FRONTIERS OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM

National Academy Of Sciences, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

America's 21st century workforce requires the technical expertise of well-educated engineers capable of working in, creating, and leading the industries that drive the economy, generate jobs, and contribute to solutions for major problems faced by the nation and world. Preparation of such a workforce requires dynamic and adaptive improvement in engineering education. Higher education in engineering must evolve by innovating, improving, and implementing best practices to properly prepare US students to lead and prosper amid increasing global competition. These crucial improvements to engineering education require a mechanism for propagating innovations throughout US engineering schools and for building a collective commitment to new levels of excellence and effectiveness in engineering education. The annual Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) Symposium of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), which aims to bring innovations in engineering curriculum and education to universities across the US, is one such mechanism. Through the FOEE, the NAE recognizes and encourages individuals who advance the teaching and learning of engineering principles, processes, and leadership. FOEE nurtures US capacity for engineering education innovation, enhances the prominence of young innovators in engineering education, facilitates the dissemination of attendees' educational innovations and strategies beyond their own campus, and stimulates new educational research and practices that advance the body of knowledge on engineering learning. It is laying the foundation for local and widespread implementations of innovations to enhance the recruitment, retention, and professional success of engineering students and to encourage increased participation of US students in engineering careers. Evidence indicates that educational innovation promotes diversity and inclusion in undergraduate engineering education, and so more women and underrepresented minority students will enter and persist in engineering. FOEE's impacts continue and accumulate with each meeting, broadening both the FOEE community around the country and the growing groups of FOEE alumni on each campus, who can support each other and bolster their continued educational innovation. FOEE's unique mission is to organize a symposium that recognizes accomplishment, facilitates learning, broadens collaboration, and promotes dissemination of pioneering practice in engineering education. Its vision is to strengthen the nation's engineering and innovation capacity and capability by catalyzing a vibrant community of emerging engineering education leaders. The eighth annual FOEE Symposium will be held September 25-28, 2016, at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Irvine, CA. Engineering faculty members who attend must have been nominated by their dean or an NAE member, completed an application, and been chosen by the FOEE Advisory Committee, which selects and invites attendees from the highly competitive pool of applicants. Invited attendees, speakers, committee members, and NAE officers meet in a retreat-like setting; the schedule includes group meals and long breaks in addition to structured panel and small group discussions, allowing for numerous interactions and network building. This is not a program of lectures and an audience; it is a highly interactive forum for sharing teaching innovation across disciplines with fellow engineering educators and practitioners. FOEE attendees are from a variety of engineering disciplines, institutions, and academic career stages, both tenure track and non-tenure track. Attendance at FOEE allows them to share their innovations with one another, receive detailed feedback, and improve further, opportunities not explicitly provided in other settings. Attendees have described takeaways they can immediately use, renewed energy and motivation, or broad ideas to frame their future work. Many praise the meeting structure and the benefit of finding a new community of like-minded colleagues. These educators return to their universities and share information with colleagues and administrators, improve their educational innovation and develop new ones, and together impact thousands of students annually.