Commodity engineers who simply run simulations can be bought and sold like sacks of grain. Educators are rapidly coming to understand that our cottage-industry style of teaching may die. If or when Disney does new-media calculus, those who use chalk and talk will face empty lecture halls. To be effective, we must practice informed creative thinking. To feel good about our lives, we must also practice gracious professionalism.
Ideal innovators practice both.
Through the lecture series and support of capstone design projects, students are exposed to processes that stimulate creativity and lead to inventions and patents. His current research includes work on the creative design process and product development systems. Dr. Flowers is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Daniel Webster College. He was recently selected to receive a Public Service Medal from NASA and the Tower Medallion from Louisiana Tech University. He is a MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT for extraordinary contributions to undergraduate education.