The discussion traces the historical development of engineering education in the United States and our legacy of British and French models. Most of the U.S. system through the years has developed along the lines of the British model. The nation's industrial development in the early 1800s set the stage for the Morrill Act of 1862, which established the agriculture and mechanical land grant colleges throughout the nation. This legacy has resulted in engineering accepting the Bachelor of Science degree as the entry-level degree to practice and industry, while the other professions (e.g., medicine, dentistry, law) have during this same time increased their respective entry-level curricula to six years or greater. Today, U.S. engineers are not being prepared for the competitive industries of the present national and world markets. Continental European engineers are better prepared to work in these competitive industries. Therefore, the United States runs the risk of having its engineers regarded as technicians. If the U.S. engineering education system is not changed, our industries may eventually become less competitive (and/or may have to begin employing Continental European-educated engineers to remain competitive). ASCE has proposed that a professional master's level degree, such as a Master of Engineering degree, be the new entry level degree to the practice and industry. This proposal will require significant changes in our engineering education system. By introducing an internship/apprenticeship course as part of a six-year formal education program, the United States can dramatically improve the quality of its engineering school graduates and, thereby, their acceptance by U.S. and international industries and practice.

As faculty members, we have the opportunity to serve as references for our students. One of the questions potential employers invariably ask is, “How well does the student work with others?” The practicing engineer must have the knowledge required to function as a member of a team, combining each individual's expertise with the skills of others on the team. Numerous organizations, most notably the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), have put an emphasis on the need to prepare engineers to work in such an environment. To address this need, we have instituted a series of projects, joining graduate industrial and systems engineers and undergraduate civil engineers, focusing on statistical applications in civil engineering. The courses chosen to pilot this program allow us to explore the hierarchical issues in project management and give us a multidisciplinary setting for potential projects. This paper discusses the issues of teamwork, leadership, and the difficulties of simultaneously creating a group identity and producing a quality product.

Engineering education has traditionally been imparted through the lecture-tutorial-laboratory paradigm. Education technology in the last few years has tried to make teaching more effective by supplementing the chalkboard teaching with audiovisual aids like overhead/slide projectors and videos. These are, however, passive teaching tools. Recent advancement in computer multimedia has brought in a new teaching medium. Multimedia education has several advantages; most noticeably, the instructions can be interactive and self-paced to meet the needs of each individual student. The writers have developed an Intelligent Interactive Tutoring System for engineering mechanics for the first-year engineering students at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The main objective of this system was to supplement classroom teaching via intelligent interaction with the computer-based tutoring system. This system is designed to be a self-paced virtual tutor with intelligent, user-friendly interactions. It is intended to be different from the many commercially available computerized textbooks. The prototype system was tried out with about 200 students who had earlier failed the course in the first semester and repeated it in the second semester of academic year 1997–1998. The system received good response from the students. The full version was implemented on the Nanyang Technological University Intranet and the Internet for use by the regular class of more than 1,600 students in both academic years 1998–1999 and 1999–2000.

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) has adopted a revised set of accreditation criteria that is designed to ensure that graduates of accredited programs are prepared to enter the practice of engineering. The proposal also specifies that engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have an understanding of professional practice issues in addition to proficiency in specific subject areas that are tabulated in the civil engineering program criteria. The findings of this study indicate that engineering undergraduate and graduate students as well as practitioners perceive that four subject areas are of great importance for civil engineers. They include structural engineering, hydraulics/hydrology/water resources, engineering design, and mathematics through calculus and differential equations. In contrast, one area, chemistry, received lower ratings. The data suggest that the majority of subjects included in the civil engineering program criteria are considered by students and practitioners to have generally the same level of importance and should be included in the curriculum at an above average level. In particular, 81% of the subject areas included in the ABET civil engineering program criteria are rated by both students and practitioners with a composite score ≥3.1. This may be interpreted as strong support for the Engineering Criteria 2000 program requirements.

This paper reports on student responses to a range of assessment activities in a final-year engineering unit. Existing assessment activities were supplemented with new activities, the overall aim being to link the assessment activities more effectively to the material being studied, and to develop a range of generic skills important in professional engineering practice. A class survey was undertaken at the beginning of the semester to establish the initial attitudes to the new assessment activities. This was followed up with an end-of-semester survey to determine the change in perceived value of the assessment activities, and to collect student feedback regarding the activities. The perceived value of the assessment activities was determined using a Likert rating scale, while student feedback was collected using open-ended questions. The assessment activities evaluated were group work, case study investigation, report writing, oral presentation, group self-assessment, industrial interviews, and written reflective journals. The responses indicate that engineering students value a range of assessment activities. They value highly visits to real engineering organizations, and—contrary to popular belief—value and enjoy oral presentation exercises.