Cleveland State University’s Fenn College of Engineering, led by Dean Charles Alexander, is leading engineering education into the 21st Century.
Fenn College is actively looking to eliminate the gaps in skills and abilities that industry has reported in all new engineering graduates they hire every year. Indeed, new engineers are very seldom able to hit the ground running, and are saddled with a significant learning curve. It some cases this learning curve may last several years. Industry has told academia that new engineers do not know how to effectively communicate, work in teams, and understand the responsibilities they have to manage their own careers. In addition, new engineers are going to be required to do even more work in the next ten years than has been engineered in all of history. This is with steady enrollment and graduation rates, but an over-all reduction in engineers due to the “graying” of the workforce.
CSU is taking a two-pronged approach to create 21st Century Engineers. First, on the curriculum side, Dean Alexander, along with colleague Jim Watson, have brought their highly successful program known as ProSkills (formerly known as WriteTalk) to Fenn College. ProSkills imbeds lessons on professional skills into existing engineering courses, rather than relying on external courses on such topics as communication, presentations, writing & career management. This approach present the topics in the context of engineering; in situations the student better connect to. Along with ProSkills, CSU is working to make their engineering courses more lab & student centric. This effort aims to actively reinforce theory learned in lecture with immediate application through labs, simulations & projects.
The second effort under way through Fenn College’s Center for Research in Electronics & Aerospace Technology (CREATE) is the creation of the Integration Development Environment with Knowledge Capture (IDE). The IDE will create an environment for an engineer to work within that easily links the various tools of the trade together in to a logical work flow, while enforcing good Systems Engineering Thinking. The IDE environment will also facilitates the capture, re-use, management and dispersing of knowledge that the engineer gains.
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