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Session 1455

Growing the National Innovation System: Reshaping Professional Graduate Education to Ensure a Strong U.S. Engineering Workforce D. A. Keating, 1 T. G. Stanford, 1 D. D. Dunlap, 2 D. R. Depew, 3 S. J. Tricamo, 4 D. H. Sebastian, 4 S. K. Fenster,4 G. S. Jakubowski, 5 M. I. Mendelson, 5 R. J. Bennett, 6 J. M. Snellenberger 7

University of South Carolina 1 / Western Carolina University 2 / Purdue University 3 New Jersey Institute of Technology 4 / Loyola Marymount University 5 St Thomas University 6 /Rolls-Royce Corporation 7

Abstract

This is the first paper in the special panel session on reshaping graduate education to better serve the needs of the practicing profession in industry to ensure a strong U.S. engineering workforce for competitiveness. The newly established National Collaborative Task Force of the Graduate Studies Division of ASEE is taking a key leadership role to enact major reform in graduate engineering education at the national level to spur U.S. technological innovation, unleash industrial creativity, and enhance competitiveness. This paper addresses the national urgency for reform in higher education to strengthen U.S. innovative capacity and outlines purposeful action that needs to be taken in transforming graduate education to better meet the needs of engineering practice for leadership of technology innovation. Further, it defines a road map for change to help guide the reshaping of professional graduate education as a “system for lifelong learning” that is specifically designed to support the continuous development of technology in industry and to grow the nation’s engineering graduates as technology leaders in industry simultaneously.

1. Introduction

Because of the urgency to strengthen U.S. innovative capacity for economic development and the nation’s security, the U.S. Science and Technology national innovation system and the nation’s system of graduate engineering education are in transition. While increased efforts must be undertaken to ensure the supply of domestic graduate students for academic research and teaching positions at the nation’s research universities, accelerated efforts also must be undertaken to better ensure the further graduate development of a strong U.S. engineering workforce in industry responsible for leading the process of engineering for creating, developing, and innovating new technology for competitiveness.

The National Collaborative Task Force was established in 2001 as an initiative of the Graduate Studies Division of ASEE to meet the need for transformation. The purpose of this paper is to help awaken the sense of urgency for government, industry, and universities to work together in reshaping professionally oriented graduate education to strengthen the creative, innovative, and leadership capacity of the U.S. engineering workforce for competitiveness. The task force is taking a key leadership role at the national level in reshaping graduate education to better serve the needs of engineers in industry and to better support the nation’s industrial infrastructure for advanced technology development. The task force has studied the issues associated with the status of U.S. engineering education; the resulting “educational gap” that has limited the further graduate development of the engineering workforce contributing to a decline of U.S. competitiveness over several decades; and the national impact that purposeful reform in graduate education can make in ensuring a strong U.S. engineering workforce to enhance the nation’s economic development and national security.

“Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Stanford, T., & Keating, D. (2003, June), Growing The National Innovation System: Reshaping Professionally Oriented Engineering And Technology Graduate Education In Ensuring A Strong U.S. Engineering Workforce Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--12644