Beginning a brand new engineering program at a college is not any easy activity. However that’s simply what Brandeis College in Waltham, Mass., is doing. By 2026, the college will provide an undergraduate engineering diploma—however with out creating an engineering division. As a substitute, Brandeis goals to lean on its sturdy liberal arts custom, in hope of providing one thing totally different from the greater than 3,500 different engineering packages in the USA accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Know-how (ABET). IEEE Spectrumspoke with Seth Fraden, one of many new program’s interim cochairs, about getting a brand new engineering program up and operating.
What prompted providing an engineering diploma?
Seth Fraden: We noticed that we had 90 % of all the weather which are essential for a vibrant engineering program—the fundamental sciences, math, physics, laptop science, life science, all put in a social context by way of the liberal arts. We see our new program as a approach of bridging science and society by way of expertise, and it looks like a pure match for us with out having to construct the whole lot from scratch.
Seth Fraden
Seth Fraden is a professor of physics at Brandeis College. He’s serving as one of many two interim cochairs for the college’s new engineering diploma.
Brandeis’s engineering diploma shall be accredited by ABET. Why is that vital?
Fraden: Being the brand new youngsters on the block in engineering, it’s pure to need to reassure the neighborhood at giant that we’re dedicated to excellent high quality. Past that, ABET has very well-thought-out standards for what defines excellence and leaves every particular person program the liberty to outline the educational goals, the instruments, the evaluation, and how you can constantly enhance. It’s a set of very-well-founded rules that we might help, even within the absence of this certification.
What’s the first course you’re providing?
Fraden: We’re doing an introduction to design. It’s a course during which the scholars develop prosthetics for each animal and human use. It’s open to all college students at Brandeis, however it’s nonetheless fairly substantive: They’re working in Python, they’re working with CAD packages, they usually’re engaged on substantive initiatives utilizing open-source designs. The thought is to get college students enthusiastic about engineering, but in addition to have them be taught the basics of ideation—going from planning to design to fabrication, after which this can assist them determine whether or not or not engineering is the main for them.
How do you see liberal arts corresponding to historical past and ethics being a part of engineering?
Fraden: A lot of our college students need to intervene on the planet and rework it into a greater place. In the event you solely deal with the manufacturing of the expertise, you’re incapable of attaining that goal. It’s worthwhile to know the affect of that expertise on society. How is that this factor going to be produced? Who says what labor goes to enter manufacturing? What’s its life cycle? How’s it going to be disposed of? It’s worthwhile to have a full-throttled liberal arts schooling to grasp the environmental, ecological, economical, and historic penalties of your intervention as a technologist.
How will you develop an engineering tradition?
Fraden: We’re not going to have a division. Will probably be the one R1 [top-tier research institution] engineering main and not using a division. We see that as a power, not a weak spot. We’re going to embed new engineering school all through all our sciences, with the intention to have a constructive affect on the departments and to advertise expertise growth.
That mentioned, we would like there to be a robust engineering tradition, and we would like the scholars to have a particular engineering identification, one thing {that a} scientist like myself—although I’m captivated with engineering—doesn’t have in my bones. With the intention to do this, our instructors will every come from an engineering background, and can work collectively to construct a tradition of engineering.
This text seems within the April 2024 print situation as “5 Questions for Seth Fraden.”
From Your Website Articles
Associated Articles Across the Internet
