“BUILD BACK WISER-Engineering The Future. " Part 1 👷🏽‍♀️✍🏽

The field of education is notoriously resistant to change, and engineering education is no exception.

However, as I write this, there is huge room for cautious optimism.

Studying as an Aerospace Engineering student in Ghana for four years and currently a Trainee Professional Engineer with the Ghana Institution of Engineering has opened my eyes to a major problem every engineering study faces after school which I’d like to highlight as today marks World Engineering Day - The huge gap between engineering in the classroom and hands-on engineering on the field.

The educational system requires aggressive, progressive, and creative curricular changes in our engineering education. Preparing future engineers in the present Age of Globalization requires additional skill sets beyond classroom work and traditional technical capabilities.

Research shows that one of the key problems is that engineering classes often focus on decontextualized problems, failing to take into account the social context. Students are asked to spend far too much time solving complex mathematical equations and hairy aerodynamic equations and just to pass examinations to graduate and far too little time thinking about the human dimensions of the problems they are trying to solve.

And now to the real deal.

Bridging the gap between the engineering student and practicing engineer. Practicing engineers are called on to solve ill-posed, messy problems that do not have one correct answer that’s easily found in a textbook. Students need the opportunity to confront, rather than avoid, this complexity during these crucial formative years when they learn to think like engineers.