A preprint of an article The Missing Basics & Other Philosophical Reflections for the Transformation of Engineering Education submitted to a volume edited by Dom Grasso, Dean at UVM, tentatively entitled The Future of Engineering Education and Practice is available at PhilSci archive here.

A related YouTube video can be viewed here or in the viewer below:

The University of Illinois and Olin College co-sponsored yesterday’s Summit on the Engineer of the Future at Olin College.  iFoundry co-director David E. Goldberg helped open the summit with his remarks, Lonely Dots, Dot Connecting & the Engineer of the Future. Download the remarks in pdf form here.

Powerful forces, including demographics, globalization, and rapidly evolving technologies are driving profound   changes in the role of engineering in society.

The purpose of this study is to pull together the principal findings and recommendations of the various reports concerning the profession of engineering, the technology and innovation needs of the nation, and the role played by human and intellectual capital.

It is clear that our nation faces the very real prospect of losing its engineering competence in an era in which technological innovation is key to economic competitiveness, national security, and social well being. Bold and concerted action is necessary to sustain and enhance the profession of engineering in America. It is the goal of this report both to sound the alarm and to suggest a roadmap to the future of American engineering.

The report can be downloaded from here. Other iFoundry readings can be found here.

In October 2007 Jonathan Glancey reported to The Guardian that Britain is 20,000 engineers short (here). This article by Chris Wise (here) is a response to Glancey’s report. According to Wise we don’t need more engineers, “we need better engineers. We need more thinkers, more engineering designers, more people who can conjure up something magical out of a complex world. We need an overhaul of engineering education.”

Goldberg, D. E. (2006). Human artifacts, phenomena, and interaction themes in the IESE curriculum (IESE whitepaper 06002). IESE Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. Download PDF here

Goldberg, D. E. (2006). The times they are a changin’ (IESE whitepaper 06001). IESE Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. Download PDF here

Goldberg, D. E. (1994). Engineering for businessfolks. Unpublished manuscript prepared for technology and management program. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. Download pdf here

Felder, R. & Prince, M. (2007, October). The case for inductive learning. ASEE Prism, 17(2), download here. (contributed by M. Loui)

Goldberg, D. E. (2006). Secondary field renaming and enhancement (IESE whitepaper 06003). IESE Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. Download PDF here

An extended abstract accepted for presentation at the 2009 Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT 2009) entitled “Is engineering philosophically weak? A linguistic and institutional analysis” is available at the PhilSci archive here.