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Schedule including this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, October 28, 2002
There is a national crisis in engineering and a compelling need to reconsider and rejuvenate engineering education. At a time when we see a growing need for engineers –- it is estimated that in the next decade more than 800,000 engineering jobs will be created -– the number of engineering graduates are not poised to keep pace. There is an imperious need to increase access of groups that have hitherto been disenfranchised from engineering education. In the past two decades, women have made great strides in entering fields previously populated almost entirely by men; women and men are now enrolling in medical and law schools in parity. However, although women now outnumber men in undergraduate degree programs, only 2 percent of female first-year students say that they intend to major in engineering. Juxtaposed with, or perhaps responsible for, the gender disparity is an extremely narrow approach to education and a concomitant obfuscated sense of engineering's social relevance. Essential and requisite for the academic preparation of engineering leaders is a thorough and balanced study of the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. Smith College has historically prepared women leaders, often challenging commonly accepted social mores. In this spirit, the Picker Engineering Program was established, the only engineering program at a women's college in the United States and one of the few within a liberal arts context. We are developing a curriculum based on a fundamental view of the unity of knowledge and the ability to use this knowledge for socially responsible, well-informed, and reasoned judgement. Starting with a short clip from Jurassic Park, join me for an entertaining view of how engineering is oft perceived and what it can be.
Dr. Domenico Grasso is the Rosemary Bradford Hewlett Professor and Founding Chair of the Picker Engineering Program a Smith College and holds adjunct faculty appointments at the Universities of Connecticut and Massachusetts and Yale University. He received a B.Sc. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an M.S. from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. from The University of Michigan. He is currently Chair of the Environmental Engineering Committee of United States Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board, Past President of the Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Environmental Engineering Science.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Barbara Pfarr
Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov