The Education and Professional Development of Engineering Faculties

The goal of engineering education is to train students to enter the practice of engineering. To accomplish this, there must be a faculty which is itself well-educated and adept at the practice of engineering, as well as a sympathetic environment, adequately equipped with appropriate facilities. Today´s rapid technological progress renders earlier developments obsolete. The engineer, therefore, must be alert to adapt to his purposes the latest and most powerful advances of scientific knowledge. The failure of the faculty to keep up this pace has resulted in an inability to cope with the implication of scientific advances and a lack of communication between the educator and his counterpart in industry and development laboratories. By default, the scientist has had to step in to assume engineering responsibilities; thus the training of our engineers all too often has become a function of industry and development centers. If industry and science continue to take over this responsibility, we need a searching examination to determine the cause of our inadequacy. Our faculties and institutions must maintain an adequate and identifiable program of engineering education, or our role will become precarious and ambiguous. At the heart of the problem are the opportunities, or lack of them, provided for engineering faculties to continue their educational and professional development. A total program of faculty education and professional development will include: 1) research and development investigations, 2) consulting, 3) internal educational activities, and 4) external educational activities.