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| Home : Volume 32 : Winter 2006 | |
| Pinpoint: Message from the dean | |
Dean Paul Peercy |
| “We're going to change the college and we should change the college to fulfill our greatest dreams, our greatest hopes, and our greatest ambitions so that we can all be proud of the college of the future.” |
Now is the time to dream big dreams.
Engineering education faces major challenges. But it faces even greater opportunities. Powerful external forces are leading us to redesign engineering education. These forces include increasing globalization, the pace of technological advance, the fusion of engineering disciplines as well as the fusion of engineering and the sciences, and a rapidly increasing role of engineering in medical science and healthcare-related areas.
Meanwhile, competition is increasing as Asia graduates some 10 times as many engineering baccalaureates as the United States. If U.S. engineers are to continue to be in demand, we must prepare our students to be leaders in the world that will be, not the world that was.
The National Academy of Engineering report “The Engineer of 2020” emphasizes that U.S. engineering and engineering education has to change dramatically. The College of Engineering Industrial Advisory Board and other leaders in technology also agree with our need to change, especially with regard to undergraduate education.
Failure to change is not an option. The question before us is, “Do we want to determine our future or do we want to let others determine our future for us?” We have chosen to play an active role in creating our future rather than waiting to see “how things work out.”
We are taking this opportunity to create what we think will be the ideal College of Engineering for UW-Madison and the desired environment for our faculty, staff and students. As we look to the future and make our plans, we are focusing on a few guiding principles:
In addition to redesigning the curricular content and structure of engineering education, we are creating new learning and research environments for our students. This summer, we will remodel an underused portion of Engineering Hall. Thanks in part to a generous gift from UW alumnus Wade Fetzer (BS '59) and his wife, Bev, we are creating a modern learning center for our students.
This facility will complement our popular engineering learning area in Kurt F. Wendt Library by providing group study and tutoring space, along with amenities that create a more inviting environment. It will be a collaborative and comfortable space where students can work together as needed. It will have refreshments available, booths for small groups, a counter for computer access, and an enclosed group study area.
This is about more than providing a new physical space; it is about creating a culture in which students assume responsibility for their education. From the response to our facility in Wendt Library, we know that if we build it — and make available the right tools and resources — they will come. This is only one example, but an important example, of changes underway in the college.
In tomorrow's world, engineers will have to be innovative and think at the system level. That means we must provide a learning environment and education that give our students the cross-disciplinary breadth required to function at that level. Fortunately, one of UW-Madison's great strengths is its incredible breadth. Virtually every major discipline is represented here at UW-Madison. It is not an accident that UW-Madison is tied with Harvard for the most alumni serving as chief executive officers of fortune 500 companies. Many of those CEOs are engineers. We can exploit the breadth and quality of our programs to create an incredible learning opportunity for our students.
We're going to change the college and we should change the college so that it will fulfill our greatest dreams, our greatest hopes, and our greatest ambitions, so that we can all be proud of the college in the future.
This is the time to dream big dreams. But it is not only the time to dream big dreams — it is also the time to act on them.
Paul S. Peercy, Dean
Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu
Date last modified: 03-Feb-2006
Date created: 03-Feb-2006
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