Missing Basics: What Engineers Don't Learn and Why They Don't Learn Them

© David E. Goldberg 2009

The Missing Basics:What Engineers Don’t Learn & Why They Don’t Learn Them

David E. GoldbergIllinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering EducationUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbana, IL 61801 [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


Engineering Education Reform in the Air

• Many calls for reform.• Many lists the same:

– Need more “design.”– Need more people skills.– Need better “communications.”

• Yet change comes slowly, if at all.• Steadfast defense of “the basics” against

“soft” subjects & other foreign invaders.• Failure to pass change when agreement exists.• Reflect on missing elements & why they’re

missing.• Warning: Systems view ahead, no silver

bullets.

Roadmap

• Reflections upon 19 years coaching industrial-sponsored engineering senior design.

• 7 things engineers don’t learn.• 5 reasons they don’t learn them: philosophical,

historical, organizational, systemic & economic.• Moving the larger system: Political realignment

for organizational realignment.• Philosophy as realignment aid.



General Engineering & Senior Design

• General Engineering at UIUC established in 1921 following curriculum study.

• Grinter report of 1955 led to more math and engineering science at expense of design.

• UCLA conference 1962.• Ford Foundation grant 1966.• Money ran out 1971.• Industrial funding supports thereafter.

Jerry S. Dobrovolny

Ready, Set, Go

• These are seniors.• Should be engineers on the

threshold.• Express preferences for projects.• Get assigned to a project: 3-

member teams & faculty advisor.• Go on the plant trip.

• Query: What don’t they know how to do?


Failure 1: Inability to Ask

• Don’t know how to frame or ask good questions.

• Difficulty probing the problem.• Trouble querying what has

been tried.• Problem learning about

vendors and sources of information.

• Historical terms: Socrates 101.


Socrates (470-399 BCE)

Failure 2: Inability to Label

• Don’t know names of common systems, assemblies, and components of technology.

• Difficulty labeling new artifact concepts or models.

• Linguistically naïve.• Mainly comfortable with familiar

categories and objects.• Historical terms: Aristotle 101.


Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

Failure 3: Inability to Model

Don’t know how to model conceptually:◦ As causal chain.◦ As categorical list of types or kinds.

Pavlovian dogs when it comes to equations.

Need to understand problem qualitatively in words and diagrams prior to quantitative modeling undertaking.

Historical terms: Hume 101 or Aristotle 102.


David Hume (1711-1776)

Failure 4: Inability to Decompose

• Don’t know how to decompose big problem into little problems.

• Look for magic bullets in equations of motion.

• Most projects too hard: Companies don’t pay $8500 for plugging into Newton’s laws.

• Historical terms: Descartes 101?


René Descartes (1596-1650)


Failure 5: Inability to Measure

• Don’t know how to measure stuff or collect data.

• Engineering taught as abstract math/science exercise.

• Ignore benefit of direct measurement.

• Historical terms: Locke 101 or Bacon 101? John Locke (1632-1704)


Failure 6: Inability to Visualize/Ideate

• Don’t know how to draw sketches or diagrams when helpful.

• Have trouble envisioning solutions.

• Graphics education greatly diminished.

• Historical terms: da Vinci or Monge 101.

Failure 7: Inability to Communicate

Finally finish the project.Don’t know how to present

or write for business.“What we have here is a

failure to communicate.”Historical terms: Newman

101.


Paul Newman (1925-2008)


The Missing Basics vs. the Basics

• Call these lacnuae the missing basics (MBs) vs. “the basics” = math, sci, & eng sci.

• After 4 years they don’t know how to– Question: Socrates 101.– Label: Aristotle 101.– Model conceptually: Hume 101

& Aristotle 102.– Decompose: Descartes 101.– Measure: Bacon-Locke 101.– Visualize/ideate: da Vinci-

Monge 101.– Communicate: Newman 101

• MBs as quality failure.

• 5th century BC as pivotal moment in human thinking.

• MBs as keys to – lifelong learning,– interdisciplinarity.

What Can They Do?

• Can plug & chug in Newton’s laws, Maxwell’s equations, and do big O.

• Can talk about limited categories of tech discussed in class.

• Can’t think qualitatively or reflectively.• Heidegger’s beef: Science/tech as

merely calculative. Many w/ humanities PhilTech (HPT) view want engineers to contemplate the “bigger picture.”

• More limited advocacy: Reflection (qualitative thinking) as central to engineering problem solving itself.

• This is failure of engineering education & liberal education.


Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

Why Don’t They Learn MBs?

• Five reasons:– Got stuck in cold war paradigm (historical). – Mistook math-science for engineering

(philosophical).– Ignored organizational barriers (organizational).– Believed isolated education scholarship & pedagogy

results in effective reform (systemic).– Ignored costs of reform proposals (economic).



Cold War Curriculum in Creative Era

• In final days of Vannevar Bush era.• Science: The Endless Frontier, set

stage for NSF & research.• Engineers accepted notion

(myth?) that “science won the war.”

• 1955 Grinter report spurred injection of math & science, reduction in design & practice.


Kuhn, Paradigms & Engin School

• “Paradigm” traces to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962.

• Argued that science proceeds in fits and starts, not gradually.

• Old paradigms, ways of thinking about the world, are overturned by revolutions, not gradually. Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996)


Paradigm of Tech Academy

• Following assumptions sacrosanct:– Basic engineering science key to success.– Government funds superior to industry $$$.– Demonstrate mettle as individuals with peer-reviewed

journal papers in specialty.

• Question any stare, derision & ridicule.• These beliefs are not scientific. • Case Western story: “Where’s the data?”• Code words: “the basics,” “rigorous,” & “soft.”• Invoking code words not an argument.


Creative Era & Missed Revolutions

• The paradigm was OK for WW2 & Cold War.

• Now a creative era, a flat world.

• Missed revolutions since WW2:– Quality revolution.– Entrepreneurial revolution.– IT revolution.

• Teach the “revolutions,” but do not integrate lessons into academy or curriculum.


Technoeconomics of Now

• Place revolutions in framework of underlying causes.

• Missed revolutions enabled by technoeconomic effects:– Transport and communication

improvements.– Network effects.– Transaction costs.

• Puts past in perspective & project future trends.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)


No Philosophy of Engineering

• Ontology, epistemology, and reasoning not taught, discussed.

• Assumed to come from “common sense” or “the basics.”

• “Design” as abused term & mysterious process.

• The 7 not usually articulated as fundamental to design.


What is Engineering?

• Many definitions:– Common view: Engineering is applied

science.– Von Karman: “A scientist discovers that

which exists. An engineer creates that which never was.”

– Koen: Engineering is heuristics.– Pitt: Technology is “humanity at work.”– Mesthene: Technology is “the

organization of knowledge for achievement of practical purpose.”

– Rogers: “Engineering refers to the practice of organizing the design and construction of any artifice which transforms the physical world around us to meet some recognized need.”

• Here: Engineering is the social practice of conceiving, designing, implementing, producing, & sustaining complex artifacts, processes, or systems appropriate to some recognized need.

• Artifacts primary object.• Science & math are among tools used for

artifact conception & support.• Social practice Engineered by and for

people.• Social side as important as the physics.• Searle’s distinctions:

– All engineered objects are observer relative.

– Engineers work in a social/institutional world constrained by nature.

• Needs are exogenous to this definition.


3Space as Balanced Curriculum

• Technological products important.

• Engineering is by and for people.

• Engineering thought includes but is not limited to math & science.


ThingSpace as Example

• Moving away from an analysis-centered curriculum.

• Taking technological products seriously.

• Needs STS faculty involved to fill in the missing subjects.


Organizational Change Ignored

Academic NIMBY problem.NIMBY = Not in my backyard.“It is OK to change the

curriculum…”“….as long as you leave my

course alone.”Politics of logrolling: You

support my not changing. I support your not changing.

Even though agreement for change is widespread, specific changes are resisted.


iFoundry: Org Innovation for Change

• Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education:– Curriculum change incubator. Permit change.– Collaboration. Large, key ugrad programs work together. Easier approval if

shared. – Connections. Hook to depts, NAE, ABET (?), industry. – Volunteers. Enthusiasm for change among participants. – Existing authority. Use signatory authority for modification of curricula for

immediate pilot. – Respect faculty governance. Get pilot permission from the dept. and go

back to faculty for vote after pilot change– Assessment. Built-in assessment to overcome objections back home. – Scalability. Past attempts at change like Olin fail to scale at UIUC and

other big schools. • www.ifoundry.illinois.edu

http://www.ifoundry.illinois.edu/

Fa09: The Students Are Coming

• 100 freshmen, 11 depts.• 21 iFoundry fellows.• Joy of X, X = Engineering,

Learning, Community.• Changes = ENG100++, HAPI

themes + iCommunity activity.

