Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systematic Innovation in Engineering Education

In today’s society, the exchange of information and ideas and cooperation among nations to address critical needs and to create solutions to overcome common international challenges are becoming more and more important. The global community is collectively concerned about the ability of the engineering education enterprise to produce engineers who are prepared to respond to the current and future technical needs of the world. The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), as a leading society for engineering education, launched a major initiative at its Annual Conference in June 2006 called, “Advancing the Scholarship of Engineering Education. ” The initiative began with a “Year of Dialogue” in which broad-based discussions were held within ASEE on the role and importance of educational innovation and scholarship as a means to ensure the long-term excellence of U.S. engineering education and to energize the Society’s role and potential contributions. The results of the year-long dialogue and discussions among the ASEE members led to a two-phase project launched in October 2007 which was also supported by the National Science Foundation (Huband and Melsa, 2007; Mohsen, et al., 2008). The project represents an important step by ASEE to catalyze even broader conversations across the U.S. engineering education enterprise to create a vibrant engineering academic culture for scholarly and systematic innovation in engineering education to ensure that the U.S. engineering profession has the right people with the right talent for a global society. The project is led by Drs. Leah H. Jamieson, Dean of Engineering, Purdue University and Jack R. Lohmann, Vice Provost, Georgia Institute of Technology, and involves 68 educators, engineers, and other stakeholders. Building upon the activities from the “Year of Dialogue” to enhance the global preparedness of U.S. engineering graduates, the project team reviewed recent articles and reports and their recommendations and associated actions to advance engineering education innovation. They distilled their thoughts and shared and discussed them in a progress report with additional stakeholders at a two-day meeting held in November, 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia. The project team subsequently incorporated the advice and ideas from that meeting into a report titled, “Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systematic Innovation in Engineering Education,” to complete Phase 1. Beginning with a plenary session on Tuesday, June 16, 2009, at the 2009 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition in Austin, Texas, the project enters Phase 2. During the coming year, the project team will seek additional advice and ideas from the broader engineering community on the recommendations and suggested actions in the report. They are gathering this input in two ways: feedback from a sample of engineering programs and engineering education-related organizations selected by the project team, and feedback from the community-at-large via a project Web page located on the ASEE homepage at www.asee. org. The project Web page will be open for comments until March 1, 2010. The results of these efforts will be incorporated into the final report to be published in June 2010. On behalf of the project team, please join us in creating a more vibrant U.S. engineering academic culture for scholarly and systematic innovation in engineering education and contribute to a meaningful exchange of expertise and knowledge with our counterparts around the world.