# Presentation: 447257

## Visions for EngineeringEducation

**IEEE Interdisciplinary Conference**
**EE & CE Education in the Third Millennium**
**September 11, 2000**

- Joseph Bordogna
- National Science Foundation
- http:// www.nsf.gov/bordogna

**Visions for Engineering****Education**

## “I never predict.  I just look out the window and see what’s visible -- but not yet seen.”

- Peter Drucker
*Forbes Magazine*
- March 10, 1997

## Something special has happened to the American economy in recent years.

- ... a remarkable run of economic growth that appears to have its roots in ongoing advances in technology.

- Alan Greenspan
- Joint Economic Committee
- June 14, 1999

**Notes:**
3
Final thoughts -- where we go from here...
Expressed by Fed Chairman Greenspan...
Key term: “conceptual-based economy”

## The source of wealth is something specifically human:  KNOWLEDGE

**Knowledge applied to tasks we already know how to do is *****PRODUCTIVITY***
**Knowledge applied to tasks that are new and different is *****INNOVATION***

*Managing for the Future:*
* **The 1990s and Beyond*
- Peter F. Drucker, 1992

## Innovation System

- Concurrent Integration

**Innovation**
**Wealth Creation**

**Analysis**
**Reduction**

**Discovery of**
**  ****New Knowledge**

**Societal Needs **
**The Public Good **
**Natural Capital**

**Devices **
**Processes**
**Systems**

**Ideas**
**Information**
**Infrastructure**

**Capital Formation **
**  ****& Investment**
**Market Place**
**Skilled Workforce**

**Synthesis**
**Integration**

**Design**
**Making & Moving**
**Sustenance**

**Science**

**Policy Context**

**Engineering**

**Economic Context**

**PEOPLE**

**TOOLS**

**IDEAS**

**Notes:**
5
5

## NSF’s Strategic Goals

**People** - *A diverse, internationally competitive and globally-engaged S&E workforce*
**Ideas** - *Discovery across the frontiers of S&E, connected to learning, innovation and service to society*
**Tools** - *Accessible, state-of-the-art, and shared research and education tools*

## “Innovators break all the rules.  Trust them.”

*The Economist,*
*Innovation in Industry*
- February 20, 1999

##  Creative Transformations

- “The interaction of technological innovation with the competitive marketplace is the fundamental driving force in capitalist industrial progress.” (Schumpeter, 1942)
- “...a normally healthy economy was not one in equilibrium, but one that was constantly being disrupted by technological innovation.”  (The Economist (on Schumpeter), 1999)

## New Capabilities

- Terascale
- Nanoscale
- Complexity
- Cognition
- Holism

**Notes:**
9
Talk has four components
1.  Where NSF fits into the national R&D picture
2.  How we operate -- namely the merit review process
3.  Where we are headed -- focusing on the priorities in our FY 2000 budget request
4.  Finally -- why it matters...the importance of innovation to the economy.

## Construction of the Whole

- 	“The need to create sound syntheses and systemizations of knowledge... will call out a kind of scientific genius which hitherto has existed only as an aberration:  the genius for integration.  Of necessity this means specialization, as all creative effort does, but this time the [person] will be specializing in the construction of the whole.”

- José Ortega y Gasset
*Mission of the University*
- 1930

**Notes:**
10
4

## Slide 11

## Slide 12

## The 21st Century Engineer

- Astute maker
- Trusted innovator
- Harm avoider
- Change agent
- Master integrator
- Enterprise enabler
- Technology steward
- Knowledge handler

## Next Generation Credentials/Skill Set

- Handle projects from initial conception of an idea through to product realization
- Understand, nurture, and capitalize sustainably on nature
- Be alpha-numeric literate
- Articulate team goals, influence others to invest in them, evince trust at all levels
- Envision rational solution scenarios to open-ended challenges
- Act as catalyst and master integrator in multifaceted, multidisciplinary projects
- Understand and practice quality issues

## Next Generation Credentials/Skill Set

- Manifest a strategic intent in design
- Enable comfort in interpersonal relations
- Pursue standards-based practice
- Practice creative transformation
- Focus on innovation
- Sense the coupling among seemingly disparate issues
- Make sense of complexity
- Contribute to, extract from, participate in the world’s collective intelligence base
- Be an astute observer of strategic inflection points and anticipate their consequences at the moment of inflection

## Next Generation Engineering Career Paths

- Sustainable development:  avoiding environmental harm; energy and materials efficiency
- Life-cycle engineering; infrastructure creation and renewal
- Micro/nanotechnology/microelectromechanical systems
- Mega systems
- Smart systems
- Multimedia and computer-communications systems
- Living systems engineering
- Product and process development, quality and control
- System integration; system reconfiguration
- Creative enterprise transformation
- ... ??

## Components of a Holistic Baccalaureate Education

- Vertical (in-depth) thinking
- Abstract learning
- Reductionism - fractionization
- Develop order
- Understand certainty
- Analysis
- Research
- Solve problems
- Develop ideas
- Independence
- Technological - scientific base
- Engineering science

- Lateral (functional) thinking
- Experiential learning
- Integration - connecting the parts
- Correlate chaos
- Handle ambiguity
- Synthesis
- Design / process / manufacture
- Formulate problems
- Implement ideas
- Teamwork
- Societal context
- Functional core of engineering

## Some Critical Issues

**Knowledge**
**Infrastructure**
**Partnerships**

## “Where is the life we have lost in living?

- Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
- Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

- T.S. Eliot
*“**The Rock”*
- 1934

## Climbing the Knowledge Ladder

- Meaning of life

- Wisdom

- Knowledge

- Information

- Data

- Bits

## Infrastructure

**Human**
**Physical**
**Cyber**

## Traditional vs. New Infrastructures

- Facilities
- Instrumentation/ Equipment
- Research Platforms
- Vehicles
- Multi-user facilities (e.g., telescope)

**Traditional Physical**
_**Infrastructure**_

**New Cyber**
_**Infrastructure**_

- Advanced computing resources
- Digital libraries
- Shared data and information bases
- Research and education networks
- Distributed user facilities
- Standards and protocols

## Partnerships Expand the Engineering Community

- To create, enable and share the infrastructure
- To create and share information, knowledge, and wisdom
- To attract and retain the best minds to engineering

## Making Partnerships “Sing”

- Trust among partners
- A diversity of perspectives
- Every partner brings something of value to the table
- Every partner has something to gain
- All parties present on the first day

## Grand Challenges

- Think **HOLLISTICALLY**
- Teach **INNOVATION**
- Reward **COLLABORATION**
- Invest in **PEOPLE, IDEAS, **and **TOOLS**

## “Our knowledge is a torch of smoking pine that lights the pathway but one step  ahead.”

*George Santayana (1863-1952)*