Engineering, Design, and People
Last Wednesday I blogged about an opinion piece by Thomas Fisher, Dean of the University of Minnesota's College of Design, which argued for a more integrated approach to design for human purposes in modern life. Yesterday Bruce F. Wollenberg, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, wrote a Counterpoint in which he challenged Fisher's seeming criticism of engineers as responsible for "for the 'inefficient, even dysfunctional' design of cities", and points out that "cities are usually designed by people educated in 'urban planning.' Engineers may be part of the teams designing cities -- but they are not the principal designers."
Wollenberg goes on to say
It is often thought that engineering is a field that manipulates things and that human need is not within its scope. The reality is quite the opposite. Engineers do what they do to meet human needs. To be truly effective, engineering and design have to work hand in hand in cooperative, interdisciplinary, ways to meet people's needs.
Both Tom Fisher and Bruce Wollenberg are friends of mine, and I have no intention to take sides. However, I think that this dispute holds a lesson about how engineering—which is indeed concerned with people's needs—doesn't make that case strongly enough in trying to attract and educate students. Wollenberg writes
The mistaken idea that engineering is not fundamentally interested in people's needs becomes a barrier to exactly the kind of cross-disciplinary work that is needed to solve complex problems. Perhaps more harmful is the effect this myth has on the career choices of young people. We often hear students say that they would like to pursue engineering but need to find a field where they can help people. This is wrong: the best and the brightest, the compassionate and the caring, driven from a field where they could help people, all by a myth.
Unfortunately, this is a message that doesn't come through as clearly as it might. The home page for undergraduates in the Electrical and Computer Engineering program says
What is engineering?
Engineering is both a science and an art, requiring a combination of imagination, creativity, technical skills, and business acumen to make things that benefit people. Engineers design bridges and automobiles, biomedical materials and robots, mass transit systems and communication networks, processes for cleaning up toxic spills, and systems for improving harvest yields; and that is only scratching the surface. Basically, engineering is the process of producing a technical product or system that meets a specific need.
This does mention benefiting people by meeting their needs, but only in a passing way. The equivalent statement on the home page of the College of Design does somewhat better.
The College of Design encompasses the full range of design disciplines from graphic design, apparel design, and interior design to architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. The college also includes programs in housing studies and retail merchandising. The faculty and students in the college seek to advance the quality and value of the natural, designed, and social environments, with a focus on the interaction of people and their world.
The real emphasis on the role of these disciplines in dealing with issues that affect people and communities comes in their outreach and service pages:
The College of Design Research & Outreach Units
The College of Design encourages faculty and students to engage in problem-focused research and outreach that has regional, national, and international significance. Research and Outreach establishes professional learning communities of scholars in centers, laboratories, consortiums, museums, and institutes. Such learning communities focus on innovative solutions to design problems relating to architecture, apparel design, interior design, graphic design, housing, landscape architecture, and merchandising, and make up-to-date knowledge available in the classroom.
The mission of Engineers Without Borders - University of Minnesota (EWB-UMN) is to partner with disadvantaged communities around the world, and to improve their quality of life through implementation of engineered projects that prove environmentally and economically sustainable. Our goals are achieved through cooperation with each other, fellow institutions, and mentors on the basis of commitment, persistence and concern for the recipients of our efforts. We strive to uphold and advance our principles for international responsibility and look forward to applying the experience in our future engineering careers.
Engineering might do better in attracting students who want "to find a field where they can help people" if it put such sentiments—and educational possibilities—up front on its undergraduate and graduate home pages.