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Peking University, Oct. 22, 2011 : “Engineering in a globalized world”, the final session of Global Engineering Deans Council Conference (GEDC), was held on the late afternoon of October 22 at Peking University (PKU), which aims to provide a stimulating discussion of the state of globalization of engineering education and its role in the development of innovation from different global perspectives and to share visions on its future, in an era when technologies are transforming this “flat world” in unimaginable ways.
Three keynote speakers took turns to share their experiences and insights on engineering education before getting down to a group Q&A session. Yannis C. Yortos, Dean of the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California and Chen Shiyi, Dean of the College of Engineering of PKU co-chaired the secession.
Three speakers answering questions from the audience at session F, chaired by Chen Shiyi
Don Giddens, currently Chair of National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Section 2, Bioengineering, began with an introduction to engineering education at Georgia Tech, where he served as Dean of College of Engineering before “half retiring” on July 1, 2011 — he continued his research as a part time faculty member.
Georgia Tech enjoys a good reputation in technology world and has a large size for engineering education. It provides summer programs, one-year programs etc. in addition to degree programs. It’s also an active player in international cooperation. In 2010, Georgia tech sent out a team of professors on a yearlong mission to Abu Dhabi to help build several technology departments from scratch in a new university, Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research (KUSTAR). The mission included setting up curriculums, recruiting faulty members, running exchange programs in such fields as aerospace engineering, industrial system, biomedicine etc. China is also its main partner in global education. Georgia Tech has established a scholarship for young Chinese women students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) and Joint Ph.D. program with PKU in biomedical engineering.
Once Dean of College of Engineering, Dr. Giddens has formed his strategic philosophy for education: education should benefit students; researches are the drivers of keeping long-term relationship with faculties; education is to help develop good citizenship. Also he strongly opposes to making a profit out of the property of the campus; the school should be revenue-neutral.
When asked how Georgia Tech decided to establish joint programs with another school, Dr. Giddens said it was mutual interest and mutual decision. “For example, the College of Engineering in PKU is brand new but they have high motivations. When both sides see the benefit of cooperation and we both have the will, then done.” “It’s the same with professors who send their students to other labs for exchange; there must be incentives to make the faculty happy in doing so. PKU has excellent students and professors. There are opportunities for joint research in biomedical engineering so we are interested in letting our students be co-advised at PKU.”
The second speaker, Dr. Josephine Nabukenya, the acting dean faculty of Computing and Information Technology, Makerere University, briefed to the audience the history of Makerere University, the most renowned university in Africa before introducing some solutions they were seeking for in Uganda in face of global challenges such as energy sustainability and IP management. She told the audience that they were turning to information and computing technology to provide services in support of smart energy communities based on smart grids.
The third speaker, Catherine Didion is a Senior Program Officer at the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). She presented the audience with some interesting findings of an on-going survey they’ve been conducting for two years to address the question that what skills and experiences today’s engineering students need to develop while in school and throughout their careers to successfully compete in today’s global workplace. Her research group came up with a series of attributes to invite educators, employers, students, and professional engineers throughout the global engineering community to rank the performance and proficiency levels of each attribute. This research group is affiliated with the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Corporate Member Council (CMC), whose mission is “to foster, encourage, and support high-quality engineering education around the world to assure a global supply of well-prepared engineering graduates.”
In general, respondents indicated that for most attributes, a “stair-stepping” of both importance levels and proficiency levels occurred over time. Academic world tend to slightly overvalue the proficiencies of the attributes compared with industrial world; however, both agree that for all stages of a global engineer’s development, the attribute “shows initiative and demonstrates a willingness to learn” are extremely important for all. One particular finding are seemingly contrary to our expectation: the low ranking of global attributes such as understanding the world politics and fluency in at least two languages. Didion called for explanations and said it needed further exploration. The final report will be released in early 2012.
In addition, Didion were also interested in the gender difference in the careers of engineering. Not a lot of women consider engineering as a choice of career. She told the audience that in recent years, the number of women students in engineering remains flat, which is not good news since the global market opens more opportunities for engineers and more and more men students are choosing to study engineering. She said girls should be better informed with engineering. In fact, a project was carried out by NAE: a website called “engineer your life” specifically designed to provide guidance to engineering for high school girls. Dr. Josephine Nabukenya also felt the same way and she shared with the audience some of the practices in Uganda: computing is becoming part of general education; professors will visit high schools to explain the enticement of engineering and give lectures to serve as living examples.
Didion later told the reporter that the survey was to meet the needs of many companies of engineering such as Boeing but it would also be beneficial for students. Researchers were kind of shy but they really need to invite students to come over to have a chat over a cup of tea.
Deans and teachers from college of engineering took an active part in the discussion of Session F and provided many thought-provoking insights.
Reported by: Chen Long
