Liberal learning revisited: A historical examination of the reasons, frustrations, and continued prospects for engineering and liberal arts integration

ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings

Volumn , Issue , 2011, Pages

  Akera, Atsushi ^a  

^a RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EDUCATION; INTEGRATION;

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATIONS; ENGINEERING EDUCATORS; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; LIBERAL ARTS; LIBERAL EDUCATION;

ENGINEERING EDUCATION;

EID: 85029110014     PISSN: None     EISSN: 21535965     Source Type: Conference Proceeding    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (54)

1. The new publish-to-present policies of our society present a novel challenge for historians. History is an empirical discipline, and historical insights are normally conveyed through the careful compilation and weaving together of evidence in the form of narratives that may reach 20-30 pages in length-not the 6-8 pages that may be appropriate for most conference proceedings. While the electronic publication protocols for the ASEE proceedings do allow for longer manuscripts, published proceedings carry little academic credit; having a conference paper block subsequent publication of the same material in a referred historical journal would delay or discourage ASEE conference presentations by academic historians. Fortunately, our society also has a long history of encouraging positive dialogue with liberal arts faculty-as recounted in this paper itself. It is therefore hoped that this paper will be regarded as a synopsis of a longer historical article, excerpted and re-presented in such a way so as to make the material accessible to an audience of engineering educators. The same material is also intended for publication in the journal, Technology and Culture.
2. The general histories of engineering education that inform this talk include Bruce Seely, "Research, Engineering, and Science in American Engineering Colleges, 1900-1960," Technology and Culture 34 (1993): 344-386
3. Terry Reynolds and Bruce Seely, "Striving for Balance: A Hundred Years of the American Society for Engineering Education," Journal of Engineering Education 82 (1993): 136-151
4. Matthew Wisnioski, "'Liberal Education has Failed': Reading Like an Engineer in 1960s America," Technology and Culture 50 (2009): 753-782
5. Bruce Seely, :The Other Re-engineering of Engineering Education, 1900-1965," Journal of Engineering Education 88 (1999): 285-294
6. and the collection of essays in Terry S. Reynolds, The Engineer in America: A Historical Anthology form Technology and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); as well as the historical accounts found in the investigations of SPEE and ASEE.
7. This transition has not been documented systematically. However, see histories of individual engineering colleges including Arthur Wilson Tarbell, The Story of Carnegie Tech (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute of Technology, 1937)
8. and C. T. Martin, From School to Institute: An Informal Story of Case (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1967)
9. and Thomas Phelan, D. Michael Ross, and Carl Westerdahl, Rensselaer, where imagination achieves the impossible: An illustrated history of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1995); as well as the historical assessments found within the investigations of SPEE including the Mann Report.
10. Edwin Layton, Jr., The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession, Second Edition (Baltimore, 1971/1986)
11. and Lawrence P. Grayson, The Making of an Engineer: An Illustrated History of Engineering Education in the United States and Canada (New York: Wiley, 1993).
12. Charles Riborg Mann, A Study of Engineering Education Prepared for the Joint Committee on Engineering of the National Engineering Societies, Bulletin Number 11 (New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1918).
13. Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, Report of the Investigation of Engineering Education, 1923-1929, Two volumes (Pittsburgh, 1930, 1934).
14. SPEE, "Report of the Committee on Aims and Scope of Engineering Curricula," Journal of Engineering Education 30 (1939-40): 555-66
15. "Report of the Committee on Engineering Education after the War," Journal of Engineering Education 34 (1943-44): 589-614.
16. Robert M. Boarts and John C. Hodges, "The Characteristics of the Humanistic-Social Studies in Engineering Education: A Report," JEE 36/5 (Jan 1946), 339-351.
17. ASEE, Committee for the Humanistic-Social Research Project, "General Education in Engineering," Journal of Engineering Education 46 (1955-56): 619-749 (hereafter, Burdell-Gullette Report), 624.
18. ASEE Humanistic-Social Research Project, "Liberal Learning for the Engineer," Journal of Engineering Education 59 (1968-69): 303-342 (hereafter, Olmstead Report).
19. See the programmatic statement in Joseph Bordogna, "Entering the "90s: A National Vision for Engineering Education," Engineering Education (November 1989): 646-649
20. as well the National Academy of Engineering's Engineer of 2020 studies, The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004)
21. and Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2005).
22. Specifically, Criterion 3 consists of eleven "program outcomes," labeled a) through k), of which, c) an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethnical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability f) an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility g) an ability to communicate effectively h) the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and social context j) a knowledge of contemporary issues are the most relevant. In addition, d) an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams; and e) an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems imply the humanities and social sciences especially under a fully integrative vision. For the latest version of the accreditation criteria, see ABET, "Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs Effective for Evaluations during the 2010-2011 Accreditation Cycle." Available for download at http://www.abet.org/forms.shtml (accessed 1/15/2011).
