Department-Level Reform of Undergraduate
Industrial Engineering Education: A New Paradigm for Engineering
Curriculum Renewal
In the opening decade of the twenty-first
century, industrial engineers play dominant roles in making
information technology selection and system management decisions,
in designing supply chains, and in allocating resources to make
production and service delivery organizations more effective
and efficient. Unfortunately, few major changes have been made
to the core baccalaureate-level industrial engineering curriculum
shared by most American Universities since the late 1960s, a
time of room-sized main frame computers when few production
and service delivery systems were information driven. Clearly,
there is a critical need to develop a comprehensive plan to
reformulate, stream line, and update industrial engineering
degree programs.
It is reasonable to ask why investing
significant funds in the "rethinking" of the baccalaureate-level
curriculum of an existing degree program, such as industrial
engineering, is worthwhile. The ABET program curricula criteria
for industrial engineering specify that: " The program
must demonstrate that graduates have the ability to design,
develop, implement, and improve integrated systems that include
people, materials, information, equipment and energy."
If the planning grant activities proposed by the investigators
of this project are successful, then, because of the integrative
nature of the industrial engineering discipline, it is logical
to assume that educators in other engineering disciplines can
use these same approaches to better prepare their students for
engineering practice.
Objectives
The primary objective of the proposed
planning project is the development of a new scaleable and deployable
industrial engineering baccalaureate-degree renewal model. This
model will be designed to permit scaling up from an information
technology kernel to a fully integrated industrial engineering
undergraduate curriculum. The model will also serve as a deployable
template for the redesign of other baccalaureate-degree engineering
programs through its use of problem-solving approaches that
draw directly from fundamental models in the physical and biological
sciences, and its emphasis on the use of nontraditional learning
methods. A secondary objective for the planning project is an
assessment of the appropriateness and likely impact of the new
model.
Intellectual Merit
The proposed project team has
extensive experience in curriculum development and assessment
in using advanced technology to improve the education delivery
system, in on-going research with industry, and in integrating
research efforts as usable deliverables in classroom. Project
team members have demonstrable results from previous NSF, FAA
and NASA grants and industry sponsors. Moreover, they have the
resources of the Advance Technology Systems Laboratory and Virtual
Reality Eye Tracking Laboratory at their disposal. Industry
partners will contribute experienced practitioners.
For the first time, a planning
process will be developed that will lead to the identification
of opportunities to extend tested asynchronous learning mechanism
and synthetic environments to support an industrial engineering
curriculum in systems and engineering design as it relates to
the three emphasis areas of information technology , biotechnology
and cognitive theory. The successful completion of this effort
will lead to the ability to fill a state and national need for
well-prepared industrial engineering graduates.
Impact
The planning project activities
presented in this proposal are expected to lead to a novel curriculum
model that will impact both the education of Industrial Engineering
students and, through time, the education of students in other
engineering disciplines. Since the industrial engineer plays
an integrated role in industry, the model should have a positive
impact on commerce in general. Specifically, the reformulated,
streamlined and updated industrial engineering curriculum should
lead to more effective and efficient use of educational resources
as curriculum components are more integrated and theory based
with less emphasis on kits of application-specific tools. Student
learning should be enhanced with complimentary in-class, in-laboratory,
and out-of-classroom experiences. This project also broadens
the participation of underrepresented faculty groups in curriculum
renewal decisions.
Industrial engineers educated in
a reformulated, streamlined, and updated engineering program
which has been developed in accord with findings from this planning
project will be better prepared to respond to the problems they
are likely to face through their professionals careers. Specifically,
graduates of the new programs will have a better understanding
of production and service delivery system capabilities and limitations
on the performance of such systems, and the use of information
technology as a tool of systems analysis, design, and ongoing
operation.
