Unification In Engineering Education And The Petroleum Engineer
Authors: Perrine Richard L. 
Published: December 2007

Publication Rights Reserved

This paper was prepared for the 38th Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME in New Orleans, La., on October 6–9, 1963, and is considered the property of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Permission to published is hereby restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words, with no Illustrations, unless the paper is specifically released to the press by the Editor of the Journal of Petroleum Technology or the Executive Secretary. Such abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgement of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request providing proper credit is given that publication and the original presentation of the paper.

Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

Recent trends in engineering education have been toward increased mathematics and physical sciences in the curriculum, often at the expense of more practical subjects. Another trend has been toward unification: the combination of subjects common to all fields of engineering into a few "core" courses required of all engineering students. The University of California at Los Angeles has a unique long experience with such a program.

The purpose of this paper is to present the basis for unification and to discuss advantages and disadvantages of this approach to petroleum engineers and to the petroleum industry. The unified program can provide education in breadth, so that the individual retains a degree of competence as an engineer in addition to the ability to practice his profession within a specific field. Thus there is a natural receptiveness for change, and adaptability to new ideas. Depth in engineering science and the physical sciences permits development of new technology from fundamentals. Problems associated with a unified curriculum include the increased importance of differences of faculty opinion, and the fact that students in a unified program may be uncertain of their future within engineering after as much as three years of study. Also, the immediate needs of industry may not be satisfied by graduates with the basic tools, but little skill in using them.

Graduates of both unified and specific career-oriented programs are needed to handle different kinds of responsibility within the petroleum industry and in petroleum engineering.

The subject matter in any academic field is continually changing. Engineering is no exception to this generalization, and within engineering a quiet revolution has taken place. One recent trend in the undergraduate education of engineers has been toward the inclusion of more mathematics and more of the sciences. This trend follows naturally the diminishing separation in time between discovery of potentially useful scientific knowledge, and its application in a feat of engineering. The time allotted to education has remained fixed. Thus inclusion of science and mathematics frequently has been possible only at the expense of more practical subject matter. A second common trend has been to recognize more subjects as basic to all fields of engineering; part of a central it core". As a consequence, appropriate subject matter is given a unified presentation within a few "core" courses required of students with various fields of engineering as their objectives.

Under the leadership of Dean L.M.K. Boelter, the University of California at Los Angeles has had a unique long experience since the latter 1940's with a unified undergraduate engineering curriculum. Students from all fields of engineering take many courses in common.