Prototyping the Engineer of 2020: A 360-Degree Study of Effective Education

In 2004, the National Academy of Engineering published a widely discussed report, entitled The Engineer of 2020: Processes and Conditions for Preparing the Engineer of 2020, which envisioned the engineering workplace of the year 2020 and the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that engineers would need to succeed in this technologically fluid, dynamic, and global workforce. The Prototyping the Engineer of 2020 study (P360) is identifying and analyzing the curricular, pedagogical, cultural, and organizational features that support engineering education that appears to produce the engineers called for in the Engineer of 2020. An interdisciplinary team of education and engineering faculty and graduate research assistants conducted detailed case studies of six engineering schools empirically identified as exemplary to identify factors that promote students’ development with regard to three focal learning outcomes critical to engineering practice: design and problem-solving skills, interdisciplinary competence, and contextual competence. The case studies also focused on factors affecting the recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented minority students in these engineering schools.