• iCommunity = Teams + companies + faculty advisors + student mentors + teamwork/leadership training.

• New courses for 2010: UOCD, FBE, DN.

• Working with Art & Design to pilot Industrial Design course for engineers (UOCD).

• Working with Tech Entrepreneur Center to pilot biz course (FBE).

• Fa10 negotiotiation & study of pioneering curricula.

• iFoundry as dept tool: ethics & bioX.

Pedagogy & Ed Research Insufficient

Pedagogical improvement & ed scholarship is fundamental response of reform movement.

Teaching/assessing wrong stuff well a poor solution.

Getting one teacher to teach right stuff well doesn’t fix a broken system.

“Rigorous” A-B tests of one facet doesn’t realign a field suffering from misconception of itself.


Economics of Reform Ignored

Teach more design, but design is usually taught in studio setting or project course.

Reform efforts ignore continuing costs of pilot efforts.Utopian hopes that research faculty will return to their love of

undergraduate classroom.Aside on off-the-cuff Utopian change suggestions: Duty for care

in reflection & action.Lecture is much maligned, but lectures are cheap:

◦ Low preparation costs.◦ Low coordination costs.

Not arguing for lectures alone.Am recommending hard look at costs & scalability: 300 versus

5300.© David E. Goldberg 2009

Moving the Larger System

• Engineering education is a larger, complex system.• Organizational realignment needs political realignment

as pressure sustaining change.• A grassroots approach:

– Social-digital media usage.– Olin-Illinois Partnership (OIP).– Summit on the Engineer of the Future 2.0 (EotF2.0)– Alliance for Promoting Innovation in Engineering

Education (APIE2).



Olin-Illinois Partnership

• Engineer of the Future Workshop, September 2007 (University of Illinois).

• Sherra Kerns (Olin) one of two keynote speakers.

• Continuing conversations & drafting of MOU for Olin-Illinois Partnership (OIP) in summer 2008.

• MOU signing 12 Sept 08.• Planning for EotF2.0 began shortly

thereafter. William Wulf (b. 1939)

http://www.illigal.uiuc.edu/web/etsi/engineer-of-the-future/

http://ifoundry.illinois.edu/files/2008/12/mou_olin_illinois_partnership.pdf


Philosophy as Realignment Tool

• Talk has used philosophical modes of thought & argumentation.

• Philosophy as– Response to crisis of a creative era. – Tool for category error diagnosis.– Aid to achieving conceptual clarity.– Pedagogy for teaching qualitative

reasoning skills to engineers.– Competing form of rigor to science &

math.– Status anxiety abatement device.

• Workshop on Philosophy & Engineering:http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/wpe

http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/wpe


Bottom Line

• Summing up:– Senior design as way in.– 7 things engineers don’t learn.– Connections to intellectual history.– 5 reasons why engineers don’t learn these

things now or why they are hard to reform.• Organizational, philosophy, and political modes of

thought have roles to play in realignment.


Last Word

• Complex system can move with pressures in- and outside the academy.• Make good arguments, treat problem as organizational, and don’t stop

moving.• Today: Have engineering graduates who can act and humanities

graduates who can reflect.• Tomorrow: Engineers who can reflect and act & humanities

graduates … • Controversial proposals here:

– To engineers who disagree: Make arguments, don’t merely invoke the cold war paradigm & the “basics.”

– To humanists saying hurrah: Engineering academy reflecting on its nature. Are you doing likewise?


More Information

• iFoundry: http://ifoundry.illinois.edu • EotF2.0: http://engineerofthefuture.olin.edu• iFoundry YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/illinoisfoundry• iFoundry SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/ifoundry • TEE, the book.

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470007230.html • TEE, the blog.

www.entrepreneurialengineer.blogspot.com • TEE, the course.

http://online.engr.uiuc.edu/webcourses/ge498tee/index.html • MTV, the course.

http://online.engr.uiuc.edu/webcourses/ge498tv/index.html• Engineering and Technology Studies at Illinois (ETSI)

http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/ETSI• Workshop on Philosophy & Engineering (WPE)


http://ifoundry.illinois.edu/

http://engineerofthefuture.olin.edu/

http://www.youtube.com/illinoisfoundry

http://www.slideshare.net/ifoundry

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470007230.html

http://www.entrepreneurialengineer.blogspot.com/

http://online.engr.uiuc.edu/webcourses/ge498tee/index.html

http://online.engr.uiuc.edu/webcourses/ge498tv/index.html

http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/ETSI
