A Critique: Report of the NASEM Committee on Integrating Higher Education in the Arts, Humanities, Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Abstract

The word is (and has been for the past 100 years – only this time it’s different?) that engineering and engineering education, face challenges. Pundits and critics show different faces (Buch, Engineering, development and philosophy, philosophy of engineering and technology. Springer Science+Business Media, 2012, p. 11). Some construct the problem in terms aligned with business needs. Others, less mundane and from a loftier position, claim that engineers need to be more socially responsible, recognize the contextual complexity of tasks in their designs while seeking to benefit all humankind. Still others see the challenge as keeping up with the emergence of new fields in practice – e.g., data science, artificial intelligence, biology, medicine – and the ever-increasing importance of working across the boundaries of traditional engineering fields to engage with practitioners of science, social science, the arts, and even the liberal arts. This last way of framing the need for renovation in engineering education, stressing the multi-dimensional character of engineering practice, is reflected in a recent study of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine – a report documenting innovative educational programs of an integrative nature. The study is titled The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education: Branches from the same Tree and focuses “on better understanding the impact of an integrated educational approach on students.”. In this chapter we: (1) Summarize the report’s results, focusing on the integration of the humanities and the arts with engineering; (2) Critique the report’s implicit vision of what is required for the education of the hybrid, polyvalent engineer; (3) Elaborate on how integrative learning courses and programs might be evaluated; (4) Make an argument for the need for collaboration across disciplines in teaching integrative courses and programs, and additionally consider, what this will demand from faculty.