|
Visiting Professors' Scheme
Visiting Professors in Principles of Engineering Design: Background to The Scheme
Engineering design
encompasses those activities which
intelligently associate useful, economic,
reliable and appropriate ideas with
technology to define an engineering project,
product, process or system to satisfy a
market need. The good engineering designer
is therefore a key link in the industrial
environment.
There has been a
national failure over many years to
recognise fully the importance of
engineering design, which has in turn
contributed to a serious loss of
international competitiveness.
Recognising the
importance of rectifying this national
weakness, The Royal Academy of Engineering
considered carefully what initiatives it
might take during the 1990s which would
quickly address the heart of the problem. It
determined that engineering higher education
contained deficiencies which deserved to be
addressed in order that (to quote from the
Moulton Report of 1976) 'the student should
be exposed to a proper mixture of analysis,
synthesis, conceptual design, detailed
design and other wider issues'.
If undergraduates were
educated appropriately about the principles
of engineering design, every future
professional engineer would be that much
better placed to contribute effectively to
regaining international market share.
The Academy's
initiative has taken the form of a scheme of
Visiting Professors in Principles of
Engineering Design. This enables
distinguished, senior engineers in business
to work with their academic colleagues to
provide a bridge for undergraduates from
education to industry. Their role is to
demonstrate and transmit to students and
staff that design is the integrating theme
in all the engineering disciplines within
the university.
|
