Prolog to the Section on Engineering Education

Engineering education has a long history in the IEEE. One of the IEEE’s parent organizations, the Institute of Radio Engineers, formed its Professional Group on Education (IRE-PGE) in 1957 and launched the IRE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION in March 1958. With the merger of the IRE and the American Institute for Electrical Engineering (AIEE) in 1963, the IRE-PGE became the IEEE Professional Technical Group on Education, and the journal became the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, with the numbering of its volumes picking up where the IRE TRANSACTIONS left off, with volume 6. The evolution from an IEEE Professional Technical Group to an IEEE Society appears in 1979, with the listing of the BIEEE Education Society[ on the cover page of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION [1]. One of the six major boards of the IEEE itself is the Educational Activities Board [2], which develops and delivers information and programs for pre-university students and teachers; resources for university faculty, especially in the area of accreditation and increasingly in the area of global engineering; and continuing professional education resources for practitioners. It is therefore an honor, but also appropriate, that engineering education be represented in the Centennial Special Issue of the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE. In this section of the Centennial Special Issue, three papers present, respectively, a look at major shifts in the past 100 years of engineering education, a layered snapshot of the current state of engineering education, and an exploration of one of the dramatic changes that will be a critical component of engineering education in the future. Looking back in time at engineering education is not new to the IEEE: Terman’s BA brief history of electrical engineering education[ appeared in the PROCEEDINGS OF