Engineering School

[couch 'em]

SMU just sent out an email with an article from Orsak, dean of the Engineering School:

Geoffrey Orsak: Where will the next Steve Jobs come from?We Americans like to congratulate ourselves for producing great thinkers, business leaders, artists and brain-on-fire innovators. Last week, we lost one of our very best in Steve Jobs.The eulogies have largely focused on the cool techno-social changes he spun out over the course of his life, but I am left with a gnawing question that goes straight to the hea rt of our education system: Where will the next Steve Jobs come from?Jobs’ immense intellectual gifts were not nurtured through formal schooling. In fact, his “official” higher-education experience was, to say the least, disappointing to both Reed College and to Jobs. After six months, he withdrew from the college, but he had the insight to spend the next 18 months popping in and out of classes that developed his creativity. In his own off-center way, Jobs invented an education experience that would serve him well as he helped shape 3 1/2 decades of blazingly fast technological change.His zigzag path to success is probably too complex a cocktail to ever be completely duplicated, but my belief is that Jobs was the first tech innovator who had unmistakable social intelligence — that special “it” factor that made him more than someone simply interested in advancing technology. I see Jobs more like Miles Davis than Thomas Edison — driven by his internal and, yes, somewhat arrogant view of the world, and serving it up in that jeans-and-black-turtleneck uniform: transcendent and enigmatic at the same time.But as an engineering educator, I have to find a way to create more Steve Jobses — individuals with a vision bigger than their inventions. Jobs came out of a post-hippie Bay Area culture that began to feel the growing pressure of finding a career when the poetry readings and endless protests started to wane. A few miles south, a small, informal gathering of tech tinkerers was emerging as the crucible of the new Silicon Valley, and Jobs was poised to become the coolest kid in the class.He wasn’t a product of the ’50s Cold War generation that started Hewlett-Packard and Intel, cemented in the notion of the orderly progress of technology and society. Jobs’ innate sense of an emerging generation, not just new markets, made his ideas relevant and captivating to a rapidly growing community whose members never saw themselves as consumers of technology. His strength was in pursuing his vision when others were headed in different directions.So how do we grow more people like Steve Jobs? The mad thinkers who can sense subtle shifts in people’s attitudes and aspirations?Jobs leaves us a template we can follow if we are willing to throw out the old rules of conventional education, where adding incremental knowledge becomes a mind-numbing, year-upon-year march toward a normative notion of intelligence.Jobs was after something much more challenging: leading society to a place yet unimagined. This doesn’t have to be happenstance — we can provide the structure that nurtures ideas and path-breaking technologies. At Southern Methodist University, we have established an “innovation gym” where young minds liberated from convention tackle the most challenging of problems under ridiculously short deadlines — but all in a spirit of serious play. It’s a style Jobs would have embraced.Next, we need to step onto that pedagogical “third rail” and embrace the idea that collecting vast amounts of knowledge is best left to the Internet, rather than human memory. Tap that resource, free the brain, and we’ll see lightning-fast movement toward the next big idea.Let’s also face up to a concept educators struggle with in a tough economy: Lighting a fire under genius may not be a matter of “What will you earn?” but “Why should you care?” We need to connect the best research on our campuses to our undergraduate students — bring them into the adventure early. And that means breaking down some age-old assumptions about who gets to do research.One day, and I hope soon, we will see many new Steve Jobses reshaping public education, or health care, or looking at solving deep problems in global poverty. The problems always change, but cool never goes out of style.

[couch 'em]

From the article:

Next, we need to step onto that pedagogical “third rail” and embrace the idea that collecting vast amounts of knowledge is best left to the Internet, rather than human memory. Tap that resource, free the brain, and we’ll see lightning-fast movement toward the next big idea

Orsak really seems to be pushing the schools into a lot of empty trendy BS. What does this statement even mean? I certainly never had to memorize meaningless numbers or data, so he must be referring to memorizing vast amounts of HOW TO DO ENGINEERING?

