2
Revising the Undergraduate Engineering Program
Undergraduate engineering programs must be modified to better prepare graduates for exploiting the benefits of advanced manufacturing. Chapter 1 outlined the state of engineering education and the goal of this study. This and the next two chapters present recommendations for changes that will improve graduates’ advanced manufacturing knowledge and skills.
As explained, the term “advanced manufacturing” is applied broadly to new approaches to all aspects of producing output, especially those driven by digital descriptions of the desired result that are converted into instructions for a variety of computer-controlled manufacturing machines. Thus, several engineering disciplines are developing and using advanced manufacturing techniques. For this study and report, the committee focused on mechanical engineering and manufacturing engineering programs leading to 4-year undergraduate degrees, and the advanced manufacturing technologies that apply to mechanical engineering. This is consonant with many engineering needs of the defense industrial base and its supply chain.
Advanced manufacturing that produces mechanical articles depends on a range of engineering disciplines and engineers—not on mechanical engineers alone. Since advanced manufacturing can be used to produce new materials and structures, materials engineers may be required to conceive, develop, and test new materials. Software engineers are involved both in creating the software that converts digital design data into formats that control
advanced manufacturing equipment and in developing software to operate the equipment. Complex designs will require expertise of many different sorts, from different engineering “disciplines.” The integrated rocket motor three-dimensional (3D)-printed by Rocket Lab shown in Chapter 1 involves cryogenic electric pumps, combustion chambers, thrust direction control, and many other parts, and will confront many considerations, such as cold and heat tolerance, fluid flow, corrosion, and material compatibility. And the idiosyncrasies of the advanced manufacturing equipment will be a factor; for example, can the optimal shape of the pump impeller blades be produced reliably by the laser beam melting process?
FUSE MANUFACTURING INTO EDUCATION’S CURRENT FOCUS ON DESIGN AND ANALYSIS
Engineering and engineers conceive, design, and build solutions to problems. The “build” element is an essential component of engineering; without it, concepts and designs simply languish on paper or in digital storage. The education, licensing, and professional growth of successful engineers thus must embrace building.1 It’s known by different terms in different fields of engineering—manufacturing, construction, production, fabrication, execution, deployment—but all these terms label the steps essential for a design to have an impact.
Undergraduate engineering education has long combined principles and practice. Advancing engineering by trial-and-error practice predates Pythagoras, and “principles” have been on the rise ever since. Today’s undergraduate engineering education programs are dominated by learning and applying principles, with practice often limited to some laboratory/machine-shop exposure and project courses. The project courses focus on design, often leading to prototypes but rarely including or discussing manufacturing. One-, two-, or three-semester project courses at the end of the degree program are often called “capstone courses.” These experiential components of undergraduate engineering education are discussed in Chapter 3.
Undergraduate mechanical engineering has, in part, been allowed to pay scant attention to manufacturing because for the past several decades most changes to basic manufacturing processes for mechanical objects have not
___________________
1 M. Klawe, 2015, “Why Manufacturing Is Vital to Engineering Education,” Forbes, June 8, https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariaklawe/2015/06/08/why-manufacturing-is-vital-to-engineering-education.
had much influence on design. True, hand-driven machines became numerically controlled, and economics of some processes improved greatly, but the knowledge needed by a designer did not change much. Advanced manufacturing, however, differs greatly from conventional manufacturing and has changed many aspects of product conception, design, and production, thus greatly affecting all aspects of engineering.
Additive manufacturing, with abilities to produce shapes that cannot be produced by traditional subtractive manufacturing processes such as milling, deeply influences problem formulation, solution conception, and design. While the details of additive technologies and the materials they can handle may change rapidly, the principles of the technologies, especially additive manufacturing, are sufficiently stable and likely to endure to be included in undergraduate engineering education.
Therefore, all undergraduate engineering students, and especially those in mechanical engineering, need to learn about manufacturing and advanced manufacturing. The benefits of understanding “realization” as an essential part of engineering are important in all engineering disciplines, as disparate as electrical engineering, materials science, biomedical engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, and many more.
Recommendation 2.1: Undergraduate engineering education programs should cover the entire engineering process, from concept to design to build—engineering deploys solutions to problems. When the end product is a physical device, fabrication and manufacturing play central roles in the process. Thus, the knowledge and practice of advanced manufacturing should be part of the undergraduate engineering education program. Engineering program leaders, such as deans and department heads, should take the lead in ushering in the necessary changes to curriculum and courses.
Many programs offer elective courses in manufacturing or advanced manufacturing.2 But the large number of required courses in engineering programs often means only a few students are able to take electives, and the elective material is not integrated into the rest of the engineering curriculum.
