Engineering education must include the foundation of successful practice, effective teaching, and relevant research in engineering design. This is primarily because few engineering faculty practice these methodologies, and cannot teach them. Strong improvement in engineering design teaching is unlikely without strong, knowledgeable, enthusiastic faculty who interact with a broad base of colleagues in industry as well as academe. This faculty must be encouraged to obtain an educational background in teaching design, develop industrial experience, and develop and maintain contacts with industry. The response of the A ccreditation B oard for E ngineering and T echnology to the pressures of the technical societies to strengthen the undergraduate design requirements has not improved design education significantly, but has resulted in more engineering programs not meeting the established standards.
Several factors contribute to the deficiency in engineering design.
Many of the design deficiencies come from the tendency of faculty to include design requirements in a few of the courses in the junior-senior level. The greatest deficiency occurs because design is not integrated throughout the engineering science courses from the first year to the senior year. The NSF supported summer workshop on Enhancement of Faculty Design Capabilities was a response to the engineering design deficiencies in this last area, the engineering science courses. There were three goals for this project. The second goal was to develop methods for disseminating design materials, design methodologies, and design philosophies developed by participants to as many faculty as possible at other institutions.