Stanford seeks to create new breed of engineer

[Andy Nguyen]

Stanford is training a new type of engineer for a fast-changing world and James Plummer wants to get the word out that students needn't be a total techie to apply.

"We are not - and should not be - a technical institute," Plummer told the university's Faculty Senate last month. "If (students) come here, they can take advantage of all the other pieces of this campus, which are equally as good as the School of Engineering."

Still, Stanford's push to broaden the student experience has had consequences, Plummer said.
"We end up on the edge of an accreditation," he said. "We have not yet failed to get accredited. But it's a tricky thing every year - or every six years."

"These students might not be as technically facile, but over five or 10 years they become the project leaders and innovators," he said. "They may have new ideas and take a very different view of problems."
Stanford seeks to create new breed of engineer


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[young]

Sounds like a new area of MBA with concentration in engineering :-k
I'm not convinced. Engineering is rigorous and nothing can really replace raw knowledge of such subject. It seems like a marketing strategy by Stanford to get a bigger pool of unique applicants. Maybe they're just too tired of reading the same cookie-cutter applications and resumes every year, and wanna see something different. But I just dont see how studying more broadly (studying less engineering) can be a good thing when youre talking about such a technical field. Just my thought

 

[bwc]

I agree with Young.. You can't replace raw technical. Math requires built up and just a like a building without a strong foundation, the building with collapse - sooner or later.
This is a fact because I tutored some person in calculus and I realized his problem was that he has a weak mathematical foundation and kept scoring in the 70s in algebra and other stuff. Thus, his inability to do get right answer, even though the steps are correct, the detail in manipulating the algebraic equation was wrong..and why he used them.

 

[Connor]

Without looking into the program at depth I can't be certain, but from the article it didn't sound like Stanford was moving away from a technically rigorous engineering program.

I think they are trying to do two things: (1) diversify the education of a traditional engineering student to better prepare them for future managerial roles, and (2) recruit students that are capable of completing an engineering program but were previously not interested.