Some engineering programs embrace the “build” part of engineering and require coverage of manufacturing technologies in their programs, often via capstone or project courses. For example, California Polytechnic State Uni-
___________________
2 These are not “manufacturing engineering” courses, which concern operating manufacturing processes: scheduling, data collection, factory processes, etc.
versity, San Luis Obispo has first-year students building air-powered piston engines as an introduction to techniques ranging from reading engineering drawings to press-fitting shafts in flywheels, and hands-on engineering in many courses and every year.3 Harvey Mudd College has been incorporating manufacturing into its entire curriculum for some time, and for 50 years has required a three-semester Engineering Clinic capstone that addresses problems posed and sponsored by industry, often leading to production.4 These two examples are not unique, and they represent major themes of the two institutions’ education programs, which are ABET accredited.5Chapter 3 explores various forms of experiential learning that build manufacturing expertise among undergraduates.
Engineering education leaders and associations are beginning to advocate substantial changes in engineering education, including more emphasis on skills for teamwork, collaboration, and communication. Some schools are rethinking and reorganizing their entire approach to engineering, for example reducing the “silos” of separate engineering disciplines. These redesigns are an opportunity to integrate production into all disciplines and thus to properly address advanced manufacturing. (See Appendix B comments by Kyle Squires on Arizona State University’s overhaul of its engineering program.)
Undergraduate engineering programs, though already busy, can be modified to include mandatory coverage of manufacturing and advanced manufacturing. So far, leadership in increasing manufacturing emphasis has not come from ABET, the engineering accreditation body. Its general criteria6 are proposed and approved by members from 35 professional societies, which represent different kinds of manufacturing and different priorities for its coverage. ABET “Program Criteria,” which focus on specific engineering disciplines driven by corresponding professional societies, could be amended to increase coverage of manufacturing. Even without amendment, ABET criteria do not prevent changes, as demonstrated by the above examples of successful integration of manufacturing into accredited programs.
___________________
3 A. Fleischer, College of Engineering, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, 2022, presentation at Infusing Advanced Manufacturing in Engineering Education Virtual Workshop, February 25.
4 Harvey Mudd College, “Clinic Program,” https://www.hmc.edu/clinic.
5 ABET is incorporated as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc.
6 ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, “Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, 2022–2023,” https://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditation-criteria/criteria-for-accrediting-engineering-programs-2022-2023, accessed September 25, 2022.
Proper amendments to ABET criteria will encourage academic institutions to build ecosystems for advanced manufacturing education by enabling the integration of engineering design (which is already present throughout engineering curricula) with manufacturing processes, so that students learn to think about design with manufacturing in mind. This will also help to integrate manufacturing-related activities in siloed courses.
Whether or not ABET criteria are changed to mandate coverage of realization, advanced manufacturing, digital infrastructure (such as digital threads and twins), and other topics that are in demand by rapid advances in industry, faculties and professional societies can advocate for emphasizing these topics in the engineering program evaluations that lead to ABET accreditation.
Recommendation 2.2: Professional engineering societies such as the American Society for Engineering Education, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and SME (previously known as the Society for Manufacturing Engineering), and their members should pursue amendments to ABET requirements to explicitly include manufacturing and advanced manufacturing in accreditation student outcome requirements. For example, current ABET criteria for student outcomes include this statement on engineering design: “an ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors.” This ABET criterion should be amended to include manufacturing as follows: “an ability to apply engineering design and realization to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors.”
ADVANCED MANUFACTURING CURRICULA
A robust advanced manufacturing curriculum would help spread expertise. Such a development would be especially welcome in academic institutions that wish to grow their advanced manufacturing coverage, perhaps starting from zero. There is an opportunity for institutions and teachers with experience in teaching advanced manufacturing, and for companies that
have employed graduates of such teaching, to develop curricula that can be shared widely to support other undergraduate engineering institutions. Stakeholders providing input to advanced manufacturing curriculum development include at least teachers, students, employers, equipment vendors, and service providers.
Advanced manufacturing will evolve, perhaps rapidly, and increase in breadth. Additive manufacturing already allows new materials to be fabricated easily, for example using blown powder directed energy deposition. Curricula need to be developed to be broadly useful for different audiences and settings. For example, they should
- Be modular, with short segments to enable study on varying schedules
- Be flexible as to setting: online, asynchronous, synchronous, in-person
- Comprehensively cover principles and practice
- Offer demonstrations (video) and laboratory “assignments” to build practice, with access to varying amounts of shop equipment or advanced manufacturing services
- Have a structure that covers basics succinctly but is expandable for greater depth or for details of specific processes, equipment, and materials
- Retain and deliver a curated online repository of open-source materials
- Encourage timely contributions and updates from teachers, students, employers, vendors, and service providers
This list is a sketch; detailed curricula design and processes for development and evolution would need to be created. Use cases must be considered: Can such a “curriculum” be used to form an undergraduate required course? an elective? an independent study? a supplement to an existing course? self-study by an undergraduate engineer? a holiday homework assignment? an industry training session to prepare employees for new assignments? an “implementation guide” for a project or capstone course? The rollout of curricula needs to include “teach the teachers” sessions to facilitate adoption. Developing such curricula is an opportunity for academic institutions to partner with other institutions, leading educators, researchers, employers,
professional societies, and others to develop an exceptional and effective contribution to the spread of advanced manufacturing.7
A stretch target for a curriculum is to serve an engineer in industry starting a project that requires advanced manufacturing in a group where neither she nor her colleagues have experience. Tips for selecting equipment, dealing with vendors, and troubleshooting would be valuable.
