IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. E-16, NO. 2, MAY 1973

Continuing Engineering Education Programat George Washington University

J. E. MANSFIELD

Abstract-The Continuing Engineering Education programat George Washington University has a somewhat unique audi-ence; 60% from government, 40% from industry; 60% fromlocal area, 40% from national and international sources. Al-though the present program has been shaped by the desires ofthis audience, it is now changing in accord with the maturingof Continuing Education studies in the United States. Plansare being devised for the awarding of certiflcates for the ac-cumulation of a certain number of Continuing Education Unitsin related subjects, recognizing courses taken at other universi-ties. In the long range, an optimum solution would be to useprofessional educators to advise individual employees of acompany or agency on a comprehensive program of study.Incentives and deterrents to participation in Continuing Engi-neering studies are being analyzed to determine the optimummix of courses and seminars. The University has worked withsome federal government agencies to devise and present up-dating courses for their particular personnel who have similarbackgrounds and needs.

Any continuing education program, even though it drawsstudents nation wide is influenced by the composition of itslocal audience. This is true of George Washington University'sContinuing Engineering Education (C.E.E.) Program. In itslocation in the center of Washington, D.C., the students en-rolled in this program over the past four years have been 60per cent from government agencies, 40 per cent from indus-try. Breaking the attendance down in another way shows 60%from the local area and 40% coming from all parts of the na-tion. Other than construction, there is almost no local heavyindustry. The Washington Board of Trade lists approximately9000 engineers and scientists in the metropolitan area. Tomeet their needs for continuing education in the engineeringand management fields the government has comprehensiveprograms run by the Civil Service Commission and the De-partment of Agriculture. A few courses are presented by otherlocal universities, and Washington is a favorite stop for variouscourses offered by commercial educational companies. Thecomposition of this local audience influences the type ofcourses we offer in our program. For instance, we avoid thoseconcerned with details of industrial engineering and, buildingon availability of talent in the nation's capital, a short coursein one of the environmental areas might emphasize legislative,regulatory and enforcement aspects.

Manuscript received January 17, 197 3.The author is with the School of Engineering and Applied Science,

George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20006.

The motivation for attendance in our C.E.E. program is es-sentially the same as those at any other university. Most ofour students initiate their own request to attend a course fortheir personal improvement. This personal improvement maybe to update themselves, learn new techniques for their pres-ent job or for promotion or similar personal incentives. Incases where the company or agency initiates the enrollment,they are usually looking for improved performance in the job,or to pick up knowledge in a growing field such as safety. Thedeterrents to attendance are not unique. However, due to thelarge proportion of students from government sources, achange of overall government policy on funds or personnel canhave an immediate and drastic change on attendance at ourcourses. For example, two years ago a government economydrive resulted in a sudden 50% overall drop in course atten-dance that lasted for six months. Such economy cuts are notall bad, however, as cuts in travel funds causes agencies to lookfor local sources of training rather than pay the travel and perdiem to attend a course across country.Time away from work is the greatest deterrent for many stu-

dents who would like to attend our three to five day shortcourses. To accommodate this problem we have moved to-wards shortening courses, condensing and deleting materialwhich we would like to include from an academic standpoint.In most cases, it is the theoretical portion which is condensed,retaining the practical and workshop portions. Prerequisitesmay deter some students, yet these must be retained, particu-larly when the basic theory portion of courses is reduced. Thegreatest deterrent of all is apathy. By working closely withone of the progressive government agencies over several years,it has become apparent that making educational opportunitiesavailable, both credit and nonoredit, at no personal cost (ex-cept time and effort), will motivate only a very small per-centage of the engineers. Though no overall solution has yetbeen reached, it is evident that a combination of reward andpressure is necessary to overcome the apathy. A schedule thatutilizes one or two hours during the working day once a weekgives incentive and does not compete with home and socialactivities. This particular agency had top-level managementdirectly interested in continuing education plus an educationalcommittee that had studied the personnel and determined theneeds.Faculty for the C.E.E. Program is not a problem except

when trying to match available faculty hours to some in-housecourse to be taught during the working day. Our own engi-neering faculty makes up about 20% of the staff of instructorsfor our courses. The remainder comes from government

