Kari
Below is a copy of the first and last paragraphs of an article in the
Chronicle of Higher Education. I have not read her book but the article is
very interesting and seems to speak to your question.
Harold
--
Harold G. Nelson, Ph.D., M. Arch. RA
Affiliated Faculty, Dept. of Mech. Eng., U. Washington
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President; Advanced Design Institute
www.advanceddesign.org
Past-President; International Society for the Systems Sciences
www.isss.org
Education for the Profession Formerly Known as Engineering
By ROSALIND WILLIAMS
Engineering is undergoing an identity crisis. The mission of engineering
changes when its dominant problems no longer involve the conquest of nature
but the creation and management of a self-made habitat. To adapt to this new
habitat, engineers have to retool, starting with their understanding of
engineering education. Today, technological change is something that happens
to engineers as much as to anyone else.
o
o
o
The convergence of technological and liberal-arts education is a deep,
long-term, and irreversible trend. Students need to be prepared for life in
a world where technological, scientific, humanistic, and social issues are
all mixed together. Such mixing will not take place if students have to
decide from the outset that they are attending an "engineering school" as
opposed to a "nonengineering school." No matter how excellent the
engineering school, and no matter how racially and ethnically diverse, if it
attracts mainly faculty members and students who gravitate toward the
technical problem-solving approach, then those students have an education
that does not prepare them well for life experience. Students need to be
educated in an environment where they get used to justifying and explaining
their approach to solving problems and also to dealing with people who have
other ways of defining and solving problems. Only a hybrid educational
environment will prepare engineering students for handling technoscientific
life in a hybrid world.
Rosalind Williams is director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
program in science, technology, and society. This article is adapted from
Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (MIT Press, 2002).
The Chronicle of Higher Education
From the issue dated January 24, 2003
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i20/20b01201.htm
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 49, Issue 20, Page B12
> From: Kari-Hans Kommonen <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Kari-Hans Kommonen <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 23:50:39 +0200
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: How engineers should think - as articulated by engineers?
>
> Thank you all for the very interesting responses! I will look into them!
>
>
> But let me still clarify a little though what I am looking for, and
> maybe inspire some of you to tell about your experiences:
>
>
> I have found many books, and this list has provided many
> contributions, that describe in various ways what 'design' is and
> 'how designers think' and what are 'designerly ways' and so on.
>
> One way to explain that is to compare it to something different.
> Sometimes people explain 'design' as being something different than
> 'engineering' or 'science'. Or that usually new products (especially
> computer-related ones) are developed in a 'technology driven' process
> and that 'designers can bring in the human aspect' etc.
>
> Many of these things I believe myself as well (to some extent, in
> some circumstances, and related to certain types of design
> approaches, supported by special competences and sensitivities), but
> I am not sure whether those who are not designers, who do not share
> with us a designer identity, feel so strongly about some alleged
> special capabilities/characteristics of the designers.
>
> Designers might in their own propaganda say that 'surely we are more
> human centric/creative/sensitive/...(insert your own characterization
> here) than for example engineers' or whatever. But engineers might
> respond and say 'on what grounds?' Designers might then give a list
> of 'characteristics' of engineers, but engineers could easily shoot
> down or render irrelevant or ridiculous those arguments one by one.
> If designers try to support some argument they are making about
> themselves by contrasting that to their own description of what
> engineers are, they are likely to only shoot themselves in the foot.
>
>
> So, in order to better be able to describe what design is to
> non-designers, and for certain reasons especially to engineers or
> people who typically work mostly with engineers, I am trying to
> understand what the engineers say about their own
> identity/nature/work/competences. Not in order to compete/argue with
> the engineers, but to illustrate the complementary nature of the two
> approaches and their likely contributions. Like Lubomir says, it is
> part of the search for common language.
>
> So instead of the 'designer view of engineering', or 'engineering
> idea of design', or 'design in engineering', I am especially
> interested in the idea of an 'engineer identity' and the concrete
> manifestations of this in the engineering practice and its education.
> What kinds of decisions, judgements, choices, plans of action, are
> engineers *typically* - even stereotypically but not in irony -
> encouraged to do by their teachers, experienced colleagues, etc. that
> try to teach or relay the 'essence' of specifically being an engineer?
>
>
> As a fact, at least the education of designers in our art and design
> university and the education of the engineers in the nearby technical
> university are very different. Why was the engineering one designed
> that way? What kinds of differences do these two systems induce in
> the minds, ways of thinking, practices of those people that go
> through the process?
>
>
> So - I am looking for an articulation of the 'engineer identity' or
> the 'engineer's way' *by* engineers...
>
>
> cheers, kh
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