Track: Global Engineering Education

Abstract

Over the past three decades, the engineering education and engineering programs in the United States and abroad have gone through several reforms. Their curricula have gone through significant revisions and refinements. Several intense reforms and activities in engineering programs have primary concentrated in two areas. These include new and recently developed knowledge into the courses and curricula, primarily utilizing hands-on and experiential learning methods to prepare engineers' next generation. In addition, the emergence of professional/soft skills including communications-presentation and public speaking and writing, entrepreneurial and business strategies awareness, leadership and ability to work in the team whose members represent different and diverse backgrounds concerning ethnicity, educational background, cultural diversity, etc.

These types of reforms often are originated by some pioneering programs and eventually are caught up by other institutions either due to the recommendation of alumni and former students, members of the advisory board, or other program's constituencies. Furthermore, aside from some articles that appeared in the academic journals and conference proceedings, there is not much information publicly available to serve as a guiding light to show the best and most effective methods to incorporate these skills into curricula. Also, the established milestones to measure and compare the engineering program's achievements. The efficacy of various techniques in delivering and instilling these professional/soft skills is often questioned. No factual data regarding the long-term benefits of these skills have been made public. It has also been noticed that usually, the status and reputation of programs incorporating these demanded professional skills into their curricula have positively enforced their reported achievements.

The new frontier in engineering education, engineering education for the 21st century, required professional skills for new engineers, training a new generation of engineers for the new global market, entrepreneur engineers, world-class engineering education, and incorporating communication skills in engineering curricula. Success is about people – leaders and lead engineers.

Keywords: Engineering Education; Leadership; Professional skills; New Engineers; Global Market; Cultural Diversity