Importance of Practical and Professional Experience for Engineering Faculty

This short forum is a discussion of the importance and need for practical and professional engineering experience for engineering faculty, along with some comments relating to the support needed for faculty members to acquire these experiences.

The recent several decades have witnessed a significant drift toward engineering faculty having little or no practical engineering experience, and this trend needs to be reversed so faculty again will have the well-rounded credentials needed for effective professional performance.

After the Russians launched Sputnik 1 in the fall of 1957, engineering experienced a shift to add more research, which was good. An unintended consequence was a deletion of the requirement that faculty have the ability to perform the engineering they were teaching. This experiment of not having practical experience to teach engineering—a profession of practice—has not served the engineering profession very well and it is time we move on from that concept.

We not only need to change the system to require faculty to have adequate practical and professional experience, but we also need to address the necessary support that is required to make it possible for this to occur. We need to think through the total process and modify the related systems to assure a good probability of satisfactory results. Therefore, I propose we first address the following concepts:I will explain each of these in more detail in the following sections.

Faculty members determine the future of engineering. Therefore, it is pertinent that faculty also have the necessary practical and professional credentials to prepare the future engineers to function as professional engineers. Engineering is a profession of practice; therefore for faculty to be effective and passionate about engineering they must have an understanding and ability to perform the engineering they are teaching. One function of engineering faculty is to be a mentor for the students. Without adequate practical experience it is not possible to be an effective mentor, as one cannot mentor on something that one is not proficient in. Engineering is alone among professional careers that try to educate future professionals with people that are not proficient in the practical side of the profession. A good reference to compare to is the medical education process. The majority of medical professors are also practicing physicians. We would not like to have a medical surgeon operate on us who was taught only by a technician who could not perform the procedure under discussion, and had only read about how to do it. We certainly would have little confidence in that surgeon’s ability. Why should engineering be different? Faculty that have obtained this additional practical and professional experience will be better prepared to demonstrate a professional attitude and culture to the students, which will generate graduates with an appropriate professional attitude. This change in how engineers are prepared to perform as professionals and leaders will significantly improve how the public perceives whether engineers are professionals or not. Currently most of the public has a perception of engineers as technicians and problem solvers. To change this perception we engineers need to perform as professionals and leaders, not just technical problem solvers. The choice of how we want the public to perceive engineers is up to us!

The current system for faculty employment, promotion, and tenure does not give any credit for individuals to have or obtain practical experience. Consequently we have the current situation where many faculty members believe that practical experience has little value to the education of engineers, or at least not enough value to be interested in obtaining this experience. The product of a system will result in what the system is set up to deliver. In the case regarding engineering faculty the result is what we currently have, which is many faculty believing that practical experience has little or no value to the engineering education process. Certainly there is no faculty incentive and reward built into the system that would encourage faculty to obtain the required practical experience. Therefore, change is needed and required so the system will deliver the result we need. Unless and until the system puts a value on practical experience, we can expect little change in the faculty credentials regarding practical experience.

Universities should assist present and future faculty in obtaining the necessary practical and professional engineering experience. There are many ways this could be accomplished. One possible way is to arrange with the larger firms that do a lot of design and construction on a yearly basis (e.g., the Corps of Engineers, the State Highway Departments, etc.) to require a very small fraction of the constructed budget to be reserved for hiring engineering faculty to work in planning, design, or construction. This would create a lot of mutual benefits for the agencies, for the practicing engineers, and for faculty. There would be many opportunities for exchange of ideas between practicing engineers and faculty, creating a significant return on this investment. Another way would be for faculty to be granted a semester-long sabbatical every five years or so to be involved in the practical side of engineering, which includes applied research and development. This method would be much easier to organize and implement than the first suggestion, and is similar to how the engineering universities in Germany integrate practical and professional experience into the faculty credentials. A semester along with a summer would be adequate time for many faculty members to assume and discharge responsible professional and leadership roles in the performance of engineering. Applied research and development, and solving some of the many industry problems that exist would also be considered as practical engineering experience.

In summary, I suggest we focus on this debate until a satisfactory resolution is achieved for the preparation of future faculty. For those who disagree with my proposed concept, I suggest you consider the public respect engineers possessed one hundred years ago, and compare it to what occurs now. Evaluate what changes occurred in the education process during that time, determine what contributed to this loss of public professional respect for engineers, and then make the necessary system corrections.