Engineering conditions atomic number 18 restructuring grad programs to connect the classroom to the real world.
Think about carrell phones, medical devices, solar power—and engineered bone. "It's blatantly obvious that engineer can soak up your life better," says T.E. "Ed" Schlesinger, head of the part of electrical and computer engineer at Carnegie Mellon University.
But for years calibrate school programs often failed to make that real-world connection apparent. Traditionally, engineering scholars adopt been seen as focusing almost exclusively on ripe math, fetching notes in large lecture halls, and working in isolated labs on narrow, abstract projects.
Today, ammonia alum schools are revamping engineering programs to help America regain its competitive edge. These efforts are remunerative off as almost 47,000 master's degrees were conferred in 2011, up 8 percent over the previous year.
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Engineering is at the core of so many complex global challenges—in healthcare, medicine, energy, food safety, manufacturing, communications, the environment—that grad programs nurse realized cross-disciplinary, heretofore multi-disciplinary programs, are essential now to train new engineers.
What this means, notes Schlesinger, is that in addition to taking core classes, one graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, for example, may add mankind policy, while another might opt for a business line course. Students " defend freedom to pursue their own interests," he says, and, at the same time, improve their marketability.
Universities have also moved to fall up formal multi-disciplinary advanced degrees offered by two or more(prenominal) departments or even with partnering institutions. Carnegie Mellon offers a master of merchandise divulgement degree, involving its department of mechanical engineering, its Tepper School of Business, and the School of Design. Students contract to design new products, considering the various elements needed to bring them to actualization: form, rompction, marketing, and consumer behavior.
Experiential learning has long been a component of undergraduate precept "as a way to engage and excite students," says capital of Minnesota Johnson, dean of genus Arizona State University's Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering. Now, he says, grad programs, too, are building in ways for develop engineers to apply classroom theory to real world situations "as the incoming students expect it."
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The non-profit-making Engineers Without Borders-USA, with chapters on more than 180 campuses around the country, is one highway for this kind of have. After receiving a request for a special(prenominal) need from a nongovernmental organization or community, domestic or international, EWB-USA puts the job out for "bid" and awards it to the chapter that seems best able to develop a solution.
Lauren McBurnett, who completed an accelerated undergraduate-plus-master's degree at Arizona State and is now a Ph.D.-track candidate in courtly engineering there, led a team sponsored by EWB-USA to Kenya last summer to implement a rainwater collection governing body they had designed: large in-ground tanks to store rainwater from school roofs.
Major corporations have also helped provide students with real-world experience in partnerships with universities.
Rachel Kelley will graduate from the Massachusetts get of applied science in spring 2013 with a master's in systems engineering from the school of engineering and an MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management. stick up year, Kelley spent her internship in Spain at the headquarters of clothing manufacturer Zara, helping the company optimize inventory transfers amid its stores.
"It was fun working on a real problem that make a difference to their bottom line," she says.
Institutions are also taking steps to fill the demand for engineers by broadening the pool, attracting more diverse student populations.
In a 2012 report, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and technical schoolnology noted that the United States must produce 1 trillion more professionals in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ( group) over the attached decade to regain its global competitiveness. The country will ne'er get there, experts believe, unless more women and underrepresented minorities enroll in graduate programs.
Though women make up 50.8 percent of the U.S. population, they only represented 22.6 percent of those earning master's degrees in engineering in 2011. In that same year Hispanics and African-Americans original only 6.3 percent and 4.9 percent of master's degrees, respectively, despite accounting for a combined 30 percent of the U.S. population.
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"To get the best solutions to complex engineering challenges, we need to get the best talent," says Gilda Barabino, associate chair for graduate studies in the department of biomedical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. This can only happen, says Barabino, if engineers are pulled from all segments of the population.
Many universities and nonprofit organizations have put in place programs to accomplish this goal. Georgia Tech is working to increase the number of African-Americans attending graduate school in engineering and science through FACES (Facilitating Academic Careers in Engineering and Science), a National Science Foundation-sponsored effort between Georgia Tech, Morehouse College, Emory University, and Spelman College.
The FACES fellowship provides a stipend of $3,000 or $5,000 to Ph.D. students at Georgia Tech that can be used for inquiry or career development expenses such as equipment or travel, says Gary May, Georgia Tech's dean of the College of Engineering.
Beyond financial aid, underrepresented students desperately need lesson support. Faculty and peer mentoring programs have sprung up to fill the role.
The University of Michigan, for example, is main office to graduate chapters of the Society of Minority Engineers and Scientists, the Society of Women Engineers, and the Society of Hispanic Professionals and Engineers. The latter offers workshops in basic skills such as how to do research and how to talk to your adviser.
All of these changes to the engineering graduate school experience seem to be working, notes May. "My personal feeling is that students are more engaged," he says. "They are more hands-on, active, and learning that there may be more than one way to solve a problem." In turn, engineers are increasingly being recognized as the world's problem-solvers.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News Best Graduate Schools 2014 guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings, and data.
Materials taken from US News
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