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EDUCATION<br />
Cutting Across<br />
the Disciplines<br />
Jim Vallino,<br />
Rochester Institute of Technology<br />
Engineering and <strong>computing</strong> educators must design curricula<br />
that require students to work outside their own domain.<br />
Multidisciplinary,<br />
interdisciplinary,<br />
transdisciplinary—<br />
these terms are<br />
all the buzz in engineering and<br />
<strong>computing</strong> curriculum design.<br />
Throughout their career, most<br />
graduates will work on project<br />
teams with people from multiple<br />
fields of expertise. Engineering and<br />
<strong>computing</strong> educators must accordingly<br />
design curricula that require<br />
students to work outside of their<br />
own domain. This opportunity can<br />
range from small-group collaboration<br />
in a single course to large-scale<br />
efforts that span every program at<br />
an institution.<br />
There is often resistance to incorporating<br />
multidisciplinary work into<br />
curricula. Academic institutions,<br />
like most other organizations, have<br />
administrative and management<br />
entities that can unintentionally construct<br />
impediments to cutting across<br />
entrenched boundaries. At colleges<br />
and universities, fingers usually point<br />
at the department as the main culprit.<br />
Typical impediments are joint sched-<br />
0018-9162/10/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE<br />
uling of cross-listed courses, faculty<br />
teaching-load accounting, and support<br />
for shared facilities.<br />
One reaction to this is a push to<br />
eliminate administrative entities.<br />
However, this creates a new set of<br />
problems when program responsibility<br />
becomes ill-defined. At the core,<br />
what is required is a commitment<br />
to improve students’ education by<br />
promoting multidisciplinary teams<br />
and projects. The motivation may<br />
be provided top-down, especially<br />
for institute-wide programs, but<br />
in most cases it will be a limited<br />
effort led from the bottom up by a<br />
small number of individual faculty<br />
members.<br />
ACCREDITATION<br />
PROVIDES A MOTIVATION<br />
Whether you believe that multidisciplinary<br />
work will be the savior<br />
of engineering and <strong>computing</strong> education<br />
or is just another fad that<br />
will blend into the curriculum landscape,<br />
educators will see it in one<br />
form or another in the foreseeable<br />
future.<br />
Published by the IEEE Computer Society<br />
Programs accredited by the Engineering<br />
Accreditation Commission of<br />
ABET (www.abet.org) must demonstrate<br />
that students have<br />
“(c) an ability to design a system,<br />
component, or process to meet<br />
desired needs within realistic<br />
constraints such as economic,<br />
environmental, social, political,<br />
ethical, health and safety, manufacturability,<br />
and sustainability”;<br />
“(d) an ability to function on<br />
multidisciplinary teams”; and<br />
“(h) the broad education necessary<br />
to understand the impact of<br />
engineering solutions in a global,<br />
economic, environmental, and<br />
societal context.”<br />
All three of these program outcomes<br />
look beyond a traditional<br />
single-discipline curriculum. Because<br />
the program is responsible for demonstrating<br />
these outcomes, the<br />
experiences can’t be haphazardly<br />
inserted in the curriculum or based<br />
on elective coursework that students<br />
may or may not actually take.<br />
APRIL 2010<br />
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Computer Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page M S BE<br />
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