On the breadth of engineering education
While a little more than two months old, this Inside Higher Ed article nails it on the head. There is a need for engineers to be more broadly trained and to engage them early in their education in real engineering.
Two relevant excerpts:
Norman Fortenberry, director of the National Academy of Engineering's Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education, said that the move toward interdisciplinary engineering curricula is definitely a trend. "It is in response to an increasing consensus within the engineering education community," he said, "but more importantly in the employer community."
Plummer (dean of Stanford's School of Engineering) said that getting underclassmen in the lab where "they can get excited about pushing the state of the art," has changed the traditional undergraduate experience from one where incoming students are faced with surviving two years of calculus, chemistry and physics before they learn what engineering is all about.
While the references in the piece are to Harvard and Stanford, this is precisely what is happening here in Princeton Engineering; engineering students are being engaged in engineering earlier in their education and more non-engineering students are being exposed to engineering. Among the examples of this include one of Princeton Engineering's newest courses, Engineering, Mathematics & Physics, a course that integrates all three disciplines at the freshman level.