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MANSFIELD: ENGINEERING EDUCATION PROGRAM

agencies, industry, and other universities throughout thecountry. This gives us the broad coverage of both theory andpractical aspects that we desire.Like most universities, and particularly private universities,

we have a number of constraints which dictate the directionand speed of growth of our program. The most importantconstraint is that we must pay our own way. Coupled withstrict hiring and promotion constraints, this means only slowexpansion, and careful selection of our program content. Ittends to make us market-oriented rather than academic-oriented. However, this may well be a strength rather than arestriction as it keeps us constantly searching for needs ratherthan working in the "Ivory Tower." In addition to this majorconstraint of marketability, we must maintain quality, flexibil-ity, and relevance in the program. Not having a continuingeducation center on campus, we suffer for classroom space forlarger classes. This, however, will be alleviated by space in thenew university library which is nearing completion. Anotherconstraint has been the decision to present our courses only inthe local area rather than repeating the course at various loca-tions around the country. We also avoid infringing on coursespresented by other local universities or by other colleges ofour own university.Our location in the nation's capital provides some unique

assets which we try to incorporate into our program. One ofthese is the contact with those in government who set the pol-icy for the nation. The top officials are approachable and co-operative and will often provide assistance in formulating andstaffing a short course. Another local strength is found in thegovernment R & D laboratories in the area. They are a sourceof staffing, information on state-of-the-art, and of students.With a young and growing C.E.E. program, we have the op-

portunity to set goals and to move towards their realization.In the short range we plan to build our program slowly, main-taining a strong emphasis on quality. We will expand in fieldswhich we are already serving in a limited way, such as in-housecourses tailored for specific government agencies. We hope toprovide increased services to the many professional confer-ences and annual meetings held in Washington. We are ex-panding a successful program conducted in cooperation with aprofessional society to offer several low-fee practical engineer-ing courses aimed at a technician level (high-school graduate totwo years of college). The response to these has been excel-lent. One of the surprises has been the attendance of somegraduate engineers who hold responsible jobs, or own a smallcompany. The response indicates a need locally that we arejust discovering.

In the long range we have a number of goals, several ofwhich are attainable within the next few years.We plan to work more closely with government agencies in

the area to provide a long-range program to meet their needsin updating their engineers and managers. The governmenteconomy drive to reduce numbers of personnel is an incentivefor better training to increase productivity. Scarce trainingfunds will be applied for maximum results. This provides theprime opportunity for a C.E.E. program to meet the needs ofa large group of engineers locally. To determine these needs,devise a quality program to meet them, and sell the program to

these agencies is a classic challenge. Like any real challenge,one cannot expect success every time. We have experiencedseveral discouraging instances in which a considerable numberof hours was expended to devise and staff a program at the re-quest of an agency, only to have them utilize our work to askfor bids or to directly hire an instructor to teach the programwe had developed. However, like fishing in a well stockedlake, some fish will get away with your bait, but with the rightproduct to offer, the overall results will be good.Another field we hope to develop is to be of greater assis-

tance to the staffs of busy Congressional committees. Thiswould be in the nature of short (2-hour) updating sessions incertain technical fields to enhance their understanding andcapability in preparation of legislation. The university is in aunique position to offer non-partisan, objective information ina number of engineering fields. Some previous unsuccessfulefforts in this field have illustrated the difficulties and limita-tions. However, we hope we can successfully do this as a partof our public service effort.Another part of our public service program would be in the

field of assistance to local urban and suburban school systems.We have already encountered the very real problems they have,of overworked teachers, crowded curriculums, and little inter-est in "engineering." However, the current, intense interest inenvironmental problems provides a means of introducing engi-neering at these levels. It remains only to find the way to pro-vide it in a way that will not crowd the curriculum nor add tothe work load of the teachers.Another goal is to expand our teaching techniques. In this

field we have been very conservative, letting others developand prove new techniques. Enough work has now been done,however, that we can evaluate the costs versus results of cableTV, programmed learning courses, correspondence courses,cassette tapes, etc., and decide where to add these in ourprogram.A major goal will be to keep our costs to a minimum and

to pass this on to the customer-at the lowest possible fees.This must be balanced against keeping class enrollment smallenough to ensure good instruction.A major step forward will be the installation of the nation-

