Some Reflections on Education for Creativity in Engineering

During the past two decades, the consistent trend in engineering education has been to cultivate an ever increasing degree of sophistication pertaining to research, mathematics, and engineering analysis at the expense of effort devoted to developing the student´s skill and confidence in engineering synthesis and creative design. The time has now come to restore a more equitable balance between these two complementary poles of the educational enterprise. This paper reviews various aspects of the problem and offers some suggestions for achieving a better balance. Some of these suggestions deal with what the individual teacher can do within the existing framework of his present courses. Other broader proposals deal with needed new administrative policies relating to faculty recruitment, pay, promotion, and tenure.