How one can Boot Up a New Engineering Program

Beginning a brand new engineering program at a college isn’t any easy process. However that’s simply what Brandeis College in Waltham, Mass., is doing. By 2026, the college will supply an undergraduate engineering diploma—however with out creating an engineering division. As an alternative, Brandeis goals to lean on its robust liberal arts custom, in hope of providing one thing totally different from the greater than 3,500 different engineering applications in america accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Expertise (ABET). IEEE Spectrumspoke with Seth Fraden, one of many new program’s interim cochairs, about getting a brand new engineering program up and operating.

What prompted providing an engineering diploma?

Seth Fraden: We noticed that we had 90 p.c of all the weather which might be vital for a vibrant engineering program—the essential sciences, math, physics, pc science, life science, all put in a social context by the liberal arts. We see our new program as a manner of bridging science and society by expertise, and it looks like a pure match for us with out having to construct all the things from scratch.

Brandeis’s engineering diploma can be accredited by ABET. Why is that necessary?

Fraden: Being the brand new children on the block in engineering, it’s pure to wish to reassure the group at massive that we’re dedicated to excellent high quality. Past that, ABET has very well-thought-out standards for what defines excellence and leaves every particular person program the liberty to outline the training targets, the instruments, the evaluation, and the right way to constantly enhance. It’s a set of very-well-founded ideas that we’d help, even within the absence of this certification.

What’s the first course you’re providing?

Fraden: We’re doing an introduction to design. It’s a course during which the scholars develop prosthetics for each animal and human use. It’s open to all college students at Brandeis, however it’s nonetheless fairly substantive: They’re working in Python, they’re working with CAD applications, they usually’re engaged on substantive tasks utilizing open-source designs. The thought is to get college students enthusiastic about engineering, but in addition to have them study the basics of ideation—going from planning to design to fabrication, after which this can assist them determine whether or not or not engineering is the foremost for them.

How do you see liberal arts akin to historical past and ethics being a part of engineering?

Fraden: Lots of our college students wish to intervene on the earth and remodel it into a greater place. If you happen to solely concentrate on the manufacturing of the expertise, you’re incapable of reaching that goal. It’s essential know the influence of that expertise on society. How is that this factor going to be produced? Who says what labor goes to enter manufacturing? What’s its life cycle? How’s it going to be disposed of? It’s essential have a full-throttled liberal arts training to know the environmental, ecological, economical, and historic penalties of your intervention as a technologist.

How will you develop an engineering tradition?

Fraden: We’re not going to have a division. Will probably be the one R1 [top-tier research institution] engineering main and not using a division. We see that as a energy, not a weak point. We’re going to embed new engineering school all through all our sciences, in an effort to have a optimistic affect on the departments and to advertise expertise improvement.

That mentioned, we would like there to be a robust engineering tradition, and we would like the scholars to have a particular engineering identification, one thing {that a} scientist like myself—although I’m smitten by engineering—doesn’t have in my bones. So as to try this, our instructors will every come from an engineering background, and can work collectively to construct a tradition of engineering.

This text seems within the April 2024 print subject as “5 Questions for Seth Fraden.”