Responses to ‘Practicing Without a License’
As educators of engineering practice, we would like to respond to Henry Petroski’s column lamenting a shift by universities away from instructors who lack Ph.D.’s but bring strong professional experience (“Practicing Without a License,” Prism, Summer 2014). We assert that the role of faculty of engineering practice [FOP] is not one that should either demand or exclude those with advanced degrees, licenses, or certifications. Rather, it is our experience that the FOP position is one of unique flexibility, allowing universities the opportunity to expose students to a wide variety of skills, experiences, relevant engineering practices, and enlightened classroom pedagogies. We suggest that a blend of qualifications and backgrounds offers a complement to traditional tenured faculty and an opportunity to build a unique and synergistic community of engineering educators – all for the benefit of students.
We are proud that our institutions are demonstrating their interest in reinforcing relations with industry and newly specialized fields of study by actively hiring those with both advanced degrees and professional accomplishments for the FOP role. Institutions like ours prize connections with those in the “real world” to offer rich contextual examples of actual engineering practice, while at the same time situating them in relevancy-based learning environments. While perhaps the majority of FOPs offer extensive engineering experience, technical degrees, and/or certifications only, we contribute years of experience, advanced technical degrees, MBAs, and even Ph.D.’s in engineering education. Through our advanced degrees in engineering education, we are able to carefully and purposefully translate engineering experiences by innovating relevant content aligned with appropriate assessment and pedagogy in the classroom
Nearly 70 years since its inception at Harvard, it seems only reasonable that the value proposition of the FOP role is re-envisioned and enhanced with all that has been learned in the domain of engineering education. Beyond the need for deep connections to industry and a full Rolodex of external contacts, we believe there is an equally beneficial need for deep educational understanding coupled with instructional excellence.
Finally, most agree there is a need to diversify the field of engineering. Diverse experiences and backgrounds aid in this effort by providing role models for alternative professional pathways open to those interested in the field. These modeled options can offer hope for broadening participation in the engineering profession. We trust that all faculty and institutions share a mutual goal of providing engineering students the best, broadest, and most informed educational experience. The warm and positive reception that our FOP panel received at ASEE is further confirmation that faculty of engineering practice – in any form – are thought of as an important element for achieving this essential higher education mission, and are not on a pathway toward extinction.
Mary Pilotte
Associate Professor of Engineering Practice, School of Engineering Education, Purdue University
Diana Bairaktarova
Assistant Professor of Engineering Practice, College of Engineering, University of Oklahoma
Rachel Kajfez
Assistant Professor of Practice, Engineering Education Innovation Center, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geodetic Engineering, Ohio State University
The authors were panelists at a 2014 ASEE conference session entitled “Faculty of Practice: Female Faculty Boundary Spanners Offering and Gaining Perspective.”
Kudos to Henry Petroski for acknowledging in his article “Practicing Without a License” the emphasis placed by engineering programs on advanced degrees for professors in lieu of practical experience. A survey conducted by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) more than 10 years ago evidenced that the most significant influence for students entering the engineering field and pursuing licensure as a professional engineer was an engineering professor who served as a mentor and who, in many cases, was a professional engineer. The lack of real-world practice in many current engineering educators does not lend itself to being a role model for future engineers and, as noted by Petroski, deprives future engineers of the benefits of learning from someone who’s been there. This issue is of great concern among NCEES member boards, particularly the lack of professional engineers teaching upper-level design courses. NCEES believes that the title “professor of practice” needs to be re-emphasized in engineering programs to denote individuals who have actually practiced the profession.
Jerry Carter
NCEES Chief Executive Officer
www.ncees.org
Design Chairs, MOOCs, and Tutorials
The summer 2014 edition of Prism contains three articles that should be read together – the connections are at least as important as the individual contents.
Henry Petroski’s column, “Practicing Without a License,” points out that engineering practice seems to be unwelcome among university academic staff. For instance, only unpublished research that results in the form of reviewed-journal papers seems to be acceptable for staff assessment and promotion, favoring large institutions. One result is that engineering design is regarded as trivial in many university engineering departments.
Exposing engineering teaching staff to engineering practice in industry should be encouraged. Practice and interest in teaching and learning should also be encouraged, e.g., contact with the ERM Division of ASEE. Additionally, engineering education research and development should also be a legitimate academic activity. This indicates one of the dilemmas of university education: selecting and rewarding staff members who are capable of spanning a wide range of skills which include theory, practice, and teaching/learning. One effort in Canada is the appointment of design chairs from engineering practice, yet these well-qualified people often fail to understand the developments in design methodology that can assist students as novice designers. Also, Germany realized the advantages of learning systematic engineering design many years ago, yet it also showed a reluctance to adopt the published improvements.
In “A Time for Hard Questions,” Kenneth Galloway mentions MOOCs and other developments that can affect our delivery of engineering education, pointing to consequences for ASEE and its members.
Finally, “In Praise of Old Ways” by Mohamed Gad-el-Hak discusses MOOCs directly. The “old ways” of lecturing and being directly accountable to the students is praised. At the recent annual conference of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), a paper described how an instructor prepared the necessary handouts and MOOC segments (10 to 15 minutes of listening and watching), and uploaded them for anyone to access online. She then used the available time to solve problems in class as a tutorial, using one-to-one student interaction. This seems to me to counter the main thrust of this article’s argument. The “good old ways” need not get lost, just updated. A danger is that the large institutions will again tend to dominate and ignore any progress made at a smaller university.
W. Ernst Eder
ASEE Life Member
Professor Emeritus
Royal Military College of Canada
eder-e@kos.net