Pathway to Well-Rounded and Design-Educated Engineers: History of Engineering Education in the United States

Written by: Katie Mowat

Engineering Education Beginnings

(1800s-1860s)

While there were engineers prior to 1814 in the US, formal engineering education in the United States was started by Syvanius Thayer at the United States Military Academy at West Point with the first four-year engineering curriculum program (Reynolds, 1992). It focused both on military and civilian sectors. During the American Revolution, the connection between engineering and military education was learned from the French. Therefore, it was not a large leap to add engineering into the training for the US army. By creating a defined program, Thayer was able to provide trained officers for the army’s corps of engineers. The War of 1812 had finally ended two years prior, and public opinion was not in favor of the military (“A brief Overview of the War of 1812”, 2021). In order to combat this, Thayer promoted the idea that the training the cadets were receiving could easily be transferred between military and civilian sectors. This idea helped bring about “civil engineering” programs. Two other significant events in the early history of engineering education in the United States were congress’ granting a charter to construct a transcontinental railroad and the passing of the Morrill Land Grant Act both in 1862 (Grayson, 1980). Due to the difficulties of building a railroad over rough terrain such as desert, forests, and mountains, engineers required more ingenuity. In order to build railways, such as the one chartered by Union Pacific, engineering schools were needed to educate engineers. The Morill Land Grant Act introduced land-grant schools where engineering quickly took hold. After the first railway was put in place, others followed and the need for engineers continued to increase.

(1918)

The first report on engineering education in the United States was written by Mann in 1918 for the joint committee on engineering education of the national engineering societies (Mann, 1918). At the time the report was written, there were around 126 engineering colleges and an additional 43 degree-giving institutions that had some engineering instruction in the United States. The Mann report recommended graduation from an accredited high school or receiving a certain grade on an entrance exam for acceptance to an engineering program and suggested that engineering was only for high achieving students that were in good math. The report also states that having enough lab experience was an engineering education concern in the curriculum category. The emphasis was on needing lots of hands-on experience and the report talked about different universities having actual companies that produce products that the students had worked on, built, and managed.

 

Engineering Education Established

(1950s-1960s)

The second major engineering education report in the United States was the Ginter report. In the Grinter report (1956), the committee’s third recommendation for engineering curriculum was “An integrated study of engineering analysis, design, and engineering systems for professional background, planned and carried out to stimulate creative and imaginative thinking, and making full use of the basic and engineering sciences.” This was the first report to include design as a goal for the engineering curriculum (Eder, 1991). The report also stated that engineering design and analysis should make up one fourth of an undergraduate program and design should certainly be integrated in all of the last four semesters of undergraduate degrees. Recommendations by Walker (1968) were that at an undergrad level about 50% of the curriculum should be design, in a masters about 30%, and in a doctorate about 5-10%. A second recommendation was that in the last year of an undergraduate program a student should complete a capstone design project. The author stressed that design in the curriculum was important in creating opportunities for students to be inspired and be imaginative thinkers. During this time, the cold war was happening and the space race was beginning. With the 1958 launch of Russian Sputnik, the Soviet-American race for technological leadership and the goal to put a man on the moon was also launched (Grayson, 1980). This caused funds to become available from both private foundations and from federal and state governments towards science and engineering education in the United States.

 

Engineering Education Recognized

(1900s)

The topic of design and its definition in engineering education became recognized in the field of engineering education in the United States during the 1900s. In a paper by Eder (1991), engineering design was defined as a way to produce documentation for a marketable product, and design was defined as both an art and a science. This paper also stated that the capstone project didn’t provide sufficient training on design, and thus design needed to be included more and earlier in the program. Also published in 1991, a paper by Dixon brought up the need for more design in the engineering curriculum for students to be prepared to enter industry. The definition of design changed slightly in this paper to include the whole project realization process from the beginning until the processes are in operation. This author also claimed the reason that engineering design is not more wide spread in engineering education is due to lack of research, engineering design being a cognitive or intellectual process rather than as art or skill, the lack of designation between analysis and design and between experience and learning, limiting engineering design to only technical issues, and finally the fact that the curriculum cannot fit all the design training that students need so industry would have to complete the training.

(Late 1990s-Early 2000s)

In 1995, the National Research Council put out a report on engineering education. In this report, one of the desired characteristics of the education system in their vision was that the curriculum included exposure to things like design earlier in an undergraduate’s program. Engineering students needed to experience “real” engineering and creative design early on in their degree. In a paper by Dym (1999), it stated that engineering educators do a better job of teaching analysis than design. It also stated the age of engineering science has yet to be taken over by the era of engineering design. One thought process that the author proposed was that engineering design should be considered “both the distinguishing feature of engineering and as a motivating factor in the learning of engineering.” In this time period, design courses for freshman were becoming more common and excepted. Finally, in the Engineer of 2020 report (2004), the word design became almost synonymous with engineer. The report defines engineering as “design under constraint.” When completing an engineering design, the report also brings up sustainability, human health, and the environment as important considerations that are needed during the process. One of the aspirations of the engineer of 2020 in the report was to create designs that were “grounded in the humanities, social sciences, and economics” and that are creative and adaptable to new and future problems.

 

Engineering Education Accreditation

ABET

The accreditation process for undergraduate engineering programs in the United States now called ABET started in the 1900s. In 1932, the predecessor to ABET, the Engineers’ Council for Professional Development (ECPD) was formed (ABET, 2021b). ABET states that the organization was created as “an engineering professional body dedicated to the education, accreditation, regulation and professional development of engineering professionals and students in the United States.” In 1980, the body was renamed the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). As of 2005, the board became known simply as ABET. Under ABET’s EC2000 accreditation process, there is a list of 11 student outcomes labeled as a-k. These outcomes are listed below (ABET, 2021a):

(a) an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering
(b) an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data
(c) an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability
(d) an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams
(e) an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems
(f) an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility
(g) an ability to communicate effectively
(h) the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context
(i) a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning
(j) a knowledge of contemporary issues
(k) an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice.

 

Educated Engineers

Now

Engineering companies across the US, such as B&A, hire engineers to work on projects in all sectors. There are over 850 universities and colleges across the US that offer degrees in engineering that award over 3,500 ABET-accredited engineering degrees each year (Tools, 2024). The engineers of today are taught technical knowledge and design, as well interpersonal skills. In order to be a good engineer, being skilled at design and being able to connect the design to the end user is important.  At B&A, we pride ourselves in having a team of well-rounded, educated engineers that are excited to continue to work and learn as they address projects in multiple engineering areas. One of our goals is to bring our clients’ goals into reality by communicating, designing, and providing a project we can be proud to call our own.

 

References

A Brief Overview of the War of 1812. (2021) American Battlefield Trust. Retrieved August 31, 2021, from https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/brief-overview-war-1812

ABET. (2021a). Criteria for Accrediting Engineering programs, 2017-2019. Accreditation. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditationcriteria/criteria-for-accrediting-engineering-programs-2017-2018/#GC3

ABET. (2021b). Founding. History. Retrieved September 6, 2021, from https://www.abet.org/about-abet/history/

Dixon, J. R. (1991). Engineering design science: the state of education. Mechanical Engineering- CIME, 113(2), 64-67.

Dym, C. L. (1999). Learning engineering: Design, languages, and experiences. Journal of Engineering Education, 88(2), 145–148. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.1999.tb00425.x

Eder, W. E. (1991). Engineering design education: situation report. Design Studies, 12(4), 261-267. https://doi.org/10.1016/0142-694X(91)90042-U

Grayson, L. P. (1980). A brief history of engineering education in the United States. IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, AES-16(3), pp. 373-392. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAES.1980.308907

Grinter, L. E. (1956). Report on the evaluation of Engineering Education. Engineering Education, 46(3), pp. 25–63.

Mann, C. R. (1918). A study of engineering education. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/AboutUs/History/Mann

National Academy of Engineering (NAE). 2004. The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10999

National Research Council. (1995). Engineering Education: Designing an Adaptive System. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/4907

Reynolds, T. S. (1992). The education of engineers in America before the Morrill Act of 1862. History of Education Quarterly, 32(4), 459-482. https://doi.org/10.2307/368959

Tools, History. (2024). How many engineering schools are there in the US? An expert guild. https://www.historytools.org/school/how-many-engineering-schools-are-there-in-the-us-an-expert-guide

Walker, E. A. (1968). Goals of Engineering Education. American Society for Engineering Education. https://www.asee.org/documents/publications/reports/goals_of_engineering_education.pdf