEOs? Engineering

See more recent post with data from 2005-2009: S&P 500 CEO’s: Engineers Stay at the Top

The most common undergraduate degree for CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies is Engineering: with 20% of all CEOs (from 2005 CEO Study: A Statistical Snapshot of Leading CEOs

Another interesting point from the report (at least to those of us who grew up in Madison with a father who taught at the University of Wisconsin (teaching Chemical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Statistics, in my father’s case, by the way):

For the second year in a row, the University of Wisconsin joins Harvard as the most common undergraduate university attended by S&P 500 CEOs. Prior to 2004, Harvard alone was the most common school attended.

Engineering the Boarding of Airplanes

Airlines Try Smarter Boarding

“An airplane that spends an hour on the ground between flights might fly five trips a day,” he explains. “Cut the turnaround time to 40 minutes, and maybe that same plane can complete six or seven flights a day.” More flights mean more paying passengers, and ultimately, more revenue.
…
Convinced that there was a statistical solution to the problem, Lindemann approached Arizona State University’s industrial engineering department. “We have a great university in our backyard, and hoped they could help,”
…
Professor René Villalobos and graduate student Menkes van den Briel began reviewing boarding systems used by other airlines. “The conventional wisdom was that boarding from back to front was most effective,” says van den Briel. The engineers looked at an inside-out strategy that boards planes from window to aisle, and also examined a 2002 simulation study that claimed calling passengers individually by seat number was the fastest way to load an aircraft.

The two then developed a mathematical formula that measured the number of times passengers were likely to get in each other’s way during boarding. “We knew that boarding time was negatively impacted by passengers interfering with one another,” explains van den Briel. “So we built a model to calculate these incidents.”

Villalobos and van den Briel looked at interference resulting from passengers obstructing the aisle, as well as that caused by seated passengers blocking a window or middle seat. They applied the equation to eight different boarding scenarios, looking at both front-to-back and outside-in systems.
…
Villalobos and van den Briel presented America West with a boarding approach called the reverse pyramid that calls for simultaneously loading an aircraft from back to front and outside in. Window and middle passengers near the back of the plane board first; those with aisle seats near the front are called last. “Our research showed that this method created the fewest incidents of interference between passengers,” Villalobos explains, “and was therefore the fastest.”

A nice example of industrial engineering. And a clear example of the benefit of industry higher education cooperation.

Graduate Scholar Awards in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math

From the proposed “Sowing the Seeds Through Science and Engineering Research Act” on the House Democratic Science Committee web site:

establishes the Graduate Scholar Awards in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (GSA-STEM) program at the National Science Foundation (NSF). GSA-STEM is a graduate fellowship program providing 5000 new fellowships per year and modeled on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program. Each three-year fellowship awarded follows the student to his/her institution of choice, provides an annual $30,000 stipend, and provides a $15,000 fee to the institution in lieu of tuition. Selection of fellowship recipients follows the guidelines of the existing NSF fellowship program, except that special consideration is given to students who pursue advanced degrees in fields of national need, as determined by an advisory board established for GSA-STEM. Authorizes $225 million for NSF for FY 2007, $450 million for FY 2008, and $675 million per year for FY 2009 through FY 2011.

Updated, on May 8th, comparison of current related legislation (from the Democrat’s site – if there is a Republican alternative version I would be happy to post that, I just could not find a Republican summary – see more info on the Republican science committee “competitiveness” home page):

Competitiveness Report Recommendation: 5,000 new graduate fellowships each year in STEM areas of national need, administered by NSF. FY 2007,

President’s Competitive Initiative: No provision.

House Bills [Gordon]: H.R. 4596 tracks C-2 recommendation. FY 2007, $225 million.

House Bills [Boehlert]: No exactly equivalent provision. Explicitly authorizes the existing Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, and authorizes NSF to accept funds from other agencies to carry out the DEd. FY 2007, $225 million.

Senate Bills [PACE, S.2197, S.2198, S.2199; and Lieberman, S.2109]: S.2198 tracks C-1 recommendation, except the program is administered by DEd. FY 2007, $225 million.
S.2109 provides for 250 new graduate fellowships each year. FY 2007, $34 million.