Students in Ronald Bucinell's mechanical engineering class at Union College face a difficult assignment this semester. They have to build, practically from scratch, a battery-operated robot that not only will walk across a beam but also find a separate light, heat and wind source, and then mark each source by depositing three different-colored rubber balls.
They have to build this unit together with a group of students from Turkey, solving cultural and time-zone differences as well as the scientific problem itself. It's exactly the sort of work environment students can expect to find in the real world. And that's the point. “Engineers aren't just engineers anymore,” said Bucinell, an associate professor at Union. “The kind of guy who sits in a corner and designs just doesn't exist anymore.” Today's engineer needs to be able to be as much salesman, ambassador and public speaker as builder — able to market a vision as well as come up with one, Bucinell said. And in order to turn out graduates with the right skills, colleges like Union and Troy's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute want professors who know a lot more than the theoretical. Bucinell, for instance, spent 10 years working as a full-time engineer before turning to education. Even now, he consults for a number of organizations, from NASA to the Knolls Atomic Laboratory in Niskayuna.
Most professors at Union and RPI in the fields of engineering and architecture work on outside projects that allow them to leave the ivory tower fairly often. “It helps me to keep up with the practice, with what's cutting-edge,” said RPI Assistant Professor Anna Dyson, who is working on finding new technologies to make a 20-year-old office building in Washington, D.C., a prototype for energy efficiency.
At RPI, well-known architects are brought in biweekly to talk to students about their work. A recent symposium offered the same opportunity for students to meet with a number of award-winning architects. There's an art to teaching students how to deal with new technologies, professors say. And the trick is this: Rather than making them aware of the current state of the art, make them aware of the skills necessary to learn the new skills when they are created.
“We're not giving them answers,” said Frances Bronet, an RPI associate professor. “The fact is we're trying to get them to ask the right questions and determine what the problems are in the first place.”
Students themselves say they do what they can to keep up with the professional Joneses. Avetis Ioannisyan, who is studying engineering and computers at RPI, says his week consists of reading technology magazines, working and studying. “I don't watch TV,” he said.
Senior Ryan Thompson, also at RPI, said there's so much to learn about engineering that she has to tell herself to focus on what's important to her. “It's all changing really fast, and there's not enough time to keep up,” she said.
Some schools have had corporate help in developing their programs. Thanks to a 1993 General Electric Co. grant of $750,000, Union changed its own engineering program, linking up math and physics courses with elements of engineering. That's a lot different from the way students were taught a few decades ago.
Andy Wolfe, an assistant professor at Union, said he went to RPI in the 1970s and left after a year. He wanted to learn engineering — but didn't want to wade through two years of dry math and science to get there. “You've got to get the basics first,” he says he was told. “Then we'll teach you engineering. Be patient.” Instead, he went to a two-year engineering program at Vermont Technical College, where students measured how level the school tennis court was (it was a little bit tilted).
The Union program also emphasizes the role of international study, making it a requirement for students — either they travel during their junior year or they take part in a program like the one Bucinell teaches. Students say they appreciate the challenge. “It's very much what we'll see out in the real world,” said Union senior Ross Guida, who is working on the robot with the Turks.
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