Transforming Engineering Education: Creating Interdisciplinary Skills for Complex Global Environments

The IEEE and IBM are hosting an international conference and workshop on the future of engineering education. The event will focus on preparing graduates who can meet the changing business climate, face rapid progress in technology, work across disciplines, and meet the expectations of clients, employers, and the public.  As a result of working sessions planned for the conference we expect to offer a roadmap for academia, industry, and government on how to shape the future engineering curriculum, and how to incorporate in the curriculum technology-driven topics in law, business and social science.

The conference will be held in Dublin, Ireland on 6-9 April 2010.  Participants will include decision and policy makers from industry, government, and academia.  They will represent multiple disciplines including engineering and technology, law, social science, and business.  We hope that results from the conference would assist the engineering education enterprise in becoming more cognizant and more responsive to the emerging needs of the market for engineering and technology services.  In this context, we will also address the emergence of service-oriented businesses which are different in many aspects from the more traditional product-oriented businesses that were the core of engineering practice for more than a century.

The conference’s topics of interest are devised to attract academics, industry practitioners and government experts. 

Here are some potential topics; participants are encouraged to expand beyond this list.

• Industry requirements for skills and competencies needed of graduating engineers – now, and looking forward 5-10 years.
• The impact of globalization on engineering practice and engineering education.
• The impact of progress in computing and networking on practice and education in engineering.
• How do we train engineers to work across disciplines?   
• The role of IP laws that affect goods and services on training of engineers.
• The role of technology transfer and commercialization of research in Engineering Education.
• The effect of the emergence of service-oriented industries on engineers and other professionals.
• Teaching non-technical skills to engineers: interpersonal, written and oral communications; cross-cultural awareness; language skills; entrepreneurship; environmental and ethical concerns; leadership; legal and regulatory requirements; managing intellectual property.
• Review of existing academic programs that involve significant participation by faculty and students in engineering, business, law and related disciplines.
• Strategies for introducing and sustaining curricular reform in engineering.
• Strategies for introducing and sustaining cross-disciplinary academic programs.
• Providing graduating engineers with lifelong learning.

Technical Papers:  All technical paper submissions (in .pdf format) should be in English, and sent via electronic mail to Moshe Kam, Program Chair (m.kam@ieee.org) and Charles Hickman, IEEE Director of University Programs (c.w.hickman@ieee.org).  Extended abstracts (due 15 November 2009) should be no longer than 500 words and manuscripts (due 22 January 2009) should not exceed 20 pages (typed double-spaced format in a 12-point font). Each manuscript should have a cover page with the titles, names and addresses (including e-mail addresses) of authors, an abstract of approximately 200 words, and a list of keywords.  Both extended abstracts and technical papers will be subject to peer review.

Conference Deadlines

The conference will provide a Proceeding document available on a CD-ROM and deposited in the IEEE/IEL electronic library (IEL, through IEEEXplore).  To be deposited in IEL, papers must be presented by one of their authors during the conference. 

General Chairs:  

Arthur Winston (Tufts University; a.winston@ieee.org)

Jai Menon (IBM; menonjm@almaden.ibm.com)   

Program Chair:

Moshe Kam (Drexel University; m.kam@ieee.org)