23. See for instance Layton (n. 4 above); and Ronald Kline, "Construing "Technology' as "Applied Science': Public Rhetoric of Scientists and Engineers in the United States, 1880-1945," ISIS 86 (1995): 194-221.
24. Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago, 1988)
25. Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, 1977)
26. For a more recent sociological study whose analysis is much more closely aligned to this paper, see Carroll Seron and Susan Silbey, "The Dialectic between Expert Knowledge and Professional Discretion: Accreditation, Social Control and the Limits of Instrumental Logic," Engineering Studies 1(2009): 101-127.
27. In addition to Layton (n. 4 above), see A Michal McMahon,The Making of a Profession: A Century of Electrical Engineering in America, 1880-1980 (New York, 1984)
28. Bruce Sinclair, A Centennial History of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1880-1980 (New York, 1980)
29. and Terry S. Reynolds, Seventy-five Years of Progress: A History of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1908-1983 (New York, 1983).
30. This extends W. Bernard Carlson's observations about the relatively autonomy of engineering schools, found in "Academic Entrepreneurship and Engineering Education: Dugald C. Jackson and the MIT-GE Cooperative Engineering Course, 1907-1932," Technology and Culture 29 (1988): 536-567.
31. On engineers and efficiency, see Thorstin Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1921).
32. See, for instance, Magnus Alexander, "The Relationship of Engineering Education to the Industries," Journal of Engineering Education 15 (1924-25): 459-475, 460
33. A. A. Potter, "Training for Activity in Non-professional Matters," Journal of Engineering Education 15 (1924-25): 469-475
34. "Preliminary Report of the Board of Investigation and Coordination," November 1926, in SPEE, Report of the Investigation of Engineering Education, 1923-1929, volume 1 (Lancaster Press, 1930), 82-119, 87, 91.
35. William Wickenden, "Engineering Education in the Light of Changed Social and Industrial Conditions," Journal of Engineering Education 24 (1933-34): 148-161.
36. See also "Carnegie Plan of Professional Education in Engineering and Science," Higher Education 7/7 (December 1950): 73.
37. Atsushi Akera, "A History of Engineering and Liberal Education Integration and Its Significance for SHOT," draft manuscript intended for publication in Technology and Culture.
38. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1987).
39. Thorndike Saville, "Engineering Education in a Changing World," Presidential address, Annual meeting of ASEE, Seattle, Wash., June 1950.
40. Published in Journal of Engineering Education 41(September 1950): 4-10.
41. This issue is explored directly in Michael Lynch, Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action: Ethnomethodology and Social Studies of Science (New York: 1993).
42. Larry Owens, "Vannevar Bush and the Differential Analyzer: The Text and Context of an Early Computer," Technology and Culture 27 (1986):63-95.
43. See especially Chas. F. Scott, "Report of the Chairman,"
44. and H. P. Hammond, "Summary of the Fact-Gathering Stages of the Investigation of Engineering Education," in Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, Report of the Investigation of Engineering Education, 1923-1929, Two volumes (Pittsburgh, 1930, 1934), Vol. 1, pp. 1-16 and 17-51.
45. This basic point is made in articles by Bruce Seely ("SHOT, the History of Technology, and Engineering Education," Technology and Culture 36 (1995): 739-772)
46. and by Robert Post, in his more recent biographic essay on Kranzberg, "Chance and Contingency: Putting Mel Kranzberg in Context," Technology and Culture 50 (2009): 839-872.
47. ECPD had its own mechanism for maintaining accountability, and therefore could not, either then or now, establish new accreditation standards simply by fiat. Still, as a "conference type organization" that operated through a small number of delegates advanced by its member organizations, ECPDs policies were more subject to oligarchic control, where a handful of individuals could build consensus around a specific position. This is probably as true with respect to ABET and the development of EC 2000, although I have not yet pursued sufficient historical research on this topic. The ECPD's 1951 appeal to the ASEE, via Hollister, to carry out a major evaluation of engineering education was designed to lend legitimacy to a change Hollister already wished to see, but for which he felt that an ASEE study was necessary to amass the necessary consensus. Hollister got what he wanted, but through a process that invited backlash. One of the major reasons for the 1968 Goals Report was the widespread discontent that engineering educators had embraced scientific knowledge and methods to the exclusion of any substantial training in engineering. See Atsushi Akera, "Engineering Science Ideology and U.S. Engineering Education, 1946-1955," unpublished manuscript.
48. Ad hoc ASEE Committee for Review of Engineering and Engineering Technology Studies (The REETS Committee), "Engineering & Engineering Technology Education" Engineering Education (May 1977): 765-776.
49. "Report of the Committee on Engineering Education after the War," JEE 34 (1943-44): 589-614, 595-600.
50. See Akera, "Engineering Science Ideology" (n. 37 above).
51. Joseph Bordogna, Eli Fromm, and Edward W. Ernst, "Engineering Education: Innovation through Integration," Journal of Engineering Education 83 (1993): 3-8.
52. See for instance, James Stice, "PSI & Bloom's Mastery Model: A Review & Comparison," Engineering Education (November 1979), 175-180.
53. The reference is to Benjamin. S. Bloom (ed.), Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (New York, 1956).
54. Joseph Bordogna, "Entering the "90s: A National Vision for Engineering Education," Engineering Education 80 (1989): 646-649.