Courses and curricula are usually started by one or more faculty members spawning a special topics course and refining it by teaching it several times. The course and associated infrastructure such as labs may grow and become a permanent offering (see Box 2-1). The course developers may invite other collaborators in academia or industry and plan a nationwide deployment. The growth and development of such a course may attract government funding; options and recommendations are explored in Chapter 4.
FLEXIBLE EDUCATIONAL PATHWAYS
For a variety of reasons, many undergraduates choose to veer from the standard 4-year undergraduate degree schedule. Engineering offers a number of reasons and opportunities. For example,
- Start at a 2-year community college, get hooked, transfer to complete a bachelor’s degree in a 4-year bachelor’s degree engineering program8
- Enter a co-op program to get real-world work experience, “social skills” on the job9
- Take a year off to continue as research staff on a research project at the university
- Switch from one engineering discipline to another (e.g., from electrical to mechanical engineering)
- Frustrated that required engineering courses preclude other offerings at a university, take an extra year and some engineering electives
- Continue after bachelor’s degree for master’s
___________________
7 See also NASEM, 2021, “Preferred Approaches to Curriculum and Program Design” and “Preferred Approaches for Program Content,” in DoD Engagement with Its Manufacturing Innovation Institutes: Phase 2 Study Final Report, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/26329.
8 For example, see “Iron Range Engineering Program” in Appendix B.
9 This was discussed in session 2 of the workshop, which is written up in Appendix B.
Students want options, with less pressure to “be done in 4 years” and/or to be constrained by specific course sequences. Students get excited at different times for different reasons, to pursue different directions.
Recommendation 2.3: Undergraduate engineering program leaders should expand flexible options that augment advanced manufacturing education or experience. For example,
- Expand 3+2 and 4+1 programs for MS degrees in advanced manufacturing.
- Build a better path from community colleges to 4-year institutions, perhaps allowing transfer credit for some hands-on skills.
- Offer manufacturing in modularized formats, blending lectures with hands-on laboratory experience to allow students to investigate manufacturing within a busy course schedule.
- Partner with industry and equipment manufacturers for co-ops (even multiyear), self-paced learning, education, and training in small segments, in partnership with industry and equipment manufacturers.
INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE IN ACADEMIA
Few engineering faculty members have extensive industrial experience, even fewer manufacturing experience, and fewer yet advanced manufacturing experience. But manufacturing experience is extremely valuable for teaching advanced manufacturing courses, supervising or critiquing hands-on labs and projects, mentoring or supervising independent study, leading a research project in collaboration with an industrial partner, setting up and running advanced manufacturing equipment such as industrial-quality 3D printers, developing or codeveloping teaching materials and curricula, and simply being available to students as role models and authorities on manufacturing. When experienced engineers are invited to join or visit an engineering program, most universities can offer a “professor of the practice” title to recognize their value as a full-fledged faculty member.
Recommendation 2.4: Engineering program leaders should encourage bidirectional collaboration exchanges between academia and industry. For example,
- Recruit professors of the practice and adjunct professors from industry and alumni (working and retired) with manufacturing experience. Adjunct professors employed in industry can collaborate with undergraduate programs remotely.
- Attract engineers to collaborate on research projects, which may also provide some funding.
- Encourage faculty to take sabbaticals in industry jobs that will give them deep contact with advanced manufacturing (design and fabrication) and help them return to the classroom or laboratory with new and useful insights.
These and other opportunities often already exist, but their small scale and limited contribution to advanced manufacturing, specifically, can be increased. Industry can offer support for faculty to work in year-long industrial assignments,10 but academic programs need to assure faculty that such experience is valued and will not jeopardize advancement or tenure.
The role of academia in undergraduate engineering education is further explored in the next chapter, which covers practical experiences–experiential education. And the support and collaboration required from industry and government are treated in Chapter 4.
___________________
10 An example is the Boeing Welliver Faculty Fellowship Program, “Boeing Selects Engineering Professors for 2009 Fellowship Program,” https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2009-04-23-Boeing-Selects-Engineering-Professors-for-2009-Fellowship-Program, accessed November 21, 2022.
