IUSE/PFE: RED: An Engineering Education Skunkworks to Spark Departmental Revolution

高等教育机构努力改善他们给学生的机会和准备，特别是在沟通，创造力和创业精神等关键专业技能方面。通常，今天的工程毕业生拥有分析和设计的示范技术技能，但需要进一步发展专业技能。美国的竞争力、国家安全和创新领导地位都岌岌可危。该项目确定了学术部门作为一个组织，其与这些目标的一致性需要改进。现代迫切需要增加价值的机械工程（ME）教育-通过更密切地关注专业技能-刺激ME部门的批判性自我检查。该项目将组织动态与学生成果联系起来，激发课程，学生体验的变化，最重要的是学生，员工和教师相互交流的方式。这一点很重要，因为目前还不知道组织模式如何促进或抑制学生这些专业技能的发展。通过将组织重塑为基于创造力和信任的组织，使用现代方法来管理这一变化，该项目为学生的工程职业生涯准备了革命性的变化。该项目涉及工程教育研究，民族志，社会网络和内容分析，变革管理的工具，以及一个新的实验性组织，以体现学生如何为工程职业做好准备的革命性变化。革命性的变化根本不可能发生，直到一个学术组织的两个关键方面得到解决：情感和文化。教师、学生和工作人员对高等教育是什么--以及应该是什么--持有深刻的个人、情感驱动的信念。反过来，这些信念又以积极和消极的方式塑造了我内部的当地文化。该项目采取了系统的方法，通过关注工程教育研究和文化/变革研究问题来彻底改变普渡大学的ME部门。这项工作将回答有关工程教育和适当的方法，以实现大规模的专业成果的关键研究问题。该愿景强调关系、文化和沟通，沿着不可否认的技术实力，作为专业技能的基石。工程学院院长为该项目及其调查团队提供了强有力的机构承诺，该团队是工程教育研究，变革管理和技术组织文化人类学专家的独特联盟。教师发展计划从事战略性的做，一个现代的方法适合高度网络化（而不是层次）ME部门组织。与专业实践的联系利用了ME中几个成功的，正在进行的项目，以获得国内和国际经验。可扩展性和适应性是教师发展计划的核心要素，特别强调评估专业成果-规模。项目对工程教育研究的依赖是强大的，PI团队的一名成员持有ME部门和普渡大学工程教育学院之间的联合任命。该项目吸引了多元化的专家团队来执行工作，并涉及一项扩展和适应计划，使革命蓝图能够被其他感兴趣的机构采用和适应。

Higher education institutions strive to improve the opportunities and preparation they give to students, especially in crucial professional skills like communication, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Very often, today's engineering graduates possess exemplary technical skills for analysis and design, but need further development of professional skills. American competitiveness, national security, and leadership in innovation are at stake. This project identifies the academic department as an organization whose alignment with these goals needs to be improved. The modern imperative to add value to a mechanical engineering (ME) education -- by focusing more closely on professional skills -- stimulates critical self-examination of the ME department. This project connects organizational dynamics to student outcomes, inspiring changes in curriculum, the student experience, and most importantly the ways that students, staff, and faculty interact with each other. This is significant, because it is not currently known how an organizational model promotes or inhibits development of these professional skills in students. By remaking the organization to one based upon creativity and trust, using modern approaches to manage this change, this project orchestrates revolutionary change in student preparation for engineering careers. This project engages the tools of engineering education research, ethnography, social network and content analysis, change management, and a new, experimental organization to manifest revolutionary change in how students are prepared for engineering careers. Revolutionary change simply cannot occur until two crucial facets of an academic organization are addressed: emotion and culture. Faculty, students, and staff hold deeply personal, emotionally driven beliefs about what higher education is - and should be. In turn, these beliefs shape the local culture within ME in both positive and negative ways. This project takes a systematic approach to revolutionize the ME department at Purdue by focusing on both engineering education research and culture/change research questions. The effort will answer critical research questions about engineering education and appropriate approaches to achieve professional outcomes at large scale. The vision emphasizes relationships, culture, and communication, along with undeniable technical prowess, as cornerstones of professional skills. The Engineering Dean has provided a strong institutional commitment to the project and its investigating team, which is a unique coalition of experts in engineering education research, change management, and cultural anthropology of technical organizations. The faculty development plan engages Strategic Doing, a modern approach appropriate for the highly networked (not hierarchical) ME department organization. The connection to professional practice leverages several successful, on-going programs in ME for both domestic and international experiences. Scalability and adaptation are central elements of the faculty development plan, with special emphasis on assessing professional outcomes - at scale. Project reliance on research in engineering education is robust, with one of the members of the PI team holding a joint appointment between the ME department and Purdue's School of Engineering Education. The project engages a diverse group of experts in executing the work, and involves a scaling and adaptation plan that allows the revolution blueprint to be adopted and adapted by other interested institutions.