Maybe I'm old school, but if you don't have a good understanding of fundamentals, where you intuitively know what they mean, you can't apply them even if you look them up.

If SMU is trying to go to purely an engineering management school to produce nobody intended to do actual engineering (probably a good move if they leverage Cox), then get it out in the open. Otherwise it's unfair to push out graduates that lack the ability to do their job effectively. Lots of fluff from Orsak.

[whitwiki]

So I don't think he is saying "don't learn the fundamentals". We as engineers need a certain toolbox to succeed in the traditional model, and I never got the impression from Orsak (during a couple 1:1 conversations my senior year) that he disagrees. Although I will agree that SMU's "brand " of engineer is more geared towards management later in life.

Orsak does challenege the traditional model of "you need x years experience to do y". He wants freshman to contribute to research, if only because they can bring an uneducated view into the lab. Maybe they spot something because they have a different view (independent from understanding the traditional science behind it). That's the principle behind paradigm shifts... A company named IDEO is probably the best at this concept of innovation.

[whitwiki]

And I agree we didn't have to memorize much. The "look it up" idea applies more to history classes in my mind. Form a thought, and search the facts to compliment. I hope that'd what he means - lets teach kids to think instead of memorizing steam tables.

[CalallenStang]

Wow, and here I was thinking that the paragraph was a nice innovation that we shouldn't do away with.

I know there are at least few bachelor's degree programs at Lyle that require two courses in engineering leadership but no courses in CAD. Considering how prevalent CAD use is at some companies, and how valuable knowledge of CAD software is in the hiring process, this seems wrong. What is accomplished in two courses in whatever disciplined "engineering leadership" is that cannot be accomplished in one? Why are some able to get a degree from Lyle without certain functional knowledge that may prove to be beneficial to their professional lives?

It. Makes. No. Sense.

Equip students with a COMPLETE toolkit, not just with a stripped down version. The extras are fine, but don't let anyone graduate with only the side dishes and no entree.

[jtstang]

Orsak is a cool guy and forward thinker, just what the engineeering school needs. He is pushing the cirriculum towards more practical lab based applications (as opposed to theorhetical labs located in the 3 buildings back in the old SEAS days), which I think is great for prospective engineers. He is not advocating losing grasp of the fundamentals (or better not be, you'd be scared to fly if you saw some of the things I did by young engineers who didn't know the fundamentals). But look, I don't need to know pi to 36 decimal places to calculate the area of a circular cross section. Hell, I don't even need to know the formula, just that there is one. That's all out there.

That's the kind of stuff he's talking about, or at least the impression I got when I read the article in the DMN (dead tree edition) this morning. I don't necessarily agree with that logic, you can make a slippery slope argument that leads to losing sight of the basics, but I don't think that's what he means and I think he's going to be good for the school.

[couch 'em]

Maybe he was just making a point, but nobody is memorizing raw data (pi, steam tables, whatever) as it is.

[CalallenStang]

Maybe he was just making a point, but nobody is memorizing raw data (pi, steam tables, whatever) as it is.

3.14159265358 and I forgot whatever comes next

[jtstang]

I'm so dumb I didn't really understand what pedagogical “third rail” meant so I went where he suggested, the internets, to try to figure it out.

Pedagogical being of educational philosophy, and "third rail" being of political analogy for a too-hot topic to be avoided by politicians, I assume he is talking about embracing a new educational philosophy that has students working practically in a hands-on enviromment rather than solely the traditional nose-in-the-book and theorhetical lab model. Meaning that opening the mind to what engineering looks like from the practical side may make for better engineers. Which is not to say that the nose-in-book method is to be abandoned, but supplemented.

Anyway, I've met the guy on a number of occasions and I like him, so I'm glad he's with us.

[CalallenStang]

I'm so dumb I didn't really understand what pedagogical “third rail” meant so I went where he suggested, the internets, to try to figure it out.

