| Winter 07: Dean's Message:
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Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau
The Future of Engineering at RPI
Undergraduate education has always been a hallmark of RPI—our engineering education is first class, our students learn excellent work habits and our faculty members have always led the nation in developing new methodologies in teaching. We were one of the first schools to embrace studio style classes. Our capstone design studio (the O.T. Swanson Multidisciplinary Design Laboratory) is a state of the art facility for team based design projects. And there are other developments: Product Design and Innovation, Inventors Studio, lab-on-a-chip, “Molecularium”; just to name a few. Our educational innovation continues to flourish; however, at this time, I have asked our new School of Engineering Advisory Council to give their thoughts on another subject: “The Rensselaer Engineer of the Future”.
New School of Engineering Advisory Council: “The Rensselaer Engineer of the Future”
Our Advisory Council includes a number of alumni who have been successful in their careers and, like many RPI engineering graduates, their career paths have led them into leadership roles in a variety of arenas. Although they started with an engineering degree, they are now utilizing that education, but not necessarily as an engineer. At RPI, as at many top universities, we aim to provide an education that will prepare one for the rest of one’s life. Thus the question posed to our Council was: “What will be important in the education of an engineer in the next decade or beyond?” Of course the context of the question was to ensure that RPI graduates continue to be successful in their future careers.
The results of the discussion were illuminating and thought provoking. The group first defined the attributes of the RPI “Engineer of the Future”:
- Grounded in the fundamentals of an engineering discipline
- Culturally sophisticated
- Knowledgeable about business
- Focused on the customer
- Possessing a pervasive knowledge of Life Sciences
- Understands complexity in systems
- A brief and effective communicator
- Respectful and knowledgeable of global cultures
- Confident and committed to success in a changing landscape
- A leader that understands balance in life
First, all graduate engineers must have specific engineering knowledge—for example, to join a team graduates bring value to the team by adding expertise not previously available to the team. Graduates must be grounded in science and math and be able to understand an area of engineering endeavor with sufficient rigor; allowing them to be a knowledgable resource and a problem solver. Graduates must be an electrical or computer or mechanical or civil engineer, etc., with significant knowledge of their chosen specialty.
Engineers must continue to be as good or better at engineering, than they were in the past. They must continue to focus on accomplishment and have an outstanding work ethic, but they must also have other abilities. Abilities that will allow them to lead and contribute on teams, be effective in a global context, and balance their work life with their private life. Our future engineers must have:
- The creativity to solve “real world problems”. Problems where there is no exact answer and that the best possible answer must be developed in a defined time frame. An engineer must therefore have an understanding of:
- Project and time management
- Systems
- Complexity
- Diversity
- Risk
- Economics
- Cultural and personal awareness. An engineer must be:
- Culturally sophisticated
- A brief and effective communicator
- Globally focused
- Confident with a personal commitment to success
- A contributor in a team environment
- An understanding of business. An engineer must have:
- Knowledge of the business process
- An extreme customer focus
- Product orientation
- An understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation
- A focus on the issues that allow successful new technology commercialization in existing and new businesses
Thus the “Rensselaer Engineer of the Future” must be deep and broad: deep in their knowledge of science and engineering and its application to technology; but broad in a personal and professional sense. We must develop technical knowledge and the person; so she or he can be successful in any venture or adventure after Rensselaer. This challenge has been accepted by a faculty committee charged with the development curriculum and programs for the “Rensselaer Engineer of the Future”—at both the undergraduate and graduate level.