Engineering school hosts forum to revitalize program

The Engineering School will intensively implement a strategic planning initiative in the next two years as part of a long term project to define the future of the school and determine how it can reach its goals.

The initiative, under the direction of Dean Maria Klawe, who was recently appointed to her position, was designed to be an inclusive opportunity, bringing together individuals from the Engineering School and other academic fields, as well as industry, government and other leading engineering schools.

The initiative's goal is to identify a number of areas in which the school will commit to being a world leader, Klawe wrote in a report that will be presented to the University trustees.

"We are looking to take the school to the next level," said Sanjeev Kulkarni, associate dean of academic affairs and initiative leader.

An important part of the initiative will be to determine what "the next level" means.

"We don't want to be defined by the US News and World Report. We want to make our own definitions," Assistant Dean of Development Jane Maggard said.

The initiative began with a series of 11 brainstorming workshops, each exploring a specific topic relating to engineering education and research at the University. According to Kulkarni, an estimated 900 people in total attended the two-day workshops, including about 200 graduate and undergraduate students.

Workshop were held on such topics as "Innovations in Information Technology" and "Engineering, Humanities, and the Arts."

At each event, a lecturer was invited to speak on the workshop's topic, after which participants broke down into small discussion groups.

"The small group format lent itself well to people of different levels and different positions. We had students in the same groups as distinguished alumni, and everyone had the opportunity to speak," Kulkarni said.

Summaries, which were collected from each of the 11 workshops, are currently being analyzed and compiled into a final report, which will be presented to the trustees and then launched during Reunions in May.

At that point, a detailed plan of how to reach the identified goals will be formed.

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Although each workshop was centered around a different core question, participant feedback contained many consistent trends. For example, according to Klawe, many participants said engineering students need to be introduced to "real world engineering" beginning in their freshman year.

Under the current system, freshmen take a fairly standardized schedule of science and math, with little focus placed on application classes. Because of this, when engineering students declare a department at the end of freshman year, they often have not yet taken classes in the department.

"Freshmen should be using math and science in ways that impact the real world," Klawe said.

Kulkarni stressed a need to introduce more interdisciplinary courses. "Engineering intersects with so many other fields, and students should be able to look at policy or law, or any of a number of things in the engineering context," he said.

Klawe said that the school will be looking to hire versatile professors who can not only build bridges among engineering departments, but also to other departments in the humanities.

In addition to branching out, the Engineering School is working on more ways to attract A.B. students into engineering classes. "In today's society you really need at least some level of an engineering background," Maggard said, "and it is the responsibility of the engineering school to provide that."

The trustees report will also address the need for more diversity in the Engineering School. Klawe explained that a homogenous school lacks perspective, and increasing diversity will make the school more effective.

Besides addressing faculty and students, the initiative has also spent a sizable amount of time discussing research.

"We need to determine which fields we can't afford to miss out on," Kulkarni said.

Klawe expressed a desire to determine Princeton's place in the world.

"We should be looking at topics such as technology for the developing world," Klawe said. "Not only would specific areas of the world benefit, but also for the world as a whole," she said.

Klawe expects that the entire project will take up to ten years. "But we want lots to be happening in the immediate future – the next two years are vital. We want people to look around and be able to see that things are happening," she said.

For example, the school is working to open a café in the E-Quad by February 2005.

In the next few months, the Engineering School will be hosting workshops across the country, Maggard said. "We are going to hold mini-workshops at some selected places so that more alumni can add their input. We are really working to get everyone's opinion."