Pedagogical being of educational philosophy, and "third rail" being of political analogy for a too-hot topic to be avoided by politicians, I assume he is talking about embracing a new educational philosophy that has students working practically in a hands-on enviromment rather than solely the traditional nose-in-the-book and theorhetical lab model. Meaning that opening the mind to what engineering looks like from the practical side may make for better engineers. Which is not to say that the nose-in-book method is to be abandoned, but supplemented.

Anyway, I've met the guy on a number of occasions and I like him, so I'm glad he's with us.

Great, maybe that means he will make sure students have a CAD class before they get out

[jtstang]

Not every engineer uses CAD man. I practiced in the aerospace field for four years full time and two years as a co-op and logged zero hours on a CAD terminal.

[whitwiki]

CAD is shipped to India these days. If you want a good job you need to be able to think creatively. The skunk works lab teaches you how to do that in teams with real deadlines.

You don't need to have a degree n engineering to generate ideas, only to flush them out and sign the drawings.

[CalallenStang]

Not every engineer uses CAD man. I practiced in the aerospace field for four years full time and two years as a co-op and logged zero hours on a CAD terminal.

I mean, I'm aware of that, but these students should be able to function on it if it's asked of them. Don't need to make them experts, but make sure they have some exposure to it.

You don't need to have a degree n engineering to generate ideas, only to flush them out and sign the drawings.

True, but it sure as hell helps to understand which ideas are feasible and which aren't

[smu diamond m]

Not every engineer uses CAD man. I practiced in the aerospace field for four years full time and two years as a co-op and logged zero hours on a CAD terminal.

I mean, I'm aware of that, but these students should be able to function on it if it's asked of them. Don't need to make them experts, but make sure they have some exposure to it.

You don't need to have a degree n engineering to generate ideas, only to flush them out and sign the drawings.

True, but it sure as hell helps to understand which ideas are feasible and which aren't

Okay. First of all, CAD doesn't help tell you what's feasible and what's not. CAD is a very powerful tool that, under the hand of a qualified operator, can do things faster than a human could even fathom. I took a class (graduate level!) in CAD while I was at SMU and it was marginally useful. I learned 99% of what I know (CAD-wise) on the job. This is coming from a guy that uses an advanced CAD platform in excess of 20 hours a week, not including what I mark up for a goon to do (for the record, my "goon" is actually really good at what he does). CAD is leveraged in practice these days for speed. It allows very complex projects to be executed that would never even be thought about 20 years ago (DFW Connector for instance, although any billion-plus design-build joint-venture really).

I do not feel like I learned all that much useless information while I was at Lyle. That thermo class I nearly failed was even somewhat useful. In my field (civil engineering) it is imperative that you have a comprehensive understanding of a myriad of concepts so that you do not accidentally (not kidding) create a situation that endangers the public. It is important to have a global understanding of a project so that you do implicate a situation which is dangerous.

I think what Orsak advocates isn't learning less technical concepts - but learning to be more analytical and identifying situations which impede innovation and progress. I'm talking about innovation and progress at any level: the design engineer, the project manager, the CEO. When you're hacking away on a design, you don't need to know the specifics of detention pond design when you start. You need to know how to identify that you need detention, how to find the best way of detaining water in your given situation, and then at the very end, pull out the most recent technical paper regarding the best practice for your solution. Orsak wants to emphasize a thinking process that doesn't get hung up on the pile of information you have in your brain already, but that approaches pedestrian problems with an exotic view and the understanding to determine the merits of different solutions. Yes, I'm saying thinking outside the box. And yes, you would be surprised just how many people universities crank out that can't do that.

[smu diamond m]

CAD is shipped to India these days. If you want a good job you need to be able to think creatively. The skunk works lab teaches you how to do that in teams with real deadlines.

You don't need to have a degree n engineering to generate ideas, only to flush them out and sign the drawings.

And no, CAD isn't shipped to India these days.