General Engineering At Harvey Mudd: 1957–2003

This paper describes the genesis and evolution of the philosophy of the Harvey Mudd College general engineering program. This program was established with a sound theoretical base strongly coupled to the realism of engineering practice. Thus, the paper also describes the development of the Harvey Mudd Clinic program — Harvey Mudd’s three-semester capstone experience — to bring professional practice to on-campus students, as well as the first-year design course (E4) that exposes students to client-based design work as the cornerstone of its program. The emerging concept of engineering as the “liberal education of the 21st century” is also cited to emphasize the centrality of the engineering design paradigm — that is, design as the cornerstone or the backbone — in defining the discipline of Engineering. The implications of this analysis for undergraduate engineering education are discussed. The paper concludes with suggestions for realizing an undergraduate program in Engineering that is current, vital, distinctive and consistent with the idea of engineering being a single discipline. Introduction Engineering at Harvey Mudd College is a non-specialized multidisciplinary program, awarding an undesignated BS degree. The engineering major comprises one-third of the requirements for a student to graduate from the college, with another third in humanities and social science, and the remaining third in a mathematics and fundamental science common core. Engineering sciences and engineering systems courses complement the engineering design experience of the first-year projects course (E4) and the junior and senior year Engineering Clinic courses bringing professional practice to campus through industry-sponsored projects. The program was recently classified 1 as a “philosophical Engineering program” based on certain defining characteristics, including a strong liberal education background and “the philosophy that such an education has intrinsic advantages over discipline-specific alternatives.” This paper describes the genesis and evolution of the Harvey Mudd engineering philosophy growing out of a P ge 937.1 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education liberal arts environment and fashioning a new synthesis between a rigorous science base and professional engineering practice. This synthesis is made possible by the focus on engineering design as the cornerstone of the program. The centrality of the engineering design paradigm leads to a discussion of the application of this philosophy to a design-based approach to engineering education. Context The origin of the modern, science-based engineering curriculum is usually attributed to the Grinter report 2, 3 . That report reflected in part the thinking embodied in the famed Vannevar Bush Report 4 : greater public investment in science was warranted because of the impact of such “scientific” advances as radar and operations research during World War II. Further, as detailed by Seely 5 , the Grinter report also reflected the culmination of the efforts of several engineering educators who had benefited from the European, more theoretical approach to engineering. (Seely 5 quotes Walker 6 as writing, “They taught us elegant theory: vector diagrams . . . , hyperbolic functions . . . , and even triple integrals.”) The rapid and widespread acceptance of the Grinter report was accelerated by the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik. The tenor of the times thus very much dictated an analytical, science-based approach to engineering education. By way of contrast, were one to start anew in the 21st century, the design of an engineering curriculum might be posed as a problem in engineering design. After all, to paraphrase a wonderful observation about knowledge offered by Stefik and Conway 7 , Engineering education is an artifact, worthy of design. This paraphrase is not meant to suggest that the engineering reform driven by the Grinter report was in any way random, thoughtless, or lacking in painstaking intellectual effort. Rather, it is meant to suggest another framework — the fundamental steps in the design of artifacts to keep in mind as the genesis and evolution of the Harvey Mudd model is detailed. Some of the basic steps in a structured, design-based approach would be 8 : eliciting and refining properly drawn objectives; articulating appropriate and realistic constraints; deriving the functions that must be performed in order to realize the desired objectives within the extant constraints; and detailing the metrics against which the achievement of the objectives can be measured and assessed. One important question addressed only implicitly in this abbreviated list is, Whose objectives are being elicited? The answer(s) to this question is/are crucial because the objectives will almost surely vary with the role of the respondent. Students want a good educational experience leading to good jobs or graduate school; professors want to do research; employers want young, newlygraduated hires with twenty-five years of experience, ready to do any job competently and productively; trustees want to fulfill the fiduciary responsibility of ensuring that the college remains financially sound; presidents want their university to be exciting to potential donors; and alumni want the program to be just as demanding as it was in “the good old days.” Are these objectives commensurate? Do they conflict? Are there still more players (or constituents, P ge 937.2 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education customers or stakeholders) with their own particular objectives? And which players are entitled to set goals for any particular engineering program? The constituents, objectives, constraints, functions and metrics that underlie the design of the Harvey Mudd non-specialized program will emerge as the tale is told. Genesis In 1957, the first class of students began their studies at Harvey Mudd College. At the time it was the first college of engineering and science to be founded in this country for three decades. It saw itself as a new experiment in shaping the philosophy of engineering and science education in America. The purpose was expressed in the following lines from the College Catalog 9 : “The College offers its students a general education in the humanities and social sciences and a specialized education in the physical sciences and engineering.” The order of subject areas in the sentence is very telling. From the start, the central place of humanities and social sciences in the curriculum of the college was asserted. The paragraph continues: “The College was founded in the belief that a special need exists for physical scientists and engineers with broad enough training in the social sciences and humanities to assume technical responsibility with an understanding of the relation of technology to the rest of society.” This was the first published mission statement of the new college and it reflected the strong belief at the time that the humanities and social sciences had a new historical role to play in the education of engineers and scientists. It was recognized that the professional training of engineers and scientists would require utilitarian courses in report writing, communication, economics, psychology and management. Also courses in philosophy, literature and the arts would provide the necessary complement to the specialized vocational studies. However a new and significant goal was added to these requirements. The new role of the humanities and social sciences at the college was to train scientists and engineers to take on positions of general leadership in society. The first chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Harvey Mudd captures the contemporary vision of the destiny of the next generation of engineers 10 : “Tomorrow’s engineer will have the fine attitude of the creative man ... He will need more than knowledge of fundamentals; he must be flexible, fluent and original. .... The modern Renaissance finds him (the engineer) still the ‘artist and empiric’, but also the psychologist, the sociologist, the economist and in many respects the mover of worlds.” This sense of the future power of engineers and scientists in society had a profound impact on the fashioning of the Harvey Mudd curriculum. The humanities and social sciences were to be the vehicle for creating the new “Renaissance” engineer/scientist. P ge 937.3 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education There is more than a little kudos in these claims for the education of the future technical elite of our society. The cachet of a “liberal education in science and engineering” was strengthened by the founding of the college as one of a group of affiliated undergraduate liberal arts colleges in Claremont which in 1957 included Pomona College, Claremont Men’s College (later Claremont McKenna College) and Scripps College. Harvey Mudd College “drew strength from its membership” of the Associated Colleges of Claremont. It was natural for Harvey Mudd College to define and align itself with the liberal arts philosophy of its sister colleges. The curricular impact of this emphasis on the humanities and social sciences was evident in the course offerings of the new college. From a total of 137 credit hours required for graduation, almost one third (42 credit hours) were required in the humanities and social sciences for all four majors (Chemistry, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics), the largest proportion of the curriculum for any engineering school in the country. Thus, the philosophical basis for the genesis of the general engineering program at Harvey Mudd College can bes