January 24, 2003

Education for the Profession Formerly Known as Engineering

By ROSALIND WILLIAMS

Engineering is undergoing an identity crisis. The mission of engineering changes when its dominant problems no longer involve the conquest of nature but the creation and management of a self-made habitat. To adapt to this new habitat, engineers have to retool, starting with their understanding of engineering education. Today, technological change is something that happens to engineers as much as to anyone else.

For most of the 20th century, engineering faculty members assumed that