History In Engineering Education: A Field Report

Abstract

This is a paper about history in engineering education, not about the history of engineering education. Still, it is useful at the start to take the historian's perspective and to remember that curriculum reform has been a recurrent theme of modern engineering education ever since its inception over a century ago. Changing technology, of course, has provided much of the impetus for reform. But so, too, has the continually evolving context in which engineers operate. The realms of business and government have simply refused to stand still. Those responsible for training engineers, if they wished to put their graduates in position to do meaningful work in the world, have had to revisit the curriculum from time to time with an eye toward preparing students to function in novel working arrangements that reflect both changing economic circumstances and evolving social values.