Issues Driving Reform Of Faculty Reward Systems To Advance Professional Graduate Engineering Education: Expectations For Core Professional Faculty

This is the fourth paper in the special panel session focusing on issues driving reform of faculty reward systems to advance professional engineering education for creative engineering practice and leadership of technological innovation to enhance U.S. competitiveness. This paper explores the conceptual beginnings of a template for improved faculty reward systems that better reflect the practice of engineering for fulltime, tenure track professionally oriented faculty in schools of engineering and technology. 1. Background and History The United States has built an excellent system of research-oriented graduate education that is second to none for the education of future engineering faculty and scientific researchers, and an excellent system of undergraduate education as preparation for entry into engineering practice, nevertheless a major reform in the U.S. system of engineering graduate education in context, organization, and culture to build complementary graduate programs of an advanced professional nature that enhance creative engineering practice for technology development and leadership of innovation in industry is needed. Since implementation of the Vannevar Bush report (Science: The Endless Frontier) of 1945, 1 which was followed by increased federal funding to accelerate the advancement of science, 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 similar emphasis on high-quality professionally oriented graduate education for creative engineering practice and leadership of technology development and innovation in industry. Engineering graduate education in the United States has emerged primarily as a byproduct of academic scientific research, 2 yielding organizational cultures and faculty reward systems that predominantly support the pursuit of academic scientific research. 2. Urgency for Reform of Professional Engineering Education for Practice There is growing national awareness that the urgency for reform of engineering education exists not only at the basic level of undergraduate engineering education (as preparation for entry into engineering practice), but also at the advanced level of professional graduate engineering education to further the lifelong learning, growth, and development of graduate engineers after entry into engineering practice in industry. The ASEE Corporate Members Council and the Graduate Studies Division have established a National Collaborative Task Force for Engineering Graduate Education Reform to answer this call for reform of graduate engineering education, to better meet the needs of working engineers in industry, to stimulate technology innovation, and to enable a strong U.S. engineering workforce for competitiveness. 3 P ge 925.1 “Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2004, American Society for Engineering Education” A major deficiency currently exists in the system of U.S. engineering graduate education which is affecting the nation’s innovative capacity for economic competitiveness. It is now evident that 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, that the 1945linear researchdriven model of engineering innovation is inadequate to ensure U.S. competitiveness. As a result of over four decades of neglect at the postgraduate level, the U.S. engineering workforce in industry has been underdeveloped for creative engineering practice and leadership of new/improved technological innovation for economic competitiveness and the nation’s defense. Fundamental changes have occurred in the U.S. Science and Technology (S&T) innovation system 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-linear research-driven paradigm of engineering practice. Scientific research and engineering practice 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. 4,5,6,7,8 But after building organizational cultures for academic scientific research at the nation’s engineering schools and a belief system during the last four decades that academic scientific research is the primary source of U.S. technology innovation, along with building faculty reward systems that predominantly reward federally funded 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. Among the issues that William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering, pointed out in the main plenary address to the 2002 ASEE – Annual Conference at Montreal, is the need for reform of faculty reward systems at the nation’s schools of engineering and technology to better reflect the modern practice of engineering. As Wulf pointed out in his address: “I don’t especially want to engage in the teaching vs. research debate. I suspect, like most of you, I believe that teaching and research complement each other. And, by and large, there is a high correlation between good teaching and good research. Good people are good! In my admittedly idiosyncratic career, the number of cases of genuinely good teachers who were not good researchers is very small. But, in engineering education I think we have an additional problem, and that’s the one I want to emphasize. Recall, my definition of engineering is “design under constraint”. I believe that it’s a synthetic, highly creative activity. Can you think of any other creative field on campus where the faculty are not expected to practice/perform? Art, music, drama? Even if you won’t buy that engineering is creative in the same way as art or music performance oriented professions such as medicine and law expect their faculty to practice that profession. Can you imagine a medical school where the faculty was prohibited from practicing medicine? Yet, not so in engineering. Faculty are, for the most part, judged by criteria similar to the science faculty and the practice of engineering is not one of those criteria. The faculty reward system recognizes teaching, research and service to the profession but not delivering a marketable product or process, or designing and enduring piece of the nation’s infrastructure. P ge 925.2 “Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2004, American Society for Engineering Education” Of course, what you measure is what you get. For the most part our faculty are superb “engineering scientists” but not necessarily folks that know a lot about the practice of the profession of engineering. At most schools, for example, it’s hard to bring someone onto the faculty who has spent the career in industry, even though such people would be extremely valuable to the students; their resumes simply don’t fit those the reward system values. Sometimes it’s even hard to get recognition for a sabbatical in industry. Please understand that I am not criticizing the current faulty; I am one of them. And I respect my colleagues greatly. Rather I am criticizing a system that prevents enriching the faculty with a complementary set of experiences and talents. But, to close the loop of course the current faculty are the folks with the largest say in the engineering curriculum. It should not be a big surprise, that industry leaders have been increasingly vocal about their discontent with the engineering graduates.” 9 3. Scholarship Reconsidered The heightened sense of urgency for reform of faculty reward systems has not happened overnight. Reform has usually been confined to the undergraduate teaching vs. research debate. But reform of professional education extends beyond the limitations of this debate and reaches into the core missions and purposes of modern universities in serving the needs of their constituencies in the 21 st century. 3.1 Priorities of the Professoriate As Ernest L. Boyer pointed out in the landmark report, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate: “At the very heart of the current debate the single concern around which all others pivot is the issue of faculty time. What’s really being called into question is the reward system and the key issue is this: what activities of the professoriate are most highly prized?” 10 Boyer was very clear about his motivation: “We begin this report on the professoriate by looking at the way the work of the academy has changed throughout the years moving from teaching, to service, and then research, reflecting shifting priorities both within the academy and beyond. We then note how, following the Second World War, the faculty reward system narrowed at the very time the mission of American higher education was expanding, and we consider how many of the nation’s colleges and universities are caught in the crossfire of these competing goals. In the current climate, students all too often are the losers. Today, undergraduates are aggressively recruited. In glossy brochures, they’re assured that teaching is important, that a spirit of community pervades the campus, and that general education is the core of the undergraduate experience. But the reality is that, on far too many campuses, teaching is not well rewarded, and faculty who spend too much time counseling and advising students may dimi