ally accepted Continuing Education Unit which will permit astudent to accumulate units from courses at different universi-ties, and to have a complete transcript of his training. We areplanning a group of programs which will award certificatesbased on the completion of certain groups of noncreditcourses and the accumulation of a certain number of Continu-ing Education units. We are aware of the work of the Univer-sity of Wisconsin towards such a goal, and hope to use theirwork as a guide. In working out this certificate program, weshall endeavor not to lose the flexibility that is a major asset ofour present program.Another goal, which we expect will accelerate, is that of in-

creased cooperation with professional societies in a number offields, such as; determining educational needs, providing quali-fied instructors, co-sponsorship of courses/programs, presenta-tion of short courses at annual meetings, and assistance in ad-vertising courses to association members. We presently are

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. E-16, NO. 2, MAY 1973

working with several professional societies in one or more ofthese fields.The final long range goal is that of providing a professional

advisor for each student to determine his level of knowledgeand to lay out his course of study to prepare him for in-creased productivity and advancement in his company oragency. A few large industrial firms have the capability intheir personnel and training department to lay out these pro-grams, provided they have adequate knowledge of educationalopportunities available. However, by far the majority of work-ers are in companies or agencies whose training departmentsdo not have this capability to determine needs and relate themto educational opportunities. Nor, in most instances, could aninterview with a university professor determine the optimummix for a student, unless that professor was familiar with thecompany that student worked for-company organization, re-

quirements of his job, the promotional paths, etc. This goalof good individual counseling is definitely long-range, but maywell come to fruition if some companies or agencies can ef-fectively demonstrate its feasibility and economic viability.These opportunities for growth of continuing engineering

studies in the Washington area which we have discussed are inmost cases applicable throughout the nation, with changes tocorrespond to the local engineering population. Our own pro-gram these past several years has seen a slow steady increase innumber of courses offered and in student enrollment percourse. Most evidence points to similar movement in continu-ing engineering studies throughout the nation. The profes-sional engineering societies in cooperation with universitieshave an excellent opportunity to influence the direction andspeed of the progress of this growing unit of our educationalstructure.

Experience and Knowledge: Let's Get Them

Together

HANSFORD W. FARRIS

Abstract-In providing continuing education opportunitiesfor its engineering-oriented employees, industry today has fivedistinct options. These are: (a) Instructional television ofcampus course offerings into the plant, (b) Contract coursestailored to the company's specific requirements, (c) Engineer-ing short courses of the summer variety, (d) In-plant offeringsby company staff augmented by other professionals, (e) Tradi-tional on-campus work through night school or released time.These options can be viewed from the standpoint of the pop-

ular value concept, "benefit:cost" ratio. Influencing factorsare the role of credit, company expectations, employee expec-tations, direct and indirect costs to the company and to theindividual, quality of course offerings, the atmosphere for con-tinuing engineering education today and the nature of thecompany's involvement in technologically advanced work.Conclusions are given regarding the "best" solution for a

given situation. Recommendations are made for enhancementof the continuing education responsibilities of participants.

INTRODUCTIONContinuing engineering education has an outstanding oppor-

tunity to unite two important facets for the benefit of all of

Manuscript received December 20, 1972.The author is with the College of Engineenng, University of Michi-

gan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104.

the participants. On the one hand is the growing realizationthat the engineer-on-the-job needs to continue his educationby formal or informal participation in university offerings inhis area. On the other hand, the spread of effective off-cam-pus instructional television systems, with their talkback re-sponse capability, makes possible the introduction into thecampus classroom the experience of the practicing engineer.This latter quality has been missing in recent generations ofstudents and faculty because of the trends in faculty recruit-ment emphasizing the Ph.D. degree.

In a related development, we have witnessed in very recenttimes a creeping technological phenomenon that places a pre-mium on advanced engineering education in those industriespreviously regarded as mature and unattractive, in contrast tothe high-technology industries. That is, those industries thatare characterized as "non-technology intensive" are suddenlyfaced with problems requiring the best that technological edu-cation has to offer to achieve their solution.These can be exciting times for continuing education across

the country, for the opportunities for two-way communica-tion between classroom and industry can be developedwhether local employers of engineers represent technology-intensive industry or traditional patterns.

EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE IN INDUSTRYIn his book, The Age ofDiscontinuity, Peter Drucker, illu-

minates one of the most significant differences of our time,

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