The missing basics and other philosophical reflections for the transformation of engineering education

Abstract

Once again, reform of engineering education is in the air. In the United States, the National Academy of Engineering has published two reports, one specifying characteristics of the engineer of our times (National Academy of Engineering, 2004) and one calling for changes in the ways young engineers are educated (National Academy of Engineering, 2005). A report sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Sheppard et al., 2008) calls for overhauling the design of engineering education, a national engineering leader has independently called for significant reform (Duderstadt, 2008), and the editor of this volume and his colleagues have called for the education of a more holistic engineer (Grasso and Martinelli 2007, Grasso et al., 2008). © 2010 Springer-Verlag New York.