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Engineering competencies, 2021

Preparing students for their future is a university’s greatest challenge and academics’ greatest reward. What follows seeks to highlight priorities in order to amplify what I think should be enduring qualities of engineering degrees, and where the gaps are. And of course, this is contestable space.

For me there are three principles that should be embedded in engineering education.

 Discipline-literate graduates

Our engineering graduates must have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of their discipline: I want them to build bridges that stand up, and to ensure that aircraft fly and land safely. The maths and engineering that underpins these will not alter. Engineering schools are practised at this, but nevertheless it is worth stating as axiom. Discipline literacy underpins engineering.

 Adaptable graduates

I want our engineering graduates to be adaptable. I think this is a broader canvas than entrepreneurship but it certainly encompasses this. Our engineers need to be technically adaptable, geographically adaptable, and culturally adaptable.

Technical adaptability is born from core competencies – the solid understanding of the fundamentals. We are already witnessing a revolution in the jobs of the present, let alone those of the future. Five years ago we saw the growing trend in graduates finding employment as building physics engineers. These are engineers who are right now at the forefront of building automation combining their understanding of thermodynamics, fluid flow, and control systems with automation, environmental engineering, and big data analytics.

Data visualisation must become a second language to engineers. Engineers must be able to shape data to support a narrative that is understandable to all. 

Geographical adaptability and cultural adaptability to some extent go hand in hand. Engineers need to be able to work across as well as within geographical boundaries and have the cultural competencies to match. Cultural competency includes possessing a much deeper understanding of the role of policy and the expectations of society in shaping engineering: how government policy dictates the building envelope, which tells us the occupancy, and has consequences for the heating and cooling, the for which are in turn dictated by policy and societal expectation.

Examples of the ways to support technical adaptability in a university setting are subjects that develop systems-thinking exemplified by the MIT Toylab[1] or the Stanford d.school[2].

Geographical and cultural adaptability are supported, for example, by multi-university partnerships through software platforms[3]. We can imagine engineering schools being a place where education occurs more commonly between and among campuses and partnerships facilitated by software tools.

Work integrated learning is the other pillar that supports adaptability, while also contributing to our responsibility to students over the term of their education.

 Resilient graduates

Technical depth coupled with adaptability is one of the key factors that will protect engineering graduates from the easy substitution of labour by capital. To me this equates to resilience. Resilience encompasses a commitment to ongoing learning. Chartered engineers across the world commit to continued professional development and engineering schools are better placed than ever to contribute. Resilience is reinforced by lifelong learning.

 Translating to the future

There are notions that I think we would do well to interrogate, and these tend to be the shorthand terms that date quickly. These terms are undeniably useful as shorthand, but quickly lose currency. My guess is that Industry 4.0 will date within the lifetime of a degree. See for example the article ‘What’s the half-life of a buzzword?’[4]  

For me, the enduring principles are discipline-literacy, adaptability, and resilience expressed through work-integrated learning and interdisciplinary opportunities. We currently do some well, some not so well but establishing enduring principles has the desirable effect of strengthening the employability of graduates whilst simultaneously inuring them to the zeitgeist.

 [1] http://web.mit.edu/2.00b/www/courseinfo.html

[2] https://dschool.stanford.edu

[3] https://www.3ds.com/partners/partnership-programs#acc_uid_1405367

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2013/08/19/data-science-whats-the-half-life-of-a-buzzword/#25c190f07bfd