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

高等教育机构努力改善为学生提供的机会和准备，特别是在沟通、创造力和创业等关键专业技能方面。很多时候，今天的工程专业毕业生拥有典型的分析和设计技能，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岌岌可危。本项目将学术部门确定为一个组织，其与这些目标的一致性需要改进。现代社会迫切需要增加机械工程(ME)教育的价值--通过更密切地关注专业技能--刺激机械工程系进行批判性的自我反省。该项目将组织动态与学生结果联系起来，激发课程、学生体验的变化，最重要的是学生、教职员工和教职员工之间的互动方式。这一点意义重大，因为目前尚不清楚组织模式是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种变化，该项目在学生为工程职业生涯做准备方面策划了革命性的变化。这个项目使用了工程教育研究、民族志、社会网络和内容分析、变革管理和一个新的实验组织的工具，以显示学生为工程职业做准备的革命性变化。只有解决了学术组织的两个关键方面：情感和文化，革命性的变化才会发生。教职员工、学生和教职员工对高等教育是什么--也应该是什么--持有深刻的个人、情感驱动的信念。反过来，这些信念以积极和消极的方式塑造了ME内部的当地文化。该项目采用系统的方法，通过关注工程教育研究和文化/变革研究问题，对普渡大学的ME系进行了改革。这一努力将回答有关工程教育和适当方法的关键研究问题，以实现大规模的专业成果。该愿景强调关系、文化和沟通，以及不可否认的技术能力，作为专业技能的基石。工程系主任为该项目及其调查团队提供了强有力的机构承诺，这是一个由工程教育研究、变革管理和技术组织的文化人类学方面的专家组成的独特联盟。教师发展计划采用战略行动，这是一种适合高度网络化(而不是层次化)的ME部门组织的现代方法。与专业实践的联系利用了ME的几个成功的、正在进行的项目，以获得国内和国际经验。可伸缩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--在规模上。项目对工程教育研究的依赖很强，PI团队的一名成员担任了ME系和普渡大学工程教育学院的联合任命。该项目让不同的专家小组参与执行工作，并涉及一项规模和适应计划，使革命蓝图能够被其他感兴趣的机构采纳和调整。

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.