Conversations on Effecting Change and Sharing Innovations to Improve Undergraduate Engineering Education
Transforming Classrooms... Transforming Organizations... Transforming Lives

Overview. Although curriculum reform has been on engineering minds for some time, it is clear that reforms are difficult to sustain and diffuse, and often even when innovations are won, it is difficult to maintain the organizational will to continually improve and adapt. Indeed, the problem of effective educational transformation is as much organizational and political as it is pedagogical and curricular; and it may be the case that effective engineering education transformation requires not a top-down approach, but rather an open-source approach in which diverse voices gather at the grassroots with a variety of views and methodological approaches and openly and actively share best practices.

The Event. To explore this possibility, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and the University of Illinois joined forces to host the Summit on the Engineer of the Future 2.0. The event was held on April 1, 2009 (Wednesday, with opening reception the Tuesday evening before) at Olin College in Needham, MA and featured a keynote talk by Vice-Provost Karan Watson, Texas A&M, a panel discussion of successful engineers of the future (recent grads 5-10 years out with a track record of entrepreneurial, corporate, organizational, or societal success), a talk by Woodie Flowers, MIT and brainstorming and involvement sessions in the afternoon. The event concluded with the signing of the “Transformation Proclamation” (see “APIE2”). For interested parties, the event was followed on Thursday with the opportunity to visit Olin College (see “Olin in Action”).

Who Came.  Engineering educators/administrators, students, alumni, and engineering corporate friends who are passionate about aligning engineering education and practice in the 21st century will find this summit of benefit.  In addition to attendance at the summit, participants were invited and encouraged to participate in the online exhibition and submit short presentations, papers, or videos addressing what they believe is important for transformation in engineering education. See “Online Sharing and Submissions” for additional details.