Engineers With a Whole New Mind, Part 2

Great column by Richard Felder called, "A WHOLE NEW MIND FOR A FLAT WORLD," written for the Chemical Engineering Education magazine. As you might guess, the column takes the concepts from the books, A WHOLE NEW MIND by Daniel Pink and The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, and applies it to the need to educate engineering students in a new way.

Felder is a professor emeritus of chemical engineer at North Carolina State University and a rare pragmatist in academia. He carries the banner for educating engineering students according to what graduates will need in the work world (hint: it's not learning how to solve differential equations.) He's also a proponent of preparing professors for their teaching roles with more than verifying they have a PhD and assigning them an introductory engineering class to teach.

A few schools are getting on the band wagon, with more multi-disciplinary approaches. Felder points to Rose-Hulman in Indiana (my home state) and the Colorado School of Mines (not too far from where I live now). My alma mater, Northwestern, is also making strides in this area. See my posting from last fall when I spoke with the dean of the school of engineering.

When I was a chemical engineering student twenty some years ago, I purposely took classes in departments outside of the engineering school--art history, religion, music appreciation, foreign language (Mandarin). And what I'm hoping is that in the future, the right-brain aspects of those disciplines will already be built into the engineering curriculum.  Progress comes in small steps.

Check out Felder's other writings in the Random Thoughts column.