Lewis M. Duncan, President, Rollins College, and former dean and professor of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College

THE ILLIBERAL ART OF ENGINEERING

ABSTACT:  Engineering is the application of science for human benefit.  It is rational, interpretive and purposeful.  This explicitly utilitarian principle stands in contrast to the classical liberal arts discourse of knowledge as its own end.  Indeed, engineering is knowledge applied.  Through engineering education we seek graduates who are not merely reflective, but also reflexive.  However, the modern manifestations of engineering education, far removed from the vocational apprenticeships of the industrial revolution, and of liberal education, also far removed from the academic elitism of its post-enlightenment foundations, today are converging on a shared vision of higher education.  We openly celebrate the intellectual priority of critical reasoning, the pragmatic importance of proficiencies in communication, the translational and transnational character of wisdom, and the essential ideals of global citizenship and responsible leadership in a diverse society.  We strive today not merely for a life of the mind, but for a life that is mindful.  This essay continues that dialogue of cultural reconciliation between the humanities and the sciences, between the pure and the applied, between the past and the future.

BIOGRAPHY:   Lewis M. Duncan was elected president of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, in 2004.  He is former dean and professor of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College and was previously provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of Tulsa.  

Dr. Duncan received his bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics and his master’s and doctorate in space physics from Rice University.  As a National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellow, he conducted research at the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center in Puerto Rico.  He subsequently joined the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a research scientist, later becoming a section head in the Division of Earth and Space Sciences.

Following a year as a Carnegie Science Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Arms Control, he joined the faculty of Clemson University as associate dean of the College of Sciences.  He was founding director of the South Carolina Space Grant Consortium and remains a fellow of Clemson’s Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs.  He currently serves on the Florida Technology, Research and Scholarship Board.

Diane P. Michelfelder, Professor of Philosophy and former Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Macalester College, and President for the Society for Philosophy and Technology

ENGINEERING AND THE LIBERAL ARTS: TOWARD ACADEMIC COSMOPOLITANISM

ABSTRACT:  What needs to be done to create engineers whose skills, knowledge, and intellectual appetites enable them to respond thoughtfully and innovatively to the challenges of sustainability and other pressingly complex social issues?  This question invites thinking not only about how to integrate more of the liberal arts into the educational pathways for future engineers, but also, in the context of bringing such integration, about what might be done differently within liberal arts education itself. Currently the liberal arts themselves do a better job in general at introducing technology itself into the classroom than they do at focusing on technology as a subject-matter for examination and reflection. Much more could be done by way of cultivating epistemic respect for technology and its significance in shaping our world; and more emphasis could be placed on building capacity for curiosity, shaping good questions, and creative problem-framing. The development of such broad, "cosmopolitan" affordances of mind would I propose help engineering and non-engineering students alike to see themselves as part of a single academic culture of inquiry within an ever-increasingly unpredictable world.

BIOGRAPHY: Diane P. Michelfelder is Professor of Philosophy and the former Dean of the Faculty and Provost at Macalester College. She received her A.B. degree from Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. from The Univeristy of Texas at Austin.

Prior to coming to Macalester College, she was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana State University. From 1981-1997, she was a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy at California Polytechnic State University. While at Cal Poly she oversaw the launch of a major in philosophy, developed and directed a university forum on ethics, technology, and the professions, and became one of the first faculty members in the US to teach a course on the ethics of the Internet. Her publications and research interests span 20th-century European philosophy, applied ethics, and the philosophy of technology. Within the philosophy of technology, her work focuses on ethical issues connected to the use of information technologies in everyday life. She has been a board member of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy and a member of the Forum for Innovation and Excellence in Higher Education. Currently, she is a board member of Scholars at Risk and the president of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.

Braden R. Allenby, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and of Law, Arizona State University, and President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology

THE CHALLENGE OF SUSTAINABLE ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Allenby's slides

ABSTACT:  At a growing number of schools, new sustainability institutions are being created.  At Arizona State University, for example, the new School of Sustainability declares that "Our mission is to bring together multiple disciplines and leaders to create and share knowledge, train a new generation of scholars and practitioners, and  develop practical solutions to some of the most pressing  environmental, economic, and social challenges of sustainability,  especially as they relate to urban areas."  While the relationship  between such institutions and the growing interest in "sustainable engineering" is apparent, and a deeper integration of engineering and  this vision is obviously necessary and desirable, significant challenges arise in practice.

BIOGRAPHY:  Braden R. Allenby is Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and of Law, and Founding Director of the Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management, at Arizona State University; he moved from his previous position as the Environment, Health and Safety Vice President for AT&T in 2004.  Dr. Allenby received his BA from Yale University, his JD and MA (economics) from the University of Virginia, and his MS and Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from Rutgers University.  He is past President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology; ex-Chair of the AAAS Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy; Chair of the IEEE Presidential Sustainability Initiative; an AAAS Fellow; an AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellow; a Templeton Research Fellow; a Batten Fellow in Residence at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration; and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures & Commerce. From 1995 to 1997, he was Director for Energy and Environmental Systems at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and from 1991 to 1992 he was the J. Herbert Holloman Fellow at the National Academy of Engineering in Washington, DC.  His areas of expertise include Design for Environment, industrial ecology, telework and netcentric organizations, transhumanism, and earth systems engineering and management.  In 2008 he was selected by the Carnegie Foundation as 2008 Arizona Professor of the Year.