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Session 2548

Organization and Management of Engineering Technology Units

Leonard M. Gold, Ph.D. P.E. Kansas State University College of Technology and Aviation

Abstract

In most schools, a department deals with a discipline and usually the various aspects of that discipline. This is also true for Engineering Technology. However; the department often doesn’t stop at the various aspects of the discipline. It continues across boundaries to other fields of expertise, such as mechanical to electrical. The organization of this unit is often treated as a single department and is determined by the size of the student body and the number of faculty in each area. This type of unit is rarely seen in Engineering and involves management of various disciplines by people not experienced in those disciplines. This leads to many students and faculty not being well served within their area of study or expertise.

The disciplinary content of these units is discussed along with the types of managerial organizations being utilized. Pros and cons of the various organizational structures are discussed along with correspondence to program size. Finally, some comments will be offered to help alleviate some of these problems.

1. Introduction

Historically, Engineering Technology units have been organized by size to be either separate departments depending on the size of the program or it can be lumped together within a single department that is multi disciplined. Each of these types of organizations can have subsets of organization within the structure. The organization that each of these resides within also varies with the academic programs at an institution. A number of specific types of organizations will be discussed. The names of these types of organizations were created specifically for this paper and do not specifically correspond to any text representations. The pros and cons of each will be mentioned with respect to management of a discipline, upper and lower division degrees, management support (budgets, etc.), cross disciplinary cooperation and leadership within the discipline.

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Gold, L. (1999, June), Organization And Management Of Engineering Technology Units Paper presented at 1999 Annual Conference, Charlotte, North Carolina. 10.18260/1-2--7870