To that end, engineering institutions should avoid focusing solely on lecture-based courses and ensure that students participate in team projects, research and experiential learning. Students should also learn communication skills and gain understanding of ethics and social responsibility, business organization, innovation and product development, in addition to engineering fundamentals, Vest said.
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The Senate is now working on legislation that would invest in making the United States more competitive with other nations when it comes to science and engineering education. The National Competitiveness Investment Act is based on recommendations from a recent federal report called “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which argued that science and engineering education is vital to U.S. economic interests.

Nicholas Powley, an MIT graduate, quit his engineering job at Guidant to work as a consultant and an inventor.
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“My whole goal is to make my life user-friendly so I can devote all my time to thinking,” he said.

One of Powley’s former professors calls him a “nouveau nerd,” someone with not only the requisite engineering knowledge, but also lots of people skills and business savvy.

Woodie Flowers, an engineering professor at MIT for 40 years, said America needs more Nick Powleys if it is to succeed against overseas competition. Engineers can no longer be the equation-spouting geek loners in the back room, he said.

Powley has been inundated with requests from ordinary people who want him to help them make their invention ideas become reality since he was profiled Oct. 15 on the front page of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. But he said one beguiling request came from a group of top executives and sales people in the health care industry who read the story about the MIT graduate: Come work for them as the head of research and development for a new medical products company they want to create in New York City.

“It was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Powley said last week as he, his mother, his girlfriend and his business partner on a medical catheter cover he helped develop five years ago were driving to New York for a weekend business dinner. Powley said his partners want to remain unnamed for now. He was reluctant to say how much the position would pay him but he did say it was “fabulous.”