Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (0)

A “new” school of engineering
September 24, 2007

On September 20, Harvard launched the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, I attended a symposium as part of the launch.

Charles Vest, former president of Harvard’s cross-town rival MIT, gave the keynote address in which he opened by quoting Churchill, saying "You can always count on Harvard to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all the other possibilities." He was referring to the fact that Harvard has had an engineering program for over 150 years, but has raised its status to a full-fledged school. You can read Harvard’s official line about the launch by clicking here.

On a more serious note, Vest said “It’s a time when the U.S. must compete, yet maintain prosperity. We can’t depend on location, natural resources, or military might.” Citing what he called a lack of urgency regarding engineering, he continued by saying “We need to revitalize our ‘can do’ attitude.” He also cited how the U.S. is losing the technical war with India and China, telling the audience that “China will dominate engineers” and “universities in just one state in India are currently graduating more engineers than all U.S. universities combined.”

Following Vest came two shorter speeches by H. Vincent Poor, Dean of the Princeton School of Engineering and Applied Science and Sabra Suresh, Dean of the MIT School of Engineering. Suresh discussed the social aspects of engineering and how engineers must interface with law, medicine, and the social sciences. Suresh stressed that engineers need knowledge in several technical areas and they need good communications skills, sentiments that several professors cited in T&MW’s “The future of engineering.”

Suresh also touched on the need for more engineers, arguing that universities must make engineering courses more interesting to students. He cited an example of a course in thermodynamics. Teaching the course using case studies put the technology in context, which created more student enthusiasm.

Both Vest and Suresh touched on the troubles and opportunities facing engineers and engineering universities today. With so many lamenting about the lack of engineers being produced in the U.S., do we really need another school of engineering?

Posted by Martin Rowe on September 24, 2007 | Comments (0)