Evolving Models for Engineering Education
Dr. Paul Penfield, Jr.
Monday, April 21, 2008
11:00AM ~ 12:00PM, Harris Center 101
Abstract
A convenient way to understand these changes is to look at the roles that engineers have played over the years, and the educational models that have supported these roles. The first electrical engineers had lifetime careers practicing engineering. Later, some engineers went into research. Recently, electrical engineering practice has demanded more technical breadth and depth than is attainable in four years. And some of our graduates are going into other professions such as law or medicine.
Today there is another posssible role. Society badly needs leaders who understand science, technology, and engineering. Engineers are not now educated for this new societal role. A different model for engineering education is needed.
Those universities that can prepare engineering students to be society's future leaders will be doing nothing less than completing the definition of what it means to be an engineer in today's world.
Short Bio
Professor Penfield was born May 28, 1933 in Detroit, Michigan. He received the B.A. degree (cum laude) in physics from Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts in 1955, and the Sc.D. degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1960. He joined the MIT faculty, in the Department of Electrical Engineering (now the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, EECS), in 1960. He served as Associate Head of the Department from 1974 to 1978, and as Director of the Microsystems Research Center from 1985 to 1989. From 1989 to 1999 he served as Head of the Department. He was Dugald C. Jackson Professor of Electrical Engineering from January, 2000 until his retirement in June, 2005.
His technical interests have included solid-state microwave devices and circuits, noise and thermodynamics, electrodynamics of moving media, circuit theory, computer-aided design, APL language extensions, integrated-circuit design automation, and computer-aided fabrication of integrated circuits. Since 2000, he has been developing a freshman course called Information and Entropy.
Professor Penfield is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and former Chairman of the Boston Section. He received from IEEE the Centennial Medal in 1984, the Circuits and Systems Society Darlington Prize Paper Award in 1985, and the Circuits and Systems Society Golden Jubilee Award in 1999. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the American Physical Society (APS), the Audio Engineering Society (AES), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and Sigma Xi. He is the author of five books and dozens of articles in his various fields of interest. He has been a consultant for many companies, and between 1980 and 1995 served as a Director of GenRad, Inc. During 1996-97 he served as President of the National Electrical Engineering Department Heads Association (NEEDHA) and in March, 2000 received its Outstanding Service Award. In 1998 he received the Fellow Award from the International Engineering Consortium. In 1998 he organized the Building 20 Commemoration, to remember and honor MIT's Building 20, for which he received the 1999 Presidential Citation from The Association of Alumni and Alumnae of MIT.
Professor Penfield lives in Weston, Massachusetts with his wife Barbara. He is a member of the American Fern Society and the Hardy Fern Foundation, and has a particular interest in field identification of ferns, fern allies, and fern hybrids.
