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dumbing down changing the definition of engineering

http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/po…

Soon after the Larry Summers debacle, Charles Murray summarized the reason for the gender gap in math and science:

[There is] a distributional difference in male and female characteristics that leads to a larger number of men with high visuospatial skills. The difference has an evolutionary rationale, a physiological basis and a direct correlation with math scores.

Well, a Smith College professor found a way around that for getting women into engineering: Ignore the math. From the Chronicle:

[The curriculum] emphasizes context, ethics, and communication as much as formulas and equations.

Smith, the first women�s college to offer an engineering degree, graduated its first class of engineers in 2004, and since the program�s creation, in 1999, has attained a 90-percent retention rate

I’m no expert, but I’m not clear on what you can engineer with “context, ethics, and communication.” I hope the Chronicle is wrong in saying that this engineering curriculum emphasizes sociology and philosophy “as much as,” um, engineering.

To be sure, if teaching in this way improves women’s performance on actual engineering tasks, as opposed to just luring them into enrolling and sticking around, I’m all for it. But I find it hard to believe such distractions would improve on a focused curriculum, and I can’t seem to find any information on (A) how these students compare to those who got into sex-integrated engineering programs and (B) how these women do when they graduate. Certainly, were the program working well, it wouldn’t need affirmative-action deals like this:

Students who maintain an overall GPA of 3.5 and a GPA of 3.5 within the major are automatically admitted to graduate study in an engineering discipline at Dartmouth College, Johns Hopkins University, Tufts University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Michigan.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 10:40 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “dumbing down changing the definition of engineering”

  1. QM Says:
    February 15th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

    FWIW, here’s the curriculum for the degree:

    http://www.science.smith.edu/departments/Engin/courses_major.php

  2. tjic Says:
    February 15th, 2008 at 11:47 pm

    The math looks real enough (although from my biased point of view as a CS type, most of that math will be forgotten soon after graduation and never used again…but I’ll admit that real engineers, as opposed to hackers, do use math).

    The physics seems a bit light for my taste, but not too bad.

    One class in CS seems a insufficient, even for a general interdisciplinary engineering major.

    “Designing the Future: An Introduction to Engineering” – sounds like fluff. “Design Clinic” is probably fun, but also likely a pile of fluff.

    The rest of it sounds decent, though.

    All in all – if we’re to judge just by the course titles – it’s more serious than I might have guessed given the description.

  3. dearieme Says:
    February 16th, 2008 at 8:32 pm

    “Design” could include handbags, I assume.

  4. Korgmeister Says:
    February 16th, 2008 at 8:33 pm

    There’s always fluff classes in engineering, these days.

  5. Kevin Says:
    February 18th, 2008 at 5:57 pm

    Design classes are important – they’re often the only time that the students are faced with “come up with something that meets these (vague, underspecified) requirements” rather than “solve this neatly stated, very specific problem exercising something you just learned, and nothing else”.

  6. Kevin Says:
    February 18th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    What I noted about that CSM article was this part:

    Ellis has done much to shape those methods. He draws on his experience teaching high school physics to bring the fun factor into his classes, for one. He has students use motion-graphing sensors to gain a deeper understanding of functions and derivatives, key building blocks in calculus. In a January math-skills class, six first- and second-year students came alive using these tools. It was a rare teaching appearance for him this year, as he’s taking his first sabbatical in a 20-year career.

    A “math-skills” class. In January – which means it’s the second semester. And some of these students are sophomores, not frosh.

    Best case, Ellis is working with students who have already or are presently taking calculus classes from the math department; worst-case, this class is meant to prepare them for calculus.

    Either way, someone who hasn’t mastered the idea of derivatives and integration – internalized them, like addition and subtraction – isn’t going to be able to do real engineering work.

    It’s fine that some people didn’t start calculus their first week of freshman year, if not earlier, as long as they learn them before they begin the engineering coursework. But if they’re not ready for the engineering classes until the start of their junior year, they’ve only got two years rather than the usual 3 (or in some schools and majors, 4) for the
    classes in their major. And I don’t see anything in the article about engineering students being worked to death in their junior and senior years, or about them taking an extra year or two to graduate.