Elementary Science Education for Advanced Engineers
One of the most authoritative academic council in Systems Engineering called INCOSE, just held an annual symposium in Singapore, one of my favorite blog SDM Chronicle reported after the author finished presentation there. My ex-boss in Japan got her full-paper accepted as well, true to her title.
Today I just bring about a question arising from what the author of the blog wrote. Excerpt:
I feel relieved and appreciate that there is a requirement for engineers in industries about fundamental engineering(& science) skills, since I am just re-doing undergraduate course in engineering school. How encouraing!
Basically it's enough now that I got right element in my role, but I still wonder how those fundamentals work for advanced engineers? Intuitively I can understand the importance, but it's hard to imagine engineering students without the basic skills and knowledge such as shown above.
Looking only at the software system developement in Japan, not all the managers engaged in large systems have obtained science/engineering degrees who didn't even take math and physics. They might have acquired sense of engineering throughout their career, or originally have it already. So I want to understand more precisely why managers think in that way.
I have already been familiar with the idea that basic math and physics are imoprtant even for advanced engineers when I heard Dr. Oiwa, formerly wokred in Keio and specializing in practical education for engineers (especially in software development), spoke about it. As far as I understand (hopefully correctly) why it is important is, basic science classes especially math and physics contribute to "understand and express the event under consideration in objective and logical manners", which is absolutely necessary for system developers. As I'm from information industries, that idea is relatively easy to understand because not all school for computer/information studies require basic science classes for the degree. Jobs in software development are sometimes non-math based, or non-numerical if I say more precisely, but it's verbal-logic based.
However, I believe students in other engineering major such as aero/astro space or electricity know much about the basics. As far as I've seen, they keep calculating all day and week! It may also be because I just don't understand how the requirement of those major in other schools is like though.
Anyway, any comments or opinions are appreciated.
Today I just bring about a question arising from what the author of the blog wrote. Excerpt:
(Original doc is here, English translation is by me)
At the banquet, I was stimulated to have talked to many people, most of them senior though. They raised issues about elementary education for engineers. Problematic phenomenon are: students in Japan are poor at modeling although they do well at algorithms, students in electrical engineering major don't know how much the electrical voltage is, they know symbols but haven't seen real resistance, and so forth.
Managers in large companies require schools to teach four major dynamics, engineering and management since recently they can't afford doing follow-up education for freshman employees.
It was surprising to know that the graduate schools failing in teaching those kind of fundamental skills are called "lost two years".
I assume students don't have any ideas about those requirement in the industries.
I feel relieved and appreciate that there is a requirement for engineers in industries about fundamental engineering(& science) skills, since I am just re-doing undergraduate course in engineering school. How encouraing!
Basically it's enough now that I got right element in my role, but I still wonder how those fundamentals work for advanced engineers? Intuitively I can understand the importance, but it's hard to imagine engineering students without the basic skills and knowledge such as shown above.
Looking only at the software system developement in Japan, not all the managers engaged in large systems have obtained science/engineering degrees who didn't even take math and physics. They might have acquired sense of engineering throughout their career, or originally have it already. So I want to understand more precisely why managers think in that way.
I have already been familiar with the idea that basic math and physics are imoprtant even for advanced engineers when I heard Dr. Oiwa, formerly wokred in Keio and specializing in practical education for engineers (especially in software development), spoke about it. As far as I understand (hopefully correctly) why it is important is, basic science classes especially math and physics contribute to "understand and express the event under consideration in objective and logical manners", which is absolutely necessary for system developers. As I'm from information industries, that idea is relatively easy to understand because not all school for computer/information studies require basic science classes for the degree. Jobs in software development are sometimes non-math based, or non-numerical if I say more precisely, but it's verbal-logic based.
However, I believe students in other engineering major such as aero/astro space or electricity know much about the basics. As far as I've seen, they keep calculating all day and week! It may also be because I just don't understand how the requirement of those major in other schools is like though.
Anyway, any comments or opinions are appreciated.
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| (Irrelevant to the topic) Friend's cat by the pool at my apt. |
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