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Decisions at the ballot box influence policies that support engineering standards and public safety.January/February 2017
Communities: Education
Dual-Degree Programs Increasing
Over the past decade, the number of engineering schools offering dual-degree programs has grown nearly 70%, according to the American Society for Engineering Education.
Brian Yoder, ASEE’s director of assessment, evaluation, and institutional research, believes the growth is driven not only by students who want to study in more than one program or discipline but also an increasing acceptance of interdisciplinary research, and more research centers that work across disciplines.
The National Academy of Engineering and the National Materials and Manufacturing Board, for example, are collaborating on a 21-month project to develop a vision and recommendations for multidisciplinary engineering research supported by the National Science Foundation. The study will evaluate the most promising approaches for centers and deliver a report in early 2017.
As Olin College of Engineering President Richard Miller explained at an April 2016 symposium related to the study, the value of simple knowledge is decreasing due to tools such as Google. However, the value of using knowledge is increasing. That means a necessary shift in education toward innovative thinking, he emphasized, including interdisciplinary thinking.
ASEE collected the data on programs that combine at least two engineering disciplines for the organization’s Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges.
