"Distinguished Symposium on the New Engineer"
Dr. Joseph Bordogna
Deputy Director
Chief Operating Officer
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Edmund Pratt, Jr. School of Engineering
December 3, 1999
I am delighted to be here and to be included in such
a distinguished panel of speakers. The National Science
Foundation extends congratulations to Kristina Johnson
as its new Dean of Engineering. Duke has made a wonderful
appointment to follow on the wonderful tenure of Earl
Dowell.
If you can make sense of the complex, you will have
a career in the 21st Century.
If you are adept, also, at integrating all knowledge
to some purpose, you will likely enjoy an engineering
career in the 21st Century.
The term the "new engineer" is a metaphor for the new
era which we have created with the microprocessor,
the laser, fiber optics, satellite technologies, and
other marvels of our world. I used to design television
circuitry as an engineer at RCA early in my career;
yet, though I "know this sutff," I still marvel at
what God has wrought when I look at today's high definition
television, or HTDV as it is referred to in today's
growing acronym lexicon of complex technological terminology.
Our language and conversation are filled with the new
terms and with vastly different meanings for old terms.
Before the advent of electronic computers, a virus
was the flu, and memory was something you lost
as you grew old.
Just as times and terms have changed, the needs and
requirements for all professions and careers have
changed. The environment and the sociology of work
have also changed.
There is an increasing connection between academic
education and economic growth. Partnerships between
industry and academe are becoming common operational
arrangements. And, information technologies have become
the new infrastructure of science, engineering, and
the function of economies.
The "big picture' is a very different painting today.
Our goal should be to educate engineers for the knowledge-economy,
not for a "museum era economy." That does not mean
the end of manufacturing, it means that we are recognizing
the end of manufacturing, as we knew it. The making
and moving of goods still underlie the meaning of
economy, as they have throughout history. Today's
rapidly changing technologies put them in a different
context. As the teachings of economist, Joseph Sohumpeter,
have revealed, "...a normally healthy economy (is)
not one in equilibrium, but one that (is) constantly
being disrupted by technological innovation." (The
Economist, 1999)
The trajectory of science, engineering, and technology
over the last half century has consistently moved
toward greater complexity. This escalating complexity
is powering us to a greater focus on intellectual
integration. Understanding the characteristics of
the whole demands more than knowledge only of the
parts.
We need to train the "new engineers" to think strategically
and holistically. We need to educate them beyond their
technical expertise and prepare them for what is to
come, not what is. The best technical training must
be combined with an understanding of how that expertise
fits into the larger societal environment, into our
overriding national goals, and, indeed, into the goals
of other nations.
This is the driving force, for example, behind investments
that the National Science Foundation makes in people,
ideas, and tools across all engineering and science.
We must teach engineers to read the larger context
in which they will work--the sector, the society,
and even the time in history, the moment in civilization.
This will provide a path for imagining the future.
Peter Drucker put it best. He says: "I never predict.
I just look out the window and see what is visible,
but not yet seen."
In the past, we have provided engineers with a first-rate
technical education. But it was an education mostly
about pieces and not their interconnections.
At our universities, we have the opportunity and responsibility
to help students learn how to "see" the larger context
of society and from it extrapolate good insight.
History is important. To understand and imagine the
nature of the future, the "new engineer" will need
to study the past. History offers us a window on the
constancy of human nature over centuries, a description
of social change, and examples of mistakes that altered
the course of events. Lastly, it tells us how the
environment or culture of a time or place can make
it ripe for dramatic change.
Innovation is both the root and the goal of engineering.
Creativity and risk-taking are inherent to any form
of innovation: the process of using knowledge to travel
paths that are new and different. Sometimes we comprehend
these paths better from examples outside our own discipline
or experience.
As one example, creativity and risk-taking drive art
and artists. Art is in the business of always breaking
the rules. Impressionism, cubism, jazz, rock music--every
field of artistic endeavor teaches the process of
creative envisioning and risk taking. For an engineering
career, innovation is the 21st Century
focus, rather than productivity only. The latter sustained
an engineering career through most of the 20th
Century... but, no longer.
And importantly, engineers need to be communicators.
The capacity to influence through written and spoken
words may sound old fashioned; in a knowledge-economy,
advocation is critical.
To prepare the New Engineer, the curriculum needs to
be designed in a new way. The objective will be to
teach the ways in which individuals can propel disciplines,
industries, and societies in whole new directions...
keeping in mind that with each new design, an engineer
manifests her or his intent for society's future.
Following this path, 21st Century is likely
to regard the New Engineer as Astute Maker, Trusted
Innovator, Harm Avoider, Change Agent, Knowledge Handler,
Enterprise Enabler, Technology Steward, and Master
Integrator.
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