The future for engineering education: faculty rewards and incentives

Several groups share responsibility for the quality of engineering education: students, faculty, and the administration. A faculty that is diverse in cultural and professional experiences, that is committed to life-long learning and scholarship, and that places primary emphasis on the education of engineering professionals determine in a crucial way, the quality of engineering education. As such, the rewards and incentives become important for promoting the contributions of all faculty. The reward system should recognize appropriate contributions including those that in the past may have received less recognition and remuneration. The reward system is the driving force which encourages faculty to invest the energy to make the changes necessary to reform engineering education; thus, changing the faculty reward system becomes a critical task. The traditional role for college and university faculty includes a balance of teaching, research, and public service among their activities. However, conventional wisdom has become, increasingly, that the one role for faculty that counts is research-research that brings grants and results and publications. This view has brought greater attention to graduate study and research and lesser attention to undergraduate study in our nation´s colleges of engineering