Dr. Bruce Seeley, soon to be the Dean of the College of Science and Arts at Michigan Tech was a distinguished lecturer today and gave an interesting talk on the history of engineering education. It seems there always been a call for a more liberal engineering education but we never seem to make the change. Either there is competition for students which kills any 5 year programs or there are other competing interests that reduce number of credit hours available in an engineering program. The room was packed but there was not nearly enough space for everyone that should have been there.
The afternoon brought the release and press conference by the National Academy of Engineering on their new report about changing the message of engineering. The NAE has put a great deal of thought and study into how to better get the message of engineering across to different people. I agree that we do need to be consistent in the message and it does need to appeal to the right ages, but we also need to have people who are able to make good presentations. I was struck by the fact some members of the panel were quite adept at making presentations while others were painful to watch. The problem is that those who were painful to watch probably think they were doing a good job. This ties in, I believe, with another presentation I heard at the conference in which it was stated that engineering students fail to understand the importance of good composition and spelling because they have the right answer. I think that applies not only to engineering students, but also to engineers. It is exacerbated by seeing good presentations made next to bad ones.
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