Enabling The U.S. Engineering Workforce To Perform: Building A Culture For Technological Innovation And Leadership In Professional Graduate Engineering Education

This is the fourth paper in the special panel session of the National Collaborative Task Force on Engineering Graduate Education Reform to ensure a strong U.S. engineering workforce for competitiveness. Whereas research cultures have been built into the nation’s schools of engineering to enhance the educational experience of research-oriented graduate students, it is now evident that a complementary but different culture is needed also to make professionally oriented engineering graduate education more relevant to the needs of industry and to further the advanced professional education of the majority of the nation’s engineers who are pursuing creative engineering practice for leadership of technology development and innovation in industry. The paper explores the type of organizational culture and attributes that must be built into high-quality professional graduate engineering education to facilitate systematic technological innovation, improve industry-university engagement for innovation, and enable the continuous positive growth of creative working professionals in industry for leadership of engineering innovation. 1. Background and History The United States has built an excellent system of research-oriented graduate education for the education of future engineering faculty and academic scientific researchers that is second to none. Nevertheless, a major reform is needed in the U.S. system of engineering graduate education in context, organization, and culture to build complementary graduate programs of a professional nature that enhance creative engineering practice for technology development and leadership of innovation in industry. Since implementation of the 1945 – Vannevar Bush report (Science: The Endless Frontier) 1 and increased federal funding to accelerate the advancement of science at the end of World War II, the nation’s schools of engineering have placed an increased emphasis on high-quality graduate education for academic scientific research. During this same time period, however, U.S. engineering education has not placed a balanced emphasis on high-quality professionally oriented graduate education for creative engineering practice and leadership of technology development and innovation in industry. As a result, engineering graduate education has emerged primarily in the United States as an outgrowth of scientific research. 2 This has produced organizational cultures and faculty reward systems that primarily support the pursuit of academic scientific research. 2. Educating Engineers as Professionals Although the Grinter Committee recognized early on in its preliminary report that one type of education for the nation’s research scientists and for the nation’s professional engineers doesn’t fit all, 3 the P ge 924.1 “Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2004, American Society for Engineering Education” correctness of their view has become more apparent after four decades of an almost singular direction of research-based graduate education at the nation’s schools of engineering. While U.S. science policy placed increased emphasis on academic scientific research as the primary driver and source of U.S. technological advancement during the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, a growing awareness began to occur during the 90’s that the linear research-driven model of engineering innovation was inadequate to ensure U.S. competitiveness. Fundamental changes were occurring in the United States with regard to the technological innovation process itself. A new model of purposeful, creative, and systematic needs-driven engineering development and innovation has emerged that is quite different from the linear, sequential research-driven model of engineering innovation portrayed by the 1945-Vannevar Bush model. Scientific research and engineering are no longer viewed as linear sequential activities but rather as concurrent activities with unique missions, functions, and talents of those practitioners who engage in these two very different pursuits. 4,5,6,7 However, after four decades of building organizational cultures for academic scientific research at the nation’s engineering schools and a belief system that scientific research is the primary source of U.S. technology innovation (along with building faculty reward systems that predominantly reward federally funded scientific research), it has become extremely difficult for many university faculty and administrators to undergo required change and to reflect the modern process of purposeful, systematic engineering innovation for needs-driven technology development. As Barwise and Perry have noted: “Different organisms can rip the same reality apart in different ways, ways that are appropriate to their own needs, their own perceptual abilities and their own capacities for action.” 5 3. The Concept of Culture Juran noted that understanding the concept of different cultural patterns is extremely important in implementing effective breakthrough innovations and creating change for new levels of performance within existing institutions. 8 This understanding is more important than ever before in implementing actual engineering graduate education reform to enhance U.S. innovative capacity for competitiveness. 3.1 Defining Culture and Difference of Cultural Patterns The concept of culture is not confined to liberal arts, the humanities, or the study of anthropology. Building an organizational culture for innovation is a key ingredient in engineering. As Juran points out: 9 • “Culture” is a body of learned behavior, a collection of beliefs, habits, practices, and traditions, shared by a group of people (a society) and successively learned by new members who enter the society. So says the anthropologist (Mead).” • “This definition is important to us, for a very good reason. Anthropologists have by now studied numerous “cultures.” From these studies they have observed some consistent effects when technical changes are introduced into societies. The conclusions from these studies are valid as applied to any human society, industrial or otherwise. If our district offices, factories, warehouses, etc., meet the definition of a “culture,” then the great body of study of cultures is applicable to these industrial societies as well.” • “Culture, then, is just a shorthand description, a label, for the fabric of human habits, beliefs, traditions, etc. It is a fabric, not a kettle full of bits and pieces. The elements of the culture are so interwoven that disturbance of one element has effects on many others.” P ge 924.2 “Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2004, American Society for Engineering Education” • “Among the ingredients of a culture is the scale of valueswhat is important, what is not. Cultures differ remarkably in what they consider important, and many tragedies have resulted from ignorance of these differences.” 3.2 Meeting of Two Cultures: Resistance to Change Difference of Cultural Patterns William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering, has pointed out that during the last two decades extensive reports for engineering education reform have been made but little action has been taken. 10 Wulf’s comments were addressed primarily at the undergraduate level. But resistance to change has been even more so at the graduate level of engineering. However, the authors believe that Juran’s ground breaking analysis of the impact that cultural patterns play in resisting needed innovation or in supporting needed innovation will be vitally important in raising the U.S. system of professional engineering graduate education to the next level of world-class performance to enhance our competitiveness in the innovation-driven economy. Without a sensitization of the unique differences between the cultural pattern required for scientific research investigations and the cultural pattern required for creative engineering practice for leadership of technology development and innovation in industry, any movement for implementing sustainable reform in professionally oriented graduate education will not yield optimal results. Juran has stated that: 11 (1) “This leads us to a cardinal rule for advocates of change: You must be aware that you are dealing with a pattern of human habits, beliefs, and traditions which may differ from yours and which may therefore view this change in a way totally different from your view.” (2) “We can now state a second basic rule for advocates of change: You should, as part of your diagnosis, discover just what will be the social effects of your proposed technical changes. Which beliefs will be denied, which habits will require change, which attitudes will be challenged. The more precisely you can predict all this, the better able you will be to prepare your case for dealing with the inevitable resistances.” Thus, one of the critical tasks facing change agents who are implementing professionally oriented engineering graduate education reform for positive impact on the nation’s economic growth, quality of life, and defense is recognizing that the cultural patterns that are required for facilitating excellence in creative engineering practice for leadership of technology development and innovation in industry and for facilitating excellence in academic scientific research are different. It is the unique differences between the functions of scientific research investigations and those of creative engineering practice for leadership of technology development in industry that make them both vitally important to the nation’s welfare for the advancement of science and for the advancement of technology (See Appendix A). 3.3 The Process of Engineering Has Changed: Lessons Learned, the Integrative Systems Approach and Culture for Needs-Driven Engineering Innovation Whereas detractors to